There are a couple of apps that are very good in their own right, but not quite what hikers need.
TrailForks[1] is in many ways the ideal app for mountain biking, and a great example of what a "trail recommendation" app for hikers should be. It combines the best trail data with easy navigation, planning and routing. What's really unique about it is that they got buy-in from a huge number of regional trail organizations and land managers, so it's frequently updated and generally quite accurate.
When you're riding in an area you're unfamiliar with, it's really easy to put together a good route, read reviews from other users and check out trail conditions.
Gaia GPS[2] is probably the best outdoor mapping app. It doesn't have social functions or trail recommendations, but you can grab layers from just about everywhere, from USGS topo maps, to forest service maps, specialty layers and more. It's great at tracking where you've been, planning routes based on map data and making it hard to get lost while you're out there.
I think the ultimate hiking app would be some combination of "Trailforks but for hiking" and Gaia.
One disclaimer about those apps, they were both recently acquired by Outside Inc., so far they haven't been ruined, but I (and other dedicated users) are worried that corporate ownership won't be good for either app/community.
Just a note about Trailforks. It was introduced as a crowdsourced, free application/service which was lacking data, but had a huge audience. So people little by little put a lot of riding data in it (trails, routes, media, info etc), the word spread, and over couple of years it turned out to be pretty much the best trail riding/mapping app. And that was mostly because of the data, not the app itself, because it was frankly not very good UI-wise.
The the other shoe dropped. They locked the data and the app behind a subscription service, and not long after that, they've bundled some related web sites with it and sold it to off to some bigger company for quite a nice sum from what I've heard.
My point being, they knew about the subscription/monetization since the beginning but "forgot" to mention it (for obvious reasons). Classic bait and switch tactic. My riding buddies and me spent dozens of hours (some much more) mapping our region and added hundreds of trails and other info "for the good of everyone", just to get it locked away by them. I'm wiser after that, but this is definitely an example how to destroy a good will of a community.
TrailForks[1] is in many ways the ideal app for mountain biking, and a great example of what a "trail recommendation" app for hikers should be. It combines the best trail data with easy navigation, planning and routing. What's really unique about it is that they got buy-in from a huge number of regional trail organizations and land managers, so it's frequently updated and generally quite accurate.
When you're riding in an area you're unfamiliar with, it's really easy to put together a good route, read reviews from other users and check out trail conditions.
Gaia GPS[2] is probably the best outdoor mapping app. It doesn't have social functions or trail recommendations, but you can grab layers from just about everywhere, from USGS topo maps, to forest service maps, specialty layers and more. It's great at tracking where you've been, planning routes based on map data and making it hard to get lost while you're out there.
I think the ultimate hiking app would be some combination of "Trailforks but for hiking" and Gaia.
One disclaimer about those apps, they were both recently acquired by Outside Inc., so far they haven't been ruined, but I (and other dedicated users) are worried that corporate ownership won't be good for either app/community.
[1] https://www.trailforks.com/
[2] https://www.gaiagps.com/