Planning and navigation

Plan a route to an address or a map point, draw one by hand, generate a loop, then navigate a saved track — in either direction.

This page covers two things: how a route gets made (address search, hand-placed points, or the loop generator), and how you follow it in the field. The planning engine is BRouter, which reads the OpenStreetMap way tags for every metre it routes over — that is why you get a surface analysis and not just a line. Planning needs an internet connection; following an already saved route does not.

Opening the planner

There is one planner now. The old split — Manual planning (Place points) on one side, automatic planning to a destination on the other — is gone: tapping the map and searching build the same route on the same screen.

  1. Tap Routes in the bottom bar.
  2. Two ways lead on from here:
    • Navigate (address or map point) — opens the planner straight away.
    • Planning — a short sheet with two entries: Route planner (the same planner) and Import track + analyse (load an existing GPX / KML / KMZ and inspect it).

Planning a route

  1. Open the planner. A search field sits at the top of the screen, and the hint chip under it spells out the whole idea: Tap the map to place points — or search. Both build the same route.
  2. Tap the map — each tap drops a blue point and the app draws the leg from the previous one. Or type into Search (e.g., Aggtelek, Bükk…) — results appear about half a second after you stop typing (if there are none you get No results), and tapping a result places a point there, exactly as a map tap would.
  3. A search pick on an empty plan inserts the start for you first: your GPS position, or the centre of the map on the web. So “route me there” is still a single search — you do not have to place the start yourself.
  4. The two inputs mix freely: search your way to the trailhead, then tap out your line through the forest.
  5. The button column on the right:
    • Undo — removes the last point and the leg it closed. Everything else is left alone; nothing is re-routed. (After a round trip or a picked alternative the plan is one whole line, so Undo clears it entirely.)
    • Snapping: ON / Snapping: OFF — on, the leg is snapped to real ways; off, it is a straight line. It only rules the legs you draw after it — what you have already drawn does not change.
    • Save GPX — name it, then save.
    • Red ✕ — leave planning and discard the drawing. The back arrow on the search field does the same.
  6. From the second point on, the Drawn route card runs the analysis at the bottom: distance, moving time, Difficulty x/10, the coloured surface-mix bar, the {percent}% surface mapped figure and the list of warnings. Tap a warning and the map jumps to it. You can switch profile on the card mid-draw — the hint on it says so: Applies to the next leg you draw — earlier legs keep their profile. So the first half of a plan can be road and the second half 4x4.
  7. Straight (unsnapped) legs carry no way tags, so the analysis shows them as Unknown surface — never quietly as tarmac.
  8. Want a different line? On a simple two-point A→B plan the card offers Compare alternatives (a Solo-subscription feature) — BRouter’s four lines are laid side by side (distance, dirt share, difficulty) and the one you pick becomes the active plan.
  9. When you are happy, use Save GPX or the green Start Navigation button.

Profiles — what they mean offroad

The profile chips at the top of the card decide what kind of roads the planner looks for. The row holds two ready-made profiles plus the custom builder:

  • 🚙 4x4 — the default. It seeks out gravel and rough tracks, avoids main roads, and blocks Singletrack outright: a 4x4 that follows a bike onto a one-metre path has a bad day.
  • 🚗 Road (car) — plain tarmac car navigation with real car access rules and turn restrictions. Use it for the drive out and the drive home.
  • 🛠 Custom — your own weighting (see below; part of the Solo subscription — the stock profiles stay free).

Switching profile replans immediately, and the app remembers your choice for next time.

Older routes may have been planned with Adventure, Hard adventure, Enduro, Scenic or MTB. Those chips are no longer shown, but a route saved with one of them still replans with that setting.

