Does GPSLarp need an internet connection?
You are somewhere without Wi-Fi, or about to be, and you want to know how much of this still works when nothing can reach a server.
Partly, and the split is worth knowing before you rely on it. The link between your Mac and your iPhone is local to the two devices and needs no connection at all. The map you look at, the search box, route planning and signing in are all requests to somebody's server.
01What needs a connection
- Searching for a place by name or address. The text you type is sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, which answers with coordinates. With no connection there is nothing to answer, and the search box has nothing to offer you. See setting an exact location.
- The map itself. Map tiles are fetched as you pan and zoom, so an offline map fills in as far as whatever is already cached and then stops.
- Planning a walking or driving route. The route between two points is computed by a routing service over real streets, which is a request that goes out and comes back. See walking and driving a route.
- Fetching the support file iOS asks for. The developer disk image comes from Apple, and the phone does not offer the service a location change needs until one is mounted — see the developer disk image.
- Signing in the first time, and checking for an update. Both talk to a server by definition.
02What contacts no server
- The connection between your Mac and your iPhone. It is between those two devices — over the cable, or over the network they share — and nothing about it travels further than that.
- Looking up a place you have already saved. The coordinates are in your own list on your own Mac and nothing has to be fetched to read them. See saved locations. Whether you are allowed to use one is a separate question — see the next section, because on the free runs the answer depends on the connection.
- Stopping. Ending a location change is between the Mac and the phone and asks nobody's permission.
03Signing in, and the fourteen days
Signing in needs a connection — there is no way around that, because signing in is a conversation with a server. After that, the app keeps working offline for fourteen days from the last time your sign-in was checked.
When that window has passed and there is still no connection, the app says so in its own words: You're offline and the 14-day grace period on your last sign-in has passed. Sign in again when you have a connection.
That message is not an error you can retry your way out of, and it is not about your subscription. It means the app has gone too long without being able to check anything, and it needs one connection to carry on. I can't sign in to GPSLarp covers the ways that can go wrong once you have one.
04A free run needs the connection; a paid one does not
This is the part that surprises people, and it is a deliberate split rather than an oversight.
- On a subscription, no connection is needed to set a location. Your entitlement is remembered on the Mac and is good until the end of the period you have paid for. This is the case the split exists for: the app gets used in places where there is no signal.
- On the free runs, a connection is needed at the moment you start one. The count lives on the server, so the app has to ask, and with nothing to ask it refuses. It refuses with a message about being offline rather than about the grant — being unable to reach the server is not the same as having run out, and telling you it was would be a false statement about what you still have.
What do I get without paying? has the rest of how the grant is counted.
05What that adds up to
On a subscription, inside the fourteen days, a saved location can be set on a Mac with no connection at all. What you will not have is a map under it or any way to search for somewhere new — so the practical version is that everything you might want offline has to be saved while you still have a connection.
The same is true of a route. Plan it while you are online; a planned walk or drive that has already been built can be played without another request.
A patchy connection is not the same as none
The map filling in slowly, a search that takes a while, or a route that takes several seconds are all the same thing: a request waiting on a server. None of them says anything about whether your Mac can reach your phone, which is a separate link entirely.
06Which services get contacted
The privacy policy lists the third-party services the app contacts directly from your Mac, and it is the authority on that question. This page deliberately does not repeat the list: two lists of vendors in two places is two things to keep in step, and the one with legal effect is the one that should be read.
07What this page cannot tell you
Everything above is about which parts of the app reach a server. None of it says the location arrives on your phone, offline or online. Nobody in this project has watched a location change happen on a real phone from end to end, and nobody has measured whether one stays put once set — so the connection question is answered here, and that one is not answered anywhere on this site, on purpose.
What is worth planning around either way: the changed position lasts only while the Mac is awake, running GPSLarp, and connected to the phone. An offline Mac can hold that connection perfectly well. A sleeping one cannot.