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Feedback on Walking With the App

Help us improve Good Ways

This is looking better than I expected at this stage, but there is clearly still work to do. I created three routes, by importing gpx files created on Outdooractive. That worked fine. I then tried following one, recording it as an Activity. A few comments:

1) The recording stopped at one point. I don't know why. I didn't press stop, but I was switching between apps, using the phone for different things during the walk. I spotted the problem, started re-recording, so the recorded track now has a straight line in it. It would need to be edited.
2) I was able to use it for navigation, although, one serious limitation, at the moment, is that you cannot see what lies underneath the blue line (route) or purple line (activity). Am I on a footpath? Very important. On OS Maps and Outdooractive, you can see what is underneath.
3) I cannot seem to access, edit or download the Activity. Is that something which will be added later?
4) It uses a lot of battery power. I only looked at the screen for a few short periods but it used 23% of my battery over the 8 hours it was running (this was a 17-mile walk)
5) It didn't seem possible to pause the recording, so you have to leave it running during longer stops