Useful but buggy

Feature rich, but crashes, interface is buggy. Occasionally loses data during crashes. Great app when not frustrating you to death. App MUST stay open & in front while downloading maps (very slow, do overnight).

Offline mapping is such a great capability. If my fav iHikeGPS supported more non-USA Topo maps I never would have discovered GAIA gps. But I was headed for an offroad Baja Mexico trip (Dec 2015) and had to look elsewhere for offline topo maps. I used the free open hiking maps even though this was mostly a driving trip. iPhone 4S was in airplane mode with wifi turned on; which saves battery by disabling cellular (none there anyway) but lets GPS work.

Because I bought & brought & used Gaia gps the entire trip, I felt confident and did not worry about being lost. That is fantastic, whether you have a good sense of direction or not. It is fun & useful adding notes & photos to waypoints.

In use Gaia is mostly good to great. Mostly. I had numerous problems with the app crashing (several times a day), so I learned not to do certain things.
Such as; First save your route without any changes, then come back and edit the name later. I lost a couple of track logs learning this because the app crashed as I edited the unsaved track name. :-(
Do not tap on the icon of multiple way points or the app may crash. Instead zoom in until you can tap just 1 waypoint.
Taking an in app photo may crash it. To be fair, I saw that problem with other apps too. I was running iOS 8.4.1 on an iPhone4S during that dec 2015 Baja trip. I have iPhone 6S now, iOS 9.1.x.

Tapping into a waypoint may kill the menu bar. Difficult (but usually possible if you keep trying everything) to return from that menu-less screen without force-quitting the app.

Even with all of these problems, I mostly enjoyed using GAIA (when it wasnt crashing) for both motorized travel, day hikes, and short walks. It has so many awesome features. I did not import custom maps, but I am excited about that feature & looking forward to doing that.

I really hope the GAIA GPS Dev team makes a better effort to achieve more solid code & interface details, because that is all that is between them and a really super awesome app that I could recommend highly.

Mac Medix about Gaia GPS Classic, v10.4.5