I made an offline-ready hiking trail companion app
Hi HN! This is a trail companion web app (think AllTrails) I hacked together in a couple weeks time. I was inspired to create this project while training for an extended backpacking trip. My motivation was to create a UI tailored exactly to my liking, and to be able to track my progress along the trail without draining my battery. I also wanted to experiment with PWA technologies. I successfully used it on my five day adventure along the Knobstone Trail in southern Indiana, and even though it's web-based it hardly consumed any battery life on my old first-gen Pixel XL. It's set up currently…
I made an offline-ready hiking trail companion app launched on November 1, 2022 with 475 votes, #28 of 3,471 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 3 years on.
In plain words
This is a web-based hiking trail companion app built as a progressive web app that works offline. It displays trail maps and tracks user progress while consuming minimal battery power, making it suitable for extended backpacking trips. The app currently supports individual trails configured via GPX files and was tested on a multi-day hike in Indiana. It is released as open source for developers to adapt as a template for their own trail projects.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
A hiking and backpacking trail companion progressive web app - jamealg/KT-companion
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN! This is a trail companion web app (think AllTrails) I hacked together in a couple weeks time. I was inspired to create this project while training for an extended backpacking trip. My motivation was to create a UI tailored exactly to my liking, and to be able to track my progress along the trail without…
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Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
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