Embark on a virtual event with your friends and family or just go solo
Always wanted to hike the length of the Camino de Santiago or ride across America or the length of Britain? Now with Map My Tracks virtual events you can remotely complete routes by using your everyday workouts.
Virtual events on Map My Tracks make every mile count and are a great way to embark on long distance challenges remotely. A virtual event takes your activities and uses each mile covered to propel you along a virtual route. Along the way you can pass point of interests, explore the terrain and compete against others to get to the finish line first.
Why not challenge your friends and family to walk the West Highland Way over the next two weeks or ride the Scottish North Coast 500 over the weekend. Want a solo adventure? Create your own virtual event to keep yourself motivated.
As with all events it’s simple to get started. Create your event then upload, or draw, your route. After that, invite the participants to join the event. Once your event has started all activities uploaded by participants will contribute to their distance along the virtual route.
Participants can use the Map My Tracks app to track live and have their progress updated in real-time or record their activity with compatible devices and upload their activities after they have finished each workout. Either way, the distance covered goes towards completing the virtual event.
Map My Tracks virtual events can be set up using the Event Planner and be viewed on the Map My Tracks app for iOS and Android as well as within Map My Tracks Events on the website.
Get started and set up your first virtual event. It’s free.
More control over your followers
Today we've rolled out a small, but handy, update to managing followers.
It’s now possible to remove a person from following you. This might be useful if you don’t know the person following you and would prefer that your activities are not in their activity feed. It also stops them from getting push notifications about your activity.
When you remove a person from following you it doesn’t stop them from following you again. We have plans to roll out user blocking which will be available in the coming weeks.
The option to remove followers is currently only available on the website. Head to your profile page then click on the ‘Followers’ link to see who’s following you. From there you can remove followers.
For now, we hope this small update helps to give you more control over your privacy.
Automatically upload workouts to Map My Track from Wahoo ELEMNT
Great news if you are a Wahoo ELEMNT user.
Automatic uploads to Map My Tracks from a Wahoo ELEMNT is now available. This makes it super simple to upload your workout to Map My Tracks.
The step-by-step guide below should help get everyone set up. You’ll need to make sure you have the updated Wahoo ELEMNT app to use it. The setup takes only a few seconds and once done any workouts recorded on the ELEMNT will automatically upload to Map My Tracks.
If you have any questions about getting this set up then contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we’ll help get you all set up.
More ways to sync your workouts into Map My Tracks
Today we would like to welcome the RunGap app to the Map My Tracks family.
RunGap is a third-party iOS app that uses the Map My Tracks API to sync workouts between services. Using this app make it super simple to keep your Map My Tracks in step with all your other apps and services.
RunGap can be downloaded free from the App Store and it includes options to upgrade unlock all features.
If you are a developer and wish to use the Map My Tracks API for your project then please contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Map My Tracks Android app update - v4.1.2
We've been busy behind the scenes updating the Map My Tracks Android app which, we are thrilled to announce, is live and available to download from Google Play.
So what’s new in this update - v4.1.2?
Cleaner, clearer high resolution maps - It’s now a lot easier to see street names and other features with the new Street map style. High resolution map tiles also make each map clean, clearer and sharp. As before, you can set your preferred map style in the app’s Settings > Display section.
Optimisation - The app has been upgraded and converted to work great on Android 9. As a result of these changes the app is now more responsive with faster page loading all round.
Data validation - Due to various changes in recent versions of Android some, but not all, devices need to allow Map My Tracks to run in the background. We’ve added in data checks to detect if your activity has been recorded fully. In the event that the app detects irregular data it will now suggest that Map My Tracks is allowed to run fully when used in the background.
Various layout improvements - The app now makes use of your device’s full screen to provide a great experience on all pages. A host of other small refinements are dotted around the app.
We hope you like the updated Android app which can be downloaded from Google Play.
Automatic privacy zone detection
With your privacy as one of our top priorities today we have launched automatic privacy zones detection.
Starting today, all new activities will be scanned to check if you regularly start or finish in the same location. If we detect that you do often start or finish in the same place a new privacy zone will be created for you. The privacy zone will mask the exact start or end location so anyone viewing your public activities is not able to determine where you home or place of work might be.
