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Strava is adding nightly and weekly heat maps to its fitness app
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Strava is adding nightly and weekly heat maps to its fitness app

Strava, a popular fitness tracking app, is expanding its heatmap feature to help improve the safety of its users. The update should be especially useful now for users in the Northern Hemisphere, who are heading into winter with less natural light.

The new nightly and weekly heat maps were announced by the San Francisco-based company on Wednesday and are available to all Strava subscribers. As the feature’s name suggests, heat maps show where Strava users choose to exercise, with thick dark lines indicating well-used routes and thin light lines indicating less popular ones.

First, the new Night Heatmaps feature is ideal for those who do their activities late at night or early in the morning when there is less light. They show the most popular areas for outdoor activities from sunset to sunrise, helping athletes better plan their outdoor activities during this time frame. If it’s a new area for you, we recommend cross-checking Night Heatmap data with Google Street View images to get a better understanding of the place.

Weekly heat maps, on the other hand, show recent heat data for the past seven days so users can see which trails and roads are currently active, especially during seasonal transitions when conditions can be affected by weather.

“Our global community powers our heatmaps, and now we’ve made it easier for our community members to build routes with confidence, regardless of the season or time of day,” Strava Product Director Matt Salazar, said in Wednesday’s announcement about the new features. “We’re continually improving our mapping technology to make human movement easier for all skill levels.”

Strava also shared a handy at-a-glance guide to all four of his heatmaps, Night, Weekly, Global and Personal:

Night (new): Discover the most frequented areas between sunset and sunrise, ideal for evening or early morning users.

Weekly (new): Stay up-to-date with the latest data from the last seven days, perfect for adjusting plans around seasonal changes or unexpected closures.

Global (existing): Viewable by anyone, regardless of whether you have a Strava account, the Global Heatmap lets you see which areas are the most popular around the world based on uploaded community activities.

Personal (Existing): A unique illustration showing the record wherever you have recorded a GPS activity. This heatmap is private and only available to you.