Travelling through rural countryside, hiking in national parks, or visiting foreign countries often means navigating through areas with spotty cellular coverage or expensive roaming charges. Starting with iOS 17, Apple Maps features native offline map downloads. Downloading specific geographic regions allows your iPhone to deliver turn-by-turn driving, walking, and cycling directions, search for nearby points of interest, and view detailed place cards entirely without an internet connection.
What Features Work When Using Offline Apple Maps?
Apple Maps offline data provides comprehensive navigation tools that operate completely independent of mobile data:
- Turn-by-Turn Navigation: Full spoken driving, walking, cycling, and public transit directions within your downloaded perimeter.
- Place Details and Hours: Access operating hours, star ratings, phone numbers, and addresses for local restaurants, petrol stations, and attractions.
- Automatic Connectivity Fallback: If cellular reception drops while driving, Apple Maps automatically switches to your offline cache without interrupting your route.
- Apple Watch Support: Offline map areas downloaded to your iPhone automatically synchronize to a paired Apple Watch running watchOS 10 or later.
How to Download an Offline Map on iPhone
Downloading a designated city or region to your device is quick and lets you resize the bounding box to capture exactly what you need.
- Open the Apple Maps app on your iPhone running iOS 17 or newer.
- Tap your profile picture (or user initials) located to the right of the search bar.
- Select Offline Maps from the account menu.
- Tap Download New Map.
- Search for your destination city, country, or national park (for example, London or Lake District).
- A rectangular boundary box will appear over the map. Drag the map to position the frame, or pinch to zoom in or out to expand or shrink the coverage area.
- Observe the estimated download size at the bottom of the screen (e.g., 350 MB).
- Tap Download. Your iPhone will download the map package in the background.
Managing and Updating Your Offline Maps
You can manage storage space, rename regions, and configure automatic updates from the Offline Maps dashboard:
- Automatic Updates: By default, Apple Maps automatically refreshes your downloaded regions periodically over Wi-Fi so business hours and roads remain current.
- Optimise Storage: Toggle on Optimise Storage inside the Offline Maps menu to automatically delete maps you have not used in a long time.
- Only Use Offline Maps: If you are on an expensive international roaming plan, toggle on Only Use Offline Maps to prevent Apple Maps from consuming even a single byte of cellular data.
- Delete a Map: Swipe left across any downloaded region in the Offline Maps list and tap Delete to reclaim local phone storage instantly.