Ski Tracks

Review by eFreeware

Ski Tracks is for people who spend enough days on snow to care what those days add up to. If you ski or snowboard regularly, whether at a resort you know well or somewhere new, the app logs your runs as you go and keeps them in one place afterward. The appeal isn't novelty; it's having a record of speed, distance, altitude and vertical drop that builds up over a season.

Ski Tracks is a fitness and sports app. It arrived in January 2013 and was updated in May 2026. It's free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases. More than half a million people have installed it, and its average sits at 3.9 from 9,552 ratings, a middling score that tells you it works for many but hasn't pleased everyone.

Automatic recording, from first chair to last run

The central idea is that you don't manage the app while you're skiing. A built-in GPS recorder captures each descent and trail on its own, so there's no starting and stopping between runs. You press nothing, you ski, and the day gets recorded. That matters on a cold day with gloves on, where fiddling with a phone is the last thing you want.

What comes out of that recording is a set of stats: speed, distance, altitude and vertical performance. Each descent is saved separately, which is what makes the app more than a simple odometer. You can look back at a single run or a whole day, and the numbers are there without any manual bookkeeping.

The developer bills the tracking as accurate, which is the claim every GPS app makes and the one worth treating with some skepticism. I'd expect the recorded shape of a day to be broadly right rather than survey-grade, which is usually enough for comparing your own runs against each other.

Maps, music and photos alongside the numbers

Saved tracks can be viewed on the map, so you can retrace where you went and see the slopes and trails you covered. For anyone exploring an unfamiliar ski area, that's a useful way to understand the layout of a day after the fact, and to spot which parts of the mountain you actually spent time on.

The app also plays music while you ski, without needing to leave it for a separate player. Photos taken in the app stay attached to that day's activity, so a panorama or a shot of the group doesn't get lost in a camera roll. Both are conveniences rather than reasons to install on their own, but they keep the day's record in one place instead of scattered across three apps.

Smartwatch integration puts live stats on your wrist, and the recent update brought back a Wear Companion app that had been away for a few years. That companion lets you start, pause and stop recording from the watch, which removes the one remaining reason to pull out your phone mid-run. If you already wear a smartwatch on the mountain, this is the part of the package most likely to change how you use the app.

Season history and comparing one day against another

Beyond individual runs, the app keeps a full season history: routes, stats and performance trends across the winter. You can see how your technique changes over months by comparing days. This is where a tracker like this earns its keep, because a single day's numbers mean little on their own.

The comparison is against yourself, not against anyone else. If you ski the same resort repeatedly, seeing your vertical and speed across a season gives you something concrete to judge progress by, and it's the kind of record that's hard to reconstruct from memory.

I'd expect this to suit people who return to the same mountains often enough to have a baseline. A once-a-year skier will still get a nice record of the trip, but the trend view only becomes interesting once there are several days to line up against each other.

What it asks of you, and what it costs

The download is free. There are no ads, which is a point in its favor for something you'd use with gloves on and a phone in a pocket. In-app purchases are present, and the developer's subscription terms describe weekly or yearly options, with a free trial available on selected subscriptions only. So the trial isn't guaranteed across every plan, and it's worth checking which one you're choosing before you commit.

The subscription renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends, and the renewal charge lands within 24 hours of that period ending. Canceling leaves the subscription active until the end of the billing period, with auto-renewal switched off and no refund for the remaining time. If a free trial is offered and you then buy a subscription, any unused trial time is forfeited. Those are standard store terms, but they're the kind of detail that's easy to skim past.

Getting the most out of a day on the slopes

The automatic recorder means there's little to prepare. Start your day, keep the phone on you, and let the app do the work while you ski. Since it records descents on its own, the main thing you control is whether the phone is with you and powered, not when to press record.

If you wear a smartwatch, pairing it with the Wear Companion app is the change I'd make first. Starting, pausing and stopping from the wrist means the phone can stay zipped away, which is both easier and safer on a lift or a steep section. For anyone who tracks a full day, that's the difference between a tool you interact with and one you forget about.

Photos are best taken as you go rather than saved up for the end, because they attach to that day's activity and keep the memory tied to the run it belongs to. Music can run from inside the app for the same reason. And the season view rewards consistency: the more days you record, the more the comparison features have to work with, so it pays to use it on ordinary days rather than only the big ones.

A tracker for people who ski often enough to care about the numbers

Ski Tracks does one job and does it in a way that asks almost nothing of you during the day. It records your runs automatically, turns them into speed, distance, altitude and vertical stats, and keeps the whole season in one place, with maps, photos, music and watch support folded in around the edges. The free download and absence of ads make it easy to try.

The subscription is the main thing to weigh, and the weekly or yearly structure means it's worth deciding how many days you'll actually ski before choosing a plan. The 3.9 average from a large body of ratings suggests the app has satisfied plenty of people without winning over everyone, which is a fair reflection of a GPS tool whose results depend on conditions it can't control.

If you're on the mountain regularly and want a record of what you did there, this is built for exactly that. If you ski a handful of days a year, you'll still get a pleasant log of the trip, but the season-long comparisons that give the app its depth won't have much to chew on.

What's new

🎿 IT'S BACK! The Wear Companion app has returned after a few years away. Control your ski tracking recording right from your wrist - start, pause, and stop recording without pulling out your phone on the slopes. Welcome back to effortless tracking!