FarOut

Review by eFreeware

If your idea of a trip involves following a route for days or weeks rather than an afternoon, FarOut is built for you. It is a GPS navigation guide for long-distance hiking, biking, whitewater rafting and paddling, and it gathers more than 200 routes from around the world into one app. The people most likely to want it are thru-hikers, bikepackers and paddlers working from a known trail or river rather than wandering freely.

What it gives them is a mapped route with the detail that matters on the ground: junctions, water sources, road crossings, portages, launch sites, trailheads and town guides. The developer says the trail data is official and kept current through partnerships with trail organizations, authors and publishers, which is the part I would weigh most heavily when choosing a navigation app for a long route.

The app is free to download, carries no ads and offers in-app purchases, and it has been on Google Play since November 2018. It holds a 4.5 average from 3,221 ratings and more than 100,000 installs, which suggests a settled product rather than a new experiment.

A route guide rather than a general map

FarOut is not trying to be a map of everywhere. Its catalog is organized around specific long-distance routes in the United States, Australia, Canada, the UK, Europe, New Zealand, the Middle East, South America and Central America. You pick the guide that matches the route you plan to travel, and the app presents that corridor with the points along it.

That structure shapes how you would use it. Before a trip, the guide is a planning tool: you can read the route, see where the junctions and resupply towns fall, and judge how the days might break up. During the trip, the same guide becomes the thing you check when you reach a fork, a river crossing or a launch point and want confirmation that you are where you think you are.

The waypoint list is where a lot of that value sits. Water sources, road crossings, portages and trailheads are the practical markers that decide how a day goes, and having them attached to the route rather than scattered across separate notes is the appeal of a dedicated guide.

Trail data that comes from the organizations behind the routes

FarOut says its trail data comes from official sources, kept current through partnerships with publishers, authors and trail groups. That is the pitch I would treat as the app's main selling point, because route information goes stale: trails are rerouted, water sources dry up, crossings change.

A guide tied to the organizations that maintain a route has a better chance of reflecting those changes than one assembled from general map data. It also means the app's usefulness varies by route, since each guide depends on the partner behind it. The breadth of the catalog is impressive, but the depth of any single guide is what a traveler actually relies on.

For planning, this matters in a concrete way. If the guide lists a water source or a portage, you can build a day around it; if the data behind that listing is maintained by people who know the route, the plan is more likely to hold. That is the case FarOut makes, and it is a reasonable one for long-distance travel.

Check-ins that keep people at home informed

FarOut includes a Check-in feature that lets you tell friends and family where you are and that you are safe. On a multi-day route, that is a small function with outsized value: it turns a vague "I should be fine" into a specific location someone at home can see.

I would expect this to matter most to people whose trips take them out of regular contact, whether that is a week on a remote trail or several days on a river. It is the kind of feature that reassures the person waiting as much as the person traveling, and it fits naturally alongside the navigation tools rather than feeling bolted on.

Navigation is the core; the check-in is the courtesy layer on top.

Favorite waypoints and syncing between devices

The most recent addition is favorite waypoints. Tapping a waypoint gives you the option to add it to favorites, which bookmarks it with a heart across the map, the waypoint list and the elevation profile. Everything you mark shows up under My Account.

The useful part is that favorites sync across your devices. If you mark a water source or a camp spot while planning at home, it should be waiting on your phone when you set out. For anyone who plans a route on one device and travels with another, that removes a step that would otherwise be done by hand.

It is a modest feature, but it points at how the app is meant to be used: mark the things that matter to your particular trip, then carry that shortlist with you instead of scrolling the full waypoint list every time.

What you pay for and what the app expects of you

FarOut is free to download with no ads, and it sells access through in-app purchases. Two routes are described: a FarOut Unlimited subscription that opens up all the guides, covering more than 50,000 miles of routes, and a lifetime purchase of a single guide if you would rather own one outright.

The subscription comes in monthly, annual and six-month Season Pass options. That spread suits different trip patterns: a season pass for someone whose travels cluster into part of the year, a monthly plan for a single long trip, an annual one for someone who is out regularly. A lifetime purchase of one guide is the sensible route if you expect to return to the same trail or river and have no interest in the rest of the catalog.

The other thing the app expects is that you choose a route before you travel. This is a guide for known long-distance trails and waterways, and the experience is built around following one of them with its waypoints in hand. Travelers who move between many routes will get more from the subscription; those committed to one will not need it.

Suited to long routes, planned in advance

The clearest fit is someone preparing a thru-hike, a bikepacking route or a multi-day paddle who wants the route, its waypoints and its town information in one place, and who values data maintained with the organizations behind the trail. The check-in feature adds a second audience: the family member or friend who wants to know where that person is.

Because the catalog is organized by route, the app rewards planning. You get the most from it when you know which trail or river you are traveling and can study the guide beforehand, marking the junctions, water sources and stops that matter to your pace. It is less about discovering a route and more about executing one you have already chosen.

The free download makes trying that straightforward. You can install it, look at the guides for the routes you have in mind, and decide whether the level of detail matches how you travel before committing to a subscription or a single-guide purchase.

A dependable companion for a route you have already chosen

FarOut is worth installing if you travel long-distance routes on foot, by bike or on water and you want a guide that carries the official trail data, the waypoints that structure a day and a way to let people at home know you are safe.

The trade-offs are the ones the app sets for itself. It is a guide for specific routes, so its value depends on whether your route is covered and how well the partner behind that guide maintains it. Access to the full catalog comes through a subscription, while a single guide can be bought outright, so the cost question is really a question about how many routes you expect to travel.

For a thru-hiker, a bikepacker or a paddler working from a planned route, the combination of official data, waypoints and check-ins is a coherent package. I would suggest downloading it free, opening the guide for your intended route and judging the detail for yourself before deciding how to pay.

What's new in version 15.11.1

Introducing Favorite Waypoints! Tap a waypoint and choose "Add to favorites" to bookmark it with a heart on the map, list, and elevation profile. Find them all under My Account, synced across your devices.