Support and FAQ

No. TrailBivvy never says that a place is legal or allowed. It assesses terrain and rules separately and shows any restriction it finds in the downloaded data. When it finds none, the most it says is “No restriction found in the downloaded data — local rules may apply”. Signs, local rules and the landowner always have the final word.

“Unknown” means the app has no rules data for that place. The data contains a country-level overnight rule only for these countries: Croatia, England, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Sweden and Wales. Some protected areas add rules of their own, such as Swiss federal hunting ban areas, French national park core zones and some US national parks. Everywhere else the state stays “unknown” unless such an area applies — for example in these countries: Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, Slovenia and United States. Imported routes have no rules data at all. “Unknown” never means “no restriction” — check locally.

No. TrailBivvy does not replace a map, a compass, proper equipment, waymarks, official warnings or local rules. Catalogue trails come from OpenStreetMap and are not officially surveyed. Trails labelled “Approximate route” and the Via Alpina demo (synthetic data) must not be used for navigation.

Catalogue trails are built into the app as offline packs made from OpenStreetMap data. Before you leave, you can download map tiles for a route corridor where the app offers offline storage for that map — in the current build in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, France, Austria, Germany, Spain and the USA. Whether each provider’s terms allow this is still being reviewed. Elsewhere, including Italy, the UK, the Balkans and Scandinavia, there is no offline base map, so carry a paper map. The last weather forecast stays available, shown with the time it was fetched.

The trail list shows every trail bundled in the current build, with its data quality. A trail appears there only once its data pack is in the app.

TrailBivvy is not on the App Store yet. There is no release date and no price. In the development build, every feature is unlocked.

No account is needed. Trips, waypoints, photos and notes stay on your iPhone; there is no TrailBivvy server. The privacy policy lists the few requests that leave your device.

From Open-Meteo, adjusted to the altitude of the place, cached on your device and always shown with the time it was fetched. The thunderstorm-risk indicator is derived from the forecast; it is not an official warning, so also check the national weather service.

They are compiled from official sources and, for a few countries, from secondary sources, and are being checked by a person before release. Near a border the app can pick the wrong country and show its numbers. 112 works across Europe, but mobile coverage in the mountains is not guaranteed.

English and 33 other languages, including Arabic and Hebrew with a right-to-left layout. The translations are machine-assisted and still need review by native speakers, so reports of mistakes are welcome.

Not in the current build. iCloud sync, community reports, an Apple Watch app, widgets and Live Activities are ideas for later versions. None of them is implemented, and there is no date.

No. TrailBivvy is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by any trail association, mapping agency, park or authority. Trail names are used only to identify the routes. Details are in the legal notice.