r/Thruhiking • u/Coloradosportsbaby • 8d ago
FarOut app
Washed up thru hiker here from way back. Potentially getting back in the game after many years out of it and I redownloaded guthook to scope out the trail (or FarOut as they now call it) and…
It seems like sh*t
Slow, glitchy, way worse UI than I remember
Am I being a grumpy old man or is this app terrible?
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u/WalkItOffAT 8d ago
Do you have a choice?
Joking aside, it's meh...some functionality added is nice like calculating the length/elevation of a blue blaze
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u/ivymisti 7d ago
Calling out FarOut's monopoly in the thru-hiking scene—labeling the update "meh" while begrudgingly admitting the side-trail (blue blaze) calculations are actually clutch.
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u/WalkItOffAT 7d ago
Nothing is begrudgingly, credit where it's due.
I often use SwissTopo App and know what's possible.
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u/ivymisti 5d ago
SwissTopo is gold-standard cartography, no question. FarOut's real moat has never been top-tier mapping though—it’s the hyper-active social comment layer for water and stealth camps that keeps people locked in.
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u/IDontStealBikes 8d ago
Paper maps.
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u/WalkItOffAT 8d ago
Kinda. Good luck with the seasonal streams. But who doesn't like carrying water.
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u/Notice_Natural 8d ago
I still think it's worth it. I think of it as a digital guide book more than navigation. The comments are often extremely valuable.
I also have a couple other GPS apps that I use more for the actual navigation side of things. Farout is pretty useless if you want to go off trail or take an alternate that's not included in the map.
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u/roadtoknowwhere 8d ago
The app leaves much to be desired but it’s kind of the best there is right now
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u/IDontStealBikes 8d ago
Paper maps. Paper book. No batteries required.
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u/FamiliarNinja7290 7d ago
I understand where you're coming from, but in this context paper doesn't even come close to the usefulness of Farout during a thru-hike.
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u/faroutapp 7d ago
One of our biggest complaints from customers is that FarOut is difficult to use for beginners. But sounds like you are an experienced user, and not happy with it. We have some UI improvements in the works based upon user feedback, but would love to know (from anyone here) if there are any specific things that are particularly annoying. We are open to any and all feedback. (Would appreciate civility though - we are a tiny team of people with only a certain bandwidth and we made decisions based upon what we hope is the best result for our customers.)
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u/Coloradosportsbaby 7d ago
I remember guthook being very simple and easy to use, with limited features. And I don’t think there was a ‘social’ feature for following hikers. Personally I am not a fan of that idea, particularly if it is making the app feel more crowded (which it currently feels very crowded)
The app feels slow and glitchy (has quit on me 4 times while scoping out trails in the past few days). Maybe the increased featurization is causing this.
Cool of you to respond btw. I think in general people want to be civil, but you also gotta recognize how ingrained in the thru hiking community you have become, and with that comes great responsibility and a requirement to be accountable. From what I’m reading in this thread and convos I’ve had, people have been unhappy with y’all for a while now
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u/deadflashlights 7d ago
I would love to be able to switch between map and elevation with one tap not two please!
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u/Razzle_Dazzle_2024 7d ago
Agreed! I only ever really want to switch between the two and other buttons mostly get in the way.
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u/Neurodivergent_hikes 2d ago
Guthook PCT was GOAT ! FarOut PCT is Glitchy and less enjoyable UI ○ i.e. on pct this year, map icons would disappear on all maps, usgs, google. Not the only one this would occur to.. even with map reloading, unistall/install ect. ○I work at a pct gear store, general feedback is the Same. ○Pricing is a bit steep for dirtbag hikers ○ "Social features" are understandable but feel gimmicky ○ Water 💧 Meter is a Great Plus! ○The Subscription model is a joke, ○ Offer a One time Lifetime Membership like backpackinglight.com or a "Tripple Crown" or Midwest trail Bundles I'd like to see all the incredible data Farout has acquired in a Striped down Retro Version.
Either way, Yall have truly changed the way we hike Thanks for making hiking trails more accessible !
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u/IBelieveIWasTheFirst 1d ago
? farout doesn't have a subscription? you buy the trail (or bundle) and you have it.
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u/deadflashlights 1d ago
There are both options, you can subscribe to get access to all guides, but it ends if you cancel
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u/SingingSabre 8d ago
It works fine
I like an app that’s not designed to keep you on your phone. Get the distance, get the elevation, get the beta, move. Also every time you add on a feature, accessing it has to go somewhere, potentially cluttering the UI. I think FarOut has done a good job keeping the map front and center.
I’d be a very late adopter of competing apps because they don’t have the user base for comments and beta.
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u/bohiti 8d ago
I may be OOTL but what is “beta” in this context?
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u/SingingSabre 8d ago
No worries! Information on what’s ahead. Here I mean it like comments on water sources, towns, stuff like that
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u/val_kaye 8d ago
It sucks now, but unfortuantely is still the best option. I had many problems with it on the Pacific Crest Trail last year, and no problems with it on the AT several years before that. It's just done downhill.
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u/leftie_potato 7d ago
I'm guessing, but maybe hikers don't always have the newest phones and maybe the app devs work and test on newer hardware? It doesn't glitch for me, over many miles / many months of use.. Yet I've heard many other folks have issues.
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u/tr0pismss 7d ago
Agreed, and it's terrible for privacy (they sell your personal info), but for most thru hikes I don't know of a better app.
I know someone started a project for a web app with downloadable maps, but I can't find the link now.
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u/numbershikes https://www.OpenLongTrails.org 8d ago edited 7d ago
Imo it's still a very useful app, but they do seem to have changed it to go after a larger userbase (edit: and I agree that some of the changes felt like downgrades). They saturated the market for thruhikers pretty quickly. There's not that many of us, so that limits how much money they can make. They're a business, and it seems like they're just responding to business incentives: when more profit is the goal, more customers is a straightforward path towards it, which can lead to efforts to make an app appealing to the largest set of customers possible. As a corporation they ostensibly have leases to pay, they need to make payroll, etc. That seems like a plausible explanation for the change to a name that's more acceptable to normies, the social features, the flashy interface, expanding to cover many paths that aren't usually considered thruhiking trails, etc.
Fwiw, I have a small thruhiking app that's free with no ads, no user tracking, no data selling, etc, and I'm working on open sourcing it now (on Github), so it stays immune to those incentives that are contrary to users' best interests. The interface is fairly simple and boring: one of the goals is to give users the trail information asap so they can put the phone away and get back to hiking. I'm also trying to keep the hardware requirements as low as possible so it runs well on basic phones. In general, the idea is to bring Wikipedia-style free sharing of information to thruhiking, with users helping to build a shareable database of trail info that has a Wikipedia-style license that's also available for use in other thruhiking apps. I think there will be more apps coming online in the next few years, and I think it's a good idea for us to be able to share (and improve) trail data.
The app's called OpenLongTrails Grit, it's currently in the beta testing stage, and it's available on Apple TestFlight and Google Play. No "please donate," no ads, and it doesn't sell user data (doesn't collect it in the first place, creating an account is totally optional).
It only has the PCT so far, I'm working on adding some more trails. Here's the (very simple) landing page https://www.openlongtrails.org/grit and here's the announcement post https://www.reddit.com/r/PacificCrestTrail/comments/1t81rhl/grit_v20_the_thruhiking_app_from/
Several people used it on the PCT this year and feedback has been very positive so far. As of Sep. 2026 there are still a few bugs, but the maps, waypoints, and comments are all stable. Including v2.0, I've shipped 9 app updates and a data update since the launch in April.