Forge app to be retired on 31 August 2025

The Forge app first went live in May 2019, initially hosting just Table Mountain National Park as the sole hiking map. Over the years, in addition to several improvements and additions to the app, we have increased the number of dedicated maps on the app to over 60 across South Africa. This has been commensurate with amazing growth in the number of downloads, which today totals over 60,000. All this whilst keeping the app free to users.

In early 2023, we received notice that the platform on which we built the Forge app would be discontinued 24 months later, in February 2025. Without the in-house expertise to rebuild the app from scratch, we spent the ensuing period looking for developers to help us rebuild the app and investors to fund it. While we made many great connections, regrettably, we were unable to find a viable solution that could secure the redevelopment of the app.

Forge has always been an after-hours labour of love for our founding team of three, and a lot has changed for us in our personal lives since registering the company back in 2017. With our full-time careers and familial commitments having grown, it has become ever more challenging to invest as much time and energy into Forge as we would like to. All things considered, we have regrettably made the tough decision to retire the Forge app on 31 August and migrate our maps to the Avenza Maps platform.

Avenza Maps can be downloaded for free on Google Play and the App Store, and our entire reserve maps library can be purchased and downloaded for offline use. While these maps are not interactive as they have been on Forge, they are geo-referenced, allowing you to continue using your location services on your cell phone to navigate these maps.

Although this marks the end of the Forge mobile app, the Forge website will continue to operate as normal.

We will keep updating the migration FAQs below, but if you encounter any issues during this transition, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly at info@forgesa.com.

FAQs

I have the Forge app installed on my device; what should I do now?

For users who have the Forge app installed on their device, it will continue to work, but it may become incompatible with future operating system updates over time.

What happens to my existing offline maps?

Offline maps that have already been downloaded will remain accessible. However, we encourage you to download the newer versions on Avenza, which are more up-to-date and of a higher quality.