Privacy zones can be edited, or created on the website at Settings > Privacy. You can choose to disable auto-detection altogether, or choose to ignore any zones that have been automatically created for you. Likewise, privacy zones can be deleted.
Privacy first
Our default set up for new users is all offline. This means that users have to choose to share their activities publicly when they wish to. We wanted to make sure that when our users do share their activities publicly that their privacy is protected by default. Automatic privacy zones will work in the background without users needing to configure their account to protect their privacy. Automatic privacy zones will help to do that for you.
We hope you like this new feature. If you have any feedback about this or any other features then please do get in touch at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Sync your Apple Watch workouts to Map My Tracks
We’re thrilled to welcome HealthFit app to the Map My Tracks family.
From today, anyone that uses an Apple Watch to record their outdoor pursuits can sync it automatically to Map My Tracks through the HealthFit app.
HealthFit is a third-party app that uses the Map My Tracks API to seamlessly sync Apple Watch workouts over to Map My Tracks. It’s easy to set up and get started and once configured the HealthFit app will take over and do work in the background keeping your Map My Tracks account up to date.
All activities synced across using HealthFit will be set to Private but if you would prefer to share them with followers on Map My Tracks then you can edit each one on Map My Tracks.
The HealthFit app is available to download from the App Store for $2.99.
It’s great to see our API being using for really useful tools like HealthFit. If you are a developer and wish to use the Map My Tracks API for your project then please contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Connect your Polar account to Map My Tracks
We’re thrilled to welcome Polar to the Map My Tracks family. From today, anyone that uses a Polar watch to record their outdoor pursuits can sync it automatically to Map My Tracks. Polar joins the existing set of services, that includes Garmin Connect and Fitbit, that makes is easy for anyone that enjoys getting outdoors to keep all their records in one place.
It’s simple to set up
To get started first connect your Map My Tracks account with your Polar Flow account. On the website go to Upload > Connect to devices. On the app go to Settings > Services to complete the connection. Once connected, your Polar activities will be synced across to Map My Tracks. After that, all new activities synced to Polar Flow will also be synced to Map My Tracks. It will not sync historical activities. If these are needed on Map My Tracks then they can be upload manually.
By default, any activity synced from Polar will be made private. It’s possible to alter this by editing the connection settings on the website at Upload > Connect to devices.
As ever, we are keen to hear from our community on what other services would be good to integrate with. Get in touch to let us know.
An apology and update
Regular users of Map My Tracks may have noticed some odd things going on over the past few days. We thought an explanation was in order.
First things first, we’re sorry for the glitches that presented themselves this week. We know that a lot of people rely on Map My Tracks and depend on it running smoothly. We can’t apologise enough for the hassle that is caused when things don’t work as expected.
So what happened?
We have some ambitious plans for Map My Tracks and to deliver these we have needed to upgrade the underlying infrastructure that Map My Tracks is built on. This has meant that a complete set of server upgrades has been completed this week. They’re bigger, faster and better!
We have spent the past few months planning this change and, we thought, we had everything covered for when the migration took place. That said, some unexpected side-effects presented themselves once the new system was under a full load of regular users.
We’ve been working through these issues over the past few days and I’m pleased to say that the apps and website are now back to normal with the added benefit of being on new infrastructure.
Once again, please accept my apologies for the inconvenience that this has caused. If you spot anything odd that we have not picked up then please do get in touch - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Nick - Map My Tracks
Map My Tracks Android v4
We’re thrilled to announce that a major new update to the Map My Tracks Android app is now available to download from Google Play.
What’s new? Well, lots!
We’ve been busy making sure that the app in general is much faster to use when browsing around. You’ll notice that maps load faster and that pages now include an infinite scroll that means you can easily browse more of your history or your friend’s activities. Some subtle changes to the page layouts mean everything is clearer and easier to read.
We’ve also made sure that the app stays in sync your website history. Now, if you upload activities to the website your phone stays in sync without needing to manually download it. This works great if you have connected your account to Garmin Connect or Fitbit. All the activities synced from these services automatically appear in the app on your phone keeping everything in one place.
Photos take center stage. When you pin a photo to an activity it will show in your profile and activity feed instead of the route map.
Other all round improvements make this version faster and even easier to use.
We hope you enjoy the update.
