When you can see trail lines while zoomed out (full state view) but they disappear at closer zoom levels, it usually means your app’s local offline database is incomplete or corrupted. We’ll explore that and other possible causes.
- You have not downloaded the region: You must download the state, province or country you are viewing first. The Trailforks app is designed to work with local offline data as much as possible. Normally, as you zoom into an area that you don't have downloaded, a red banner appears at the top of the map letting you know to download that region. If you see this, be sure to download the region first. In rare cases, this banner might not appear, so you can pan around to a different area, or go to Map -> Download Regions, and manually download the region.
- The trails might have been removed: You may be viewing an area that had sensitive or unsanctioned trails on private land. It may have been decided to remove these trails from public view. You might still see the trail name labels floating on the map; these labels take some time to generate and refresh through various levels of caching. Check if you are able to load other trail networks in the same region.
- Region download is in a failed state: You might have started to download the region, but it failed and is in a buggy state. Go to the Settings -> Downloaded Regions screen and try manually syncing the region. You can also swipe the region on this screen to the left to reveal a delete icon. Delete the region and try re-downloading it fresh.
- Login auth is broken so regions won't update: If your login authentication is broken, syncing new data for the regions you have downloaded will fail along with downloading any new regions. The area you are trying to view on the map might have newer data added to it that hasn't synced to your app. In November 2025, we identified that some users' auth tokens were stuck in a bad state. We've fixed this for most users, but to confirm that the issue you're experiencing isn't due to an auth issue, please try logging out from the app and re-logging in, starting a new auth session.
- The app's local database is corrupted: Your app's database could be in a bad state, which prevents new region data from being added to the database. Try deleting and re-downloading regions similar to Step 3. More likely, you will have to uninstall the Trailforks app from your phone and re-download it fresh. A fresh install of the app will fix your local database.
We've identified several causes of failed region downloads and subsequent database corruption, and we’re releasing updated app versions in November 2025. These updates may automatically restore your app; if they don’t, a clean reinstall is the best solution.