Get the most out of every ride.
Short guides to the features riders love — and the ones that aren't obvious at first. Start with trips; it's the idea that ties Second Kick Maps together.
One trip holds your whole outing
This is the part people miss at first — then can't ride without. Tap Start a trip and from that moment every waypoint and every recorded track files itself under that trip. No folders, no tidying. At camp you open the trip and the whole weekend is in one place.
- Tap Start a trip at the top of the map and name it.
- Ride — mark fuel, camp, and hazards; record your tracks. They all land in the trip automatically.
- Open Tools → Saved → Trips to review, then Share Trip as GPX to send the whole outing to your group as one file.
A topo that works with no signal
Second Kick Maps default base is a vector topo that renders on your phone — sharp at every zoom, with contours, terrain, and public land. Download any of the 50 states once and the map, search, and tap-to-identify all keep working in airplane mode.
- The vector base is already your map — nothing to set up.
- On a fresh install, the second setup screen offers the states first: your own is ticked from your location, motor vehicle use maps come with it unless you untick them, and you watch the download start before you reach the map.
- Any time after that, open Tools → Offline maps, pick your state (or draw a box around a smaller area), and download.
- Head out. Everything keeps working without a bar of signal.
Drop a waypoint without stopping
Mark what you see the instant you see it — a campsite, a washout, a great overlook. Pin your two most-used presets to the button so a fuel stop or a camp is a single tap.
- Tap the green Mark button to drop a pin at your GPS spot, or long-press the map to mark anywhere.
- Hands full? Say “Hey Siri, mark a waypoint in Second Kick Maps” — it works with no signal at all. More on voice.
- Add photos, notes, an icon, and a color — or tap Edit presets to build your own.
Mark it without taking your hands off the bars
Gloves on, phone on the bar mount, nothing to look at. Ask Siri and the pin lands at your GPS spot — and it works with no signal at all. Airplane mode, dead zone, bottom of a canyon: the command is understood on the phone, and Second Kick Maps already has everything it needs to finish the job.
- Say “Hey Siri, mark a waypoint in Second Kick Maps” — or name the type: hazard, campsite, fuel, water, fishing, trail and the rest of the built-in presets.
- Need to say why? “Hey Siri, mark a hazard with details in Second Kick Maps” — Siri asks what to write, and your words land on that waypoint.
- Starting out? “Hey Siri, start a trip in Second Kick Maps” keeps the ride and everything you mark on it together.
Say the app's name. “Mark a waypoint” on its own isn't enough — Siri needs to know whose waypoint it is, so finish the sentence with in Second Kick Maps.
Bring your old app's library over
Switching apps shouldn't cost you years of pins and tracks. Second Kick Maps imports GPX, GeoJSON, KML, and KMZ and keeps your colors, routes, and icons. A GeoJSON “All Data” export usually carries the most detail; GPX works too.
- Export your data from your old app, and open the file into Second Kick Maps — from Files, Messages, or AirDrop.
- Review what's coming in, and choose a trip or just your library.
- Save. Re-importing the same file into the same place is safe — pins and lines that are already there are skipped, not doubled. If a file carries route options, the review screen and the confirmation both say what will and won't come across, so you never have to count your own options afterwards.
- Adding options on one phone and importing on another tops the route up. The route itself is recognised and left alone, and any options it doesn't have yet are added to the copy you already have — the ones it does have are left exactly as you set them, including which branch you chose.
One route, every way you might ride it
The technical line and the easy bypass. The spur to the lookout, if there's time. Save them all on one route as options, then pick what you're actually riding on the day — distance, climb, point count and the fuel verdict all recompose with the choice, and nothing is re-planned, because every option is already snapped and saved.
There are three shapes. An add-on is an out-and-back or a loop that leaves the main line and returns to it — off until you switch it on. A fork is two ways round from one split: A is the main line, B the alternate, and choosing B replaces that stretch rather than adding to it. And a fork doesn't have to come back — choose one that ends the route on its branch and everything the main line did after the split comes off the day.
- While you're drawing a route, tap the branch button in the plan bar to fork from the end of the line. Draw the other way, tap Done, and you're back on the main line at the split to carry on as normal. Fork again while you're on a branch and the new one hangs off that branch.
- Already saved it? Open the route and tap Add out-and-back or fork in its OPTIONS card, then trace the detour on the map. It attaches to whichever drawn line you traced along — the main line, or a fork you've switched on.
- On the day, flip the rows in the route's Options list and the map and the numbers follow. Forks at the same split are either/or: turning one on turns the others off.
More guides
If Siri won't mark a waypoint
Almost always the same cause: iOS asks once whether to turn on Second Kick Maps shortcuts, and it's easy to dismiss. Until you say yes, every phrase comes back “Sorry, I don't understand” with nothing to explain why. Open the Shortcuts app, find Second Kick Maps under App Shortcuts and make sure they're switched on — or check Settings → Apps → Second Kick Maps. Then check the phrase itself: it has to end with in Second Kick Maps. This isn't a signal problem — the commands work in airplane mode once they're switched on.
Layers & identify
Switch on the layers you want — USFS roads, USFS trails, MVUM, rec sites, fuel, public land — then tap any road, trail, or parcel to identify it, including who owns the land. 14,000+ USFS campgrounds and trailheads are already on the map nationwide.
Organize with layers & tags
Split your saved data into Map layers and My Data, then build custom layers to group waypoints and tracks your way. Tag anything — search and filter the library by tag, bulk-tag a whole selection at once, and rename, merge, or delete a tag everywhere it's used.
Record a ride
Tap the red Record button for live distance, climb, moving time, and top speed — on screen and on the Dynamic Island. Lock the phone; it keeps recording, and recovers your track if the phone dies.
Plan a route & follow it
Drop points and snap to the road-and-trail network, get an elevation profile, then follow the line with off-route alerts that buzz before a wrong turn costs you ten miles. Snapping runs offline once you've grabbed that state's routing pack — Second Kick Maps prompts you with the exact state and size while you plan, or add it when you download the state under Tools → Offline maps. Cross a state line and it'll ask for the next pack too.
Options that hang off options
An option attaches to a line, not to the route as a whole — so a fork can hang off another fork, and off that one again. A nested option is listed underneath the one it branches from, and it's only on the table if you took that branch first. Give each its own color and the map reads at a glance; the color carries into exported GPX, and the whole set travels with the route in backups and in the GPX you share, so your group gets the same choices you had instead of one flattened line.
When an option is greyed out
If the composed route doesn't run past an option at all, no position of its control would change the line — so the control is greyed whichever way it's set, and the row names the choice that's in the way: “Not on the route while Fork 1 is on B.” The row still shows what that option would cost in distance and climb, so you can weigh putting the other choice back, and your setting on it is kept, not reset.
If a traced detour won't attach
An option can only attach to a line the map is actually drawing, so a trace sometimes comes back with a reason. Both ends have to touch the route — the main line, or a fork you've switched on. Trace along an option that's switched off and it says so, and offers to switch it on first; trace across a stretch a chosen fork has replaced and it points you at the line you can see. Because an option hangs off one line, both ends have to land on the same one — and on one of that line's own points, so start and end at a bend.
Fuel range & My Garage
Add your bike to My Garage with its range — type the miles, or enter MPG and tank size and Second Kick Maps does the math. Pick it while planning and the route colors green to amber to red by remaining fuel, then flags the last mapped gas before the gap. Detouring on a half-empty tank? Set it to ¾, ½, or ¼ and the range scales to what you've actually got. A saved route says whether it's in range too — on the bike you picked, named on the row, and you can switch bikes or turn it off right there. It's the same choice as planning, so both screens are always about the same bike.
River conditions
Turn on River Gauges in Layers and tap one for live flow, water temperature, and trend charts — anywhere in the US. Know the crossing before you're standing in it.
Back up & switch phones
Tools → Import & export → Export all data writes one file with everything — waypoints, tracks, trips, photos, settings — or turn on iCloud backup. Restore on a new phone by importing; nothing is lost.
Go fully off-grid
No account needed. Everything lives on your device and works in airplane mode once your state is downloaded — the backcountry doesn't get a signal, and neither does Second Kick Maps need one.