When I’m out and about, I find it really helpful having the Maps app to know exactly where I’m going. But did you know you can actually plan a route in advance in the Maps app and then save it to follow? A bit like satnav, but satnav for walking around the fields or lanes by your house. Satnav for cycling through the dirt track that you want to visit. Well, we can do all of this in the Maps app, and it even works offline. Let me show you how.

And before I do that, if you’re new here, hi, I’m Jacob. I’m your friendly iPhone teacher who will show you loads of things that you can do with your phone that you might not have realised before. If you want more tips, make sure you subscribe.

Okay, enough of that. I’m in the Maps app, and I’m going to choose a starting point for my walk, and it’s going to be near the cathedral in Truro. That’s the city where I’m closest to. I’m going to tap and hold on the road, and I’m going to drop a little marker there to start my walking route.

At this point, I can press the three dots on the bottom little toolbar, and I can say Create a Custom Route. Now, we’re going to get an interesting screen here that comes up with a little animation on, but essentially all we need to do is start moving the map with our fingers and then tap where you want the next waypoint to be. Maps will automatically join them up for you. And if you find that it’s chosen a route you wouldn’t want to use, you can simply press Undo at the top and then choose a different location slightly closer, to kind of guide that line where you want it to go.

We can repeat this process for as long as you want. And you’ll notice that as you start building your route, it will give you some metrics at the bottom, like the distance, the elevation, all those sort of things. We’ve also got the option to create an out-and-back route. So perhaps you’re doing a long walk and you want to retrace your steps to get home. Or we have the option to close the loop, which will automatically try and find a route back home for you.

I’m going to do a few more points on my map here, and then I’ll tap onto Close the Loop. And just like that, it’s created that full circle for me, exploring a part of the city that I’ve not been to recently.

At this point, we can just start the walk immediately, and it will show up on our watch and our phone, and we can get exploring. Or we can save that route for another time, which is what I’m going to do. When you tap on here, you can give the route a name, and that will then store it under the Maps app of your phone, ready for next time.

And to get to those saved routes that you’ve had, it’s really, really simple. When you open Maps, tap on your profile picture, and then tap onto Places. Then you’re going to see My Routes. And tapping on there will bring up all of the routes that you’ve saved onto your phone. You can tap on one, you can get going, and you can explore the great outdoors.

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