onX Offroad Adds Real-Time Location Sharing for Group Rides

onX Offroad introduced real-time location sharing on April 28, 2026, adding a group-coordination feature to the off-road navigation app''s existing trail and land-status toolkit. The update is live for all onX Offroad members across iOS and Android, with no upgrade required between the Premium and Elite membership tiers.

In an active session, the app pushes each participant''s position to every other member of the group every five seconds. Sessions support up to 10 people. Each member''s tile shows whether their phone is currently online or offline, and if a connection drops the app holds the last known location with a timestamp so the rest of the group still has a useful pin to navigate to. Sessions are user-controlled: any member can join, leave, or end at any time. When a session ends, onX deletes the location data.

The feature requires cellular coverage to transmit. onX positions it as a complement to the app''s existing Cell Coverage Layer, which lets a trip leader plan a route through known coverage windows so the group can rejoin updates after dead-zone stretches.

Andy Zielinski, onX Senior Product Marketing Manager, said location sharing topped the off-road community''s feature requests. "Riders are constantly balancing coordination, safety, and the reality that groups naturally spread out," Zielinski said.

For multi-vehicle overlanding trips, the practical case is the recurring problem of staying loosely grouped on long graded-dirt routes. A lead vehicle can pull ahead by ten or fifteen minutes without anxiety if the trail boss can glance at the app and see the sweep is still moving. For technical 4×4 outings where groups commonly spread out by line difficulty, position-sharing makes regroup points easier to coordinate and reduces the radio-traffic load.

The cell-coverage requirement is the practical limit. Most actual overlanding happens beyond cell range, which makes location sharing a tool for the connected portions of a trip (staging areas, fuel stops, mixed-use routes that pass through populated valleys) rather than the deep backcountry. Satellite-based group tracking, like Garmin MapShare or Zoleo group plans, remains the right tool for genuinely off-grid coordination.

Pricing for onX Offroad: Premium is $34.99 per year, Elite is $99.99 per year. Both tiers include the new location-sharing feature.