Offline maps
A map you cannot load is not a map. Download the areas you need before you leave, over wifi, and the map behaves in a valley with no signal exactly as it does at home.
File: img/myjikita/offline-01-list.png
Shows: The offline maps screen listing downloaded areas with their sizes.
Downloading an area
- Main menu → Offline maps → Add area.
- Pan and zoom until the rectangle covers where you are going.
- Confirm, and the download starts.
You can watch the progress and carry on using the app. Downloading a large area takes time and space — do it on wifi, not on a mobile connection at a car park.
File: img/myjikita/offline-02-select.png
Shows: Drawing the rectangle over the area to download, with the estimated
size.
How big to make it
Bigger than your route. The whole reason to have an offline map is the day something does not go to plan, and the descent you end up taking is by definition not the one you drew.
A sensible habit is to cover the massif rather than the line: the valleys on both sides, the road you could walk out to, the refuge you might divert to.
Zoomed-out detail is cheap; the fine zoom levels are what cost space. A large area can run to several hundred megabytes.
What is included
The downloaded area contains the topographic base map — contours, paths, refuges, terrain.
Pistes, lifts and ski-touring lines are not included in an offline area. With no signal they will not be drawn, and you get the base topographic map only. Plan accordingly if you rely on the ski layer.
Your GPX routes are stored on the phone and are always drawn, online or off.
Managing areas
The offline maps screen lists what you have, with sizes, so you can see what is using space. Delete an area you no longer need.
Overlapping areas are fine: deleting one does not blind the other where they overlap.
Downloaded areas survive signing out. They are not personal data, and re-downloading a season's worth of maps over a mobile connection is exactly the kind of thing the app should not make you do twice. To free the space, delete the areas explicitly.
Map data
Maps are served by Alpik's own tile servers, from OpenStreetMap data, and are attributed on the map as the licence requires.
If the map is blank
| Symptom | Likely cause |
|---|---|
| Blank where you are, everything else fine | You are outside every downloaded area, with no signal. |
| Base map fine, no pistes | Normal offline behaviour — the ski layer is not downloaded. |
| Blank everywhere, with signal | A connection problem, or the tile server is unreachable. Try again on a different connection. |
| The download never finishes | Poor connection, or not enough free space. Check storage and retry on wifi. |
More in Troubleshooting.