Custom profile

  1. Tap the 🛠 Custom chip (a Solo-subscription feature — without Solo the subscription sheet opens here; the stock profiles stay free). The Custom profile sheet opens (0 = never, 10 = seek out).
  2. Seven sliders set how much each road class is sought or avoided: Motorway, Main roads, Minor roads, Service roads, Gravel tracks, Rough tracks, Singletrack. A slider pulled to 0 shows ✕ — that class is never used at all.
  3. Below them sits Avoid climbs (0–5) and three switches: Avoid gates, Avoid ferries, Avoid tolls.
  4. Tap Apply — the route replans with the new weights.

Generating a round trip

  1. Open the planner and leave it empty — while the plan has no points yet, the Round trip button sits right under the search field. (A loop is a whole plan by itself, which is why the button hides once points exist.)
  2. Tap Round trip. The loop starts from your GPS position, or from the centre of the map if you have no fix.
  3. Set Loop length anywhere between 10 and 300 km with the slider, or tap one of the 20 / 40 / 60 / 100 / 150 km chips.
  4. Pick a Head out direction: Any, or one of the eight compass points (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW).
  5. Tap Generate loop. Under Finding a loop… the app tries several circle sizes (up to eight attempts) and returns the closest match it found.
  6. The result is named after its real length (e.g. “38 km loop”), not the one you asked for — offroad loop length jumps around wildly with the circle size, so the app always names the loop it actually found.

Area check (AI)

The analysis tells you what the ground is; the Area check (AI) researches what currently applies on it.

  1. With a route on the plan card, tap the globe button — its tooltip reads Check current restrictions and rules along the route (AI). On the phone it opens as a bottom sheet; on the web the button also sits next to the plan actions and the panel opens on the right.
  2. The check researches the corridor of your plan — Gemini, grounded on live Google Search: current closures, protected-area rules and the legal baseline along the route. While it runs you see Researching the area — current closures, protected areas, rules…
  3. The answer lists its Sources — tap one to open it. An unsourced “probably fine” is worth nothing on a forest road; the sources are the point.
  4. Ask follow-up questions in the same panel (Ask a follow-up…) — the conversation keeps your route in context. Opening a different route starts fresh.

The area check is a Solo-subscription feature, with 2 free checks per day for everyone.

AI research with live sources. Verify locally before you drive — this is not legal advice.

Importing and inspecting an existing track

  1. Routes → Planning → Import track + analyse.
  2. Pick the GPX / KML / KMZ file. It can come from any source.
  3. The bottom Imported: {name} card gives you the surface, difficulty and warning analysis.
  4. From here you can start it (Start Navigation) or export GPX with surface colors — that file opens in Garmin and OsmAnd too, with a waypoint on every warning.

Saving the plan

  • Save GPX writes a local GPX first and then — if you are signed in — uploads it to your account as well: Route saved and uploaded! ☁️. Signed out, you only get the local GPX.
  • The download icon produces the GPX with surface colors file: the track split and coloured by surface.
  • A free account holds up to 100 cloud routes; beyond that the subscription sheet appears instead of the save.
  1. Routes → My Routes. Under My routes, tap the route you want — the panel closes, the map zooms to it, and the route becomes the selected one.
  2. The green navigation button appears on the map. Tap it — that is Start Navigation.
  3. The map switches to follow mode: the camera locks onto your arrow and turns with your heading (unless you have switched North up on).
  4. To stop: the Stop Navigation button at the bottom left.
  5. You do not have to stop it at the destination: when you have genuinely arrived — a few consecutive seconds within about 30 m of the route’s end — navigation ends itself, on every screen at once (phone, Android Auto, CarPlay), and the app confirms: You’ve arrived at your destination. A loop’s start is also its end, so arrival is not armed in the first moments of the drive.

Navigation runs on the phone and the head unit. The web map plans and exports, but it does not navigate.

It runs in either direction

A recorded track has no direction, so the app decides for you:

  • The first GPS fix decides: if you are standing at the far end of the track (within about 1 km), the route is taken back to front.
  • If you then drive against the route for a sustained stretch (about 60 m, above 3 km/h), it flips itself and the other end becomes your destination.
  • There is no separate “reverse” button, and you do not need one: Left always counts down to the end you are actually driving towards.

