This will be Gaia’s fifth season out in the woods, and for Gaia 9, we’ve engineered a big leap forward in app performance and features. We’ve been working on this release since about February, and we hope the improvements help you plan, explore, and stay safe.
Gaia 9 brings you a faster map engine - like the stock Maps app, Gaia 9 uses hardware acceleration (OpenGL) to make the maps fast and responsive, and perform great when displaying a lot of tracks and POIs.
Gaia 9 lets you tap tracks and routes on the map to show details. This has been a long-standing user request, and we’re happy to make it happen in Gaia 9.
Display and download vector topo maps. This is an experimental source you can add by going to “More Sources” in the main map menu. We built a worldwide vector map server and styled the maps from scratch, using OpenStreetMap data, and recent technology standards pioneered by MapBox.
On iPhone5 and iPad mini, you get a very fast, small-to-download, detailed, and pretty worldwide topo source, styled to look similar to traditional USGS cartography. We are still working to improve performance for older iPad and iPhones, and to improve the style of the map at all zoom levels.
The route-maker has been updated to a new design that we think you’ll find better in every way.
We’ve always found it hard to settle on an icon that captures what Gaia GPS does, but we think the new icon succeeds, combining the elements of maps, trails, and nature that define Gaia. In addition, the art has been refined and unified: