Feature
Running with no signal
GPS does not need a phone network. It never has. So the honest question is not whether Waypath records offline, which it does, but which parts of the screen stop working when the bars disappear.
Offline
What keeps working with no signal
The recording
GPS is a satellite signal. Distance, pace, elevation, splits and the track itself are all computed on the device and none of them need a network.
Your saved routes
A route you saved is on the phone. Following it, and the pacer that goes with it, do not depend on a connection.
Your own history
Activities live on the phone. Looking at last Sunday's run in a valley with no coverage works exactly as it does at home.
An app that says so
When the connection goes, Waypath tells you: the map may not fill in, the recording is safe, and sharing picks up again when you are back.
Online
What needs a connection
New map tiles
The basemap is drawn by Apple's MapKit. Areas you have looked at recently may still draw from the system's own cache, but a region your phone has never seen will come up blank.
Live sharing
Positions have to reach the browser holding the link. The recording continues offline and sharing resumes when the signal does.
The trail catalogue and the feed
Browsing 426,029 trails, condition reports, clubs and messages all need the network.
The honest bit
Is there a downloadable offline map?
No, and this page would rather explain why than quietly avoid the question.
Waypath draws its maps with Apple's MapKit, which has no public API to pre-download a region, to ask how large a cached region is, to pin one so it is not evicted, or even to know whether a tile came from the cache or the network. The tile cache is private, shared with Apple Maps, sized by the operating system and cleared whenever the system decides, with no notification.
A Download this region button built on that would be a promise the phone can break in your pocket, silently, and it would break at exactly the worst moment: three days into a trip, in airplane mode, on a mountain. A screen full of grey grid and an app that told you it had the map is worse than an app that never claimed it.
Proper offline basemaps mean licensing and hosting vector tiles rather than borrowing Apple's. That is a real project with a real bill attached, and it is on the list. Until it exists, this page says what the app does: it records anywhere, and it tells you when the map cannot follow.
It records where the signal does not reach.
Free unlimited recording, and an app that tells you which half of the screen is guessing.
Requires iPhone. Recording is free and unlimited. Premium adds the deeper analysis.