The arrow and the shrinking line

  • The cyan arrow is you, nose pointing where you are heading. While you are on the line the arrow is drawn snapped onto the route, so GPS side-drift does not park you in the trees beside the road.
  • The part you have driven disappears behind the arrow — the line shortens smoothly instead of stepping. Between GPS fixes the app extrapolates from your speed, which is what keeps the dissolve even.
  • The card at the top shows the next manoeuvre as an icon and a line of text (Turn left, Slight right, Continue straight, Arriving at destination…), with three figures below it: ETA, Left and Speed.

When you leave the route

  • The warning fires when you are more than about 50 m from the line (plus your GPS’s own error margin, up to another 30 m) and stay there for three consecutive fixes — roughly three seconds.
  • A red banner then appears: YOU ARE OFF TRACK! ⚠️, and the turn card says the same.
  • One good fix — the moment you are back inside the 50 m corridor — clears it immediately.

Recentre and map orientation

  • The My location button on the right-hand rail jumps back to you and re-engages follow. With no fix in hand it tells you why (location switched off, or permission denied).
  • Follow drops as soon as you drag the map by hand — take it back with My location.
  • The same rail carries Map Layers and 3D view (tilt + relief).
  • Map orientation is set by the North up switch in the Map Layers sheet: on, north stays on top and the arrow turns; off, the map turns with your heading. The setting covers the phone, Android Auto and CarPlay at once.

Roadbook and tulip cards

The tulip roadbook belongs to competitions: open it from the competition hub panel by tapping Roadbook (Checkpoints and tasks).

  1. Every card carries its number, the tulip pictogram, and below it the CAP (the compass heading to leave on), the leg distance, the tot. distance from the start, and — on a checkpoint — its points value.
  2. On a tulip you always arrive from the bottom (that is the ball), the junction is in the centre, and the arrow points the way out: Straight on, Slight left, Turn left, Sharp right, U-turn, Start, Finish.
  3. Tap a checkpoint card to make it your manual navigation target; the sheet closes and the map takes you there.
  4. Checkpoints you have already collected are struck through and show the points you earned.
  5. If the competition has no route uploaded, the top of the sheet says: No route set — distances and bearings are straight-line, checkpoint to checkpoint. The cards are then not real junctions but point-to-point bearings.

If something goes wrong

“Route planning needs an internet connection.” — Planning is an online service. Out in the field with no signal you cannot compute a new route. What you can do: place your points with Snapping: OFF — straight legs need no network — or start navigation on a route you saved earlier, which works offline.

“No route with this profile.” — The selected profile blocks every road here (typically 4x4 when the point landed on a footpath). Switch to Road (car), or drag the destination closer to a real road. (The message suggests Adventure and Scenic; those chips are no longer in the row.)

“Couldn’t build a loop here. Try another length or direction.” — There is no road network nearby that produces a loop of the length you asked for. Change Loop length, or pick a different Head out direction.

The planned route is not what you expected. — Check the {percent}% surface mapped figure. Where OpenStreetMap carries no surface tag the app estimates from the road type. A low figure means the surface shares are a best guess.

No GPS. — On GPS ERROR: Location is turned off! use the Settings action to reach the system settings. On Location permission denied — enable it in Settings. you have to give the app permission back (on iOS that is only possible in the system settings). No GPS signal yet. Please wait. is normal — a cold start or a canopy of trees can take a while.

The subscription sheet appears instead of saving. — You have hit the free account’s limit of 15 cloud routes. Delete an old one from My Routes, or move to Premium.

“Your route leaves your offline maps.” — This appears when you start navigation on a route longer than 50 km that crosses a country you have not downloaded. Use Download to fill the gap before you set off.

The off-track warning does not fire even though you left the line. — The threshold is 50 m and it grows with your GPS error, so under dense forest it speaks up later. The other way round: if it flashes constantly, the recorded track probably sits 50 m off the real road — the track is wrong, not you.