Any in-app purchase you have made can be recovered on re-install or other devices for free! Just tap the Restore Purchases link at the bottom of the upgrade screen.
If you tap Purchase on *exactly* the same product you purchased before, you also will not be charged again for it.
Currently, Pocket Earth relies on an online mapping service. But you can create and save routes for offline use, including Voice Navigation.
The main maps come from the awesome community mapping project known as OpenStreetMaps.
The topographic maps is based on data from the NASA SRTM project.
The main maps come from the awesome community mapping project known as OpenStreetMaps. We try to update our maps from this source every 1-2 months, however sometimes we get more delayed than this due to technical issues. If you find mistakes, you can contribute the the OpenStreetMap website yourself to make the corrections, or you can simply flag them there for other people to fix.
We do not make map edits ourselves because one should have good familiarity with the area being edited. We are a tiny company of just 2 people, and we focus mostly on making a great app. When we have time we do also fix the maps in the areas that we live and travel.
Pocket Earth is focused on true, compact offline vector based maps for offline uses such as hiking, cycling, boating, outdoors and travel.
Real-time map data like traffic would not be possible to offer offline.
Satellite maps are inherently image based maps and are absolutely HUGE, its data size would be measured in the terabytes (TB)! It would not be possible for us to offer this in an offline way.
The free app allows you to preview the app functionality and use the app online much like you would use Google Maps or Apple Maps. It provides in-app purchase options for full world wide offline access as well as smaller per country offline access options.
The PRO version includes world wide offline map access out of the box and only has one additional in-app purchase for Topographic Maps should you want that.
This is because technically the main label represents more than just your Offline Maps. It includes all map related resources that have been downloaded.
It includes a temporary cache of the last 60MB of recently viewed maps. Panning and zooming the map around areas which you haven’t explicitly downloaded in Manage Maps will be saved to this cache and it will never exceed 60MB.
In addition to this, it also includes other map resources such as the map stylesheets and fonts.
Sometimes this main label may also show less than the total of the individual maps in the list. This is because some maps can share data and it will not be downloaded twice. This is the case for example if you download 2 bordering countries or regions.
GPX files are designed to hold recorded GPS Tracks, not navigation Routes. They do not contain the necessary information to provide turn directions.
You must use the tools in the app to build a navigation route yourself. If you simply want to have the imported track displayed all the time as a guide you can go to its Info screen and switch off the Hidden option so that it is always displayed on the map as a reference. If you wish you can then use this as a guide to construct your own route in the app. Note that you can set your transport mode and then press hold on the route line to create control points and drag these to match the downloaded track.
There are several third party proprietary GPX extensions to allow them to contain navigable routes, however we do not support these currently.
If you have a GPX file that specifically contains Waypoints which represent your Start, End and optionally mid way destinations, then you can use the Import as Route option on the Import screen and a new route will be created based on these points. However, many GPX files will not contain such waypoints. More commonly you will find GPX files which if they have Waypoints at all, are used for marking points of interest nearby, but not the actual Route Destinations.
Provided you have purchased the Offline Topographic Maps Upgrade, you must still download the Topo maps for the specific countries or regions you would like to have them. Just go to Manage Maps to choose.
If you would like to see Topo maps everywhere by default (meaning automatically shown when panning around the map for places you have not specifically downloaded, then go to our Main Menu, tap Settings, and enable the “Download Add-ons Content” option in the “Automatic Downloads” section. Keep in mind that just like normal maps, this only momentarily downloads the maps needed to display the screen and they are not guaranteed to remain available offline in this case.
You can display the Map Layers for Contours without deleting the data, just as you can disable other POI and map layers, by customizing the Map Activities.
Map Activities consist of topical uses of the map such as Hiking or Cycling. Each Activity has different map appearance rules to show different information on the map. For example, Hiking will show hiking trails from a more zoomed out map and will emphasis POI related to hiking.
Near the top of the Main Menu in Pocket Earth, you will see a large blue rectangle which tells you the currently selected Activity. Tap the arrows next to it to switch your current Activity and tap on the title to customize that particular Activity. Customizations are stored per Activity so for example, you can disable Contour lines on the Standard Map, but have them enabled on the Hiking and Cycling maps, making it easy to switch between them.
In Pocket Earth, by default, we allow the small network requests which are triggered directly by user actions to run over both WiFi and cellular data. This includes panning the map to a new area not already downloaded for offline access, as well as creating Routes, etc.
Also by default, we do not allow the larger map downloads from Manage Maps to happen over cellular data. They will occur automatically the next time you are on a WiFi connection. If you would like to specifically download such maps over cellular, please enable the setting for this, “Allow cellular map downloads”.
If you would like to prevent *all* network use while on cellular data, please simply put your device in Airplane Mode OR disable cellular data (from the iOS dashboard or Settings app). If you would like to prevent cellular data use only for Pocket Earth, please do so in the Privacy/Network settings in Apple’s Settings app.
Your favorites should be safe and sound, but check in your Favorites list to be sure! If you delete a Favorite on one device, it will also delete it on your other devices when Sync is enabled.
There are, however, a few reasons why your Favorites may not be showing:
1. If you have a Group focused on the map, Pocket Earth hides all other Favorites. This can happen from a Nearby Search > Show All, or from viewing one of your saved Groups. Just tap the X close button on the Info Panel to return to normal state.
2. Favorites can be hidden if their Hidden option is switched on on the Info Screen. Switching on the Hidden flag on one of your Groups will also hide everything in it.
3. Favorite Pins and POI can be hidden from the Map Layer options on the Activity screen. Tap the blue Activity box near the top of the main menu to customize Activity options and layers.
You can use your Pocket Earth purchases on all of your devices and access your existing Favorites data.
1. Make sure you are signed into the App Store with the same AppleID account that you originally made the purchases with.
2. Make sure you have downloaded the same version of our app on the store, we have two separate products called “Pocket Earth” and “Pocket Earth PRO”.
3. For in-app purchases, tap the Restore Purchases link at the bottom of the Upgrade screen in our app when it pops up (or access it from our Settings screen by tapping Manage Add-ons).
4. Your downloaded maps do not automatically sync so that you can choose different offline maps on different devices. Just go to Manage Maps and choose your places again to download on your new device.
5. If you have Sync Favorites enabled, all of your Favorites data should be transferred automatically, and then continue to stay in sync when using multiple devices. If you have any issues with this or just prefer to not use Sync, you can manually transfer all of your Favorites data, by opening the app on your old device, tap the Menu button, tap Export in the Tools section and choose Pocket Earth Archive as the format. You can then share to your new device via AirDrop, iCloud Files, etc.
In Pocket Earth on iPhone, all screens in the app support a swipe down gesture to close them! This can be useful for quickly returning to the map instead of tapping the Back button multiple times.
Also if you “swipe down to close” from any of the main menu sub-screens, you can press and hold on the Menu button to return to when you left off! This can be super useful, for example, when doing a search and you want to return to that search to see other results. Press and hold on the Menu button also works after tapping the View button on a Favorite or search result to return to where you left off.
You can also long press on any “map viewable” item in the lists (Favorites, Nearby, etc) to immediately view it on the map.
When GPS is enabled and you pan away, it breaks out of the center locking mode where the map tracks the GPS in the center of the screen. If you move the map such that the GPS indicator is no longer on the screen, Pocket Earth intelligently disables the GPS to save your battery (after some timeout). If you want to immediately disable the GPS however, you might not want to tap the GPS button because it will re-center the map on your GPS location before you can tap again to disable it. Instead, just long press on the GPS button and it will immediately disable it without loosing your map position!