Hiker Apps

Glympse is an application that specializes in real time location sharing. A free version is available with features that are sufficient for hikers.

Glympse is a fast, free, and simple way to temporarily share your real-time location with anyone. The tracking is based on GPS, is temporary and secure – and Glympse recipients don’t need to download an app to see the shared location - they will instead receive a link which they can open in any web browser, on their computer or mobile. The web page in the browser will display a map with approximately the last kilometer of the shared trail.

AGPS-TrackerOm is an interesting and very robust Android application. It's main function is to follow preloaded tracks and record your tracks, as many other apps do, but it does so reliably - ensuring that the GPS data is recorded at all times, even when the phone goes into stand-by mode. This means you won't get surprise straight lines in your GPX tracks. It can also provide enhanced accuracy of your current elevation, by using altitudes from NASA-generated Digital Elevation Models (DEMs).

AGPS-TrackerOm (previously called A-GPS Tracker++), differs from the lighter version, A-GPS Tracker in the following:

  • AGPS-TrackerOm uses offline maps maintained by OpenStreetMap, which you need to preload. The "lighter" A-GPS Tracker uses Google maps which are not available offline.
  • You can download Digital Elevation Models (DEM) which allow the app to display altitude contour lines and provide DEM altitude along with GPS altitude, the former being more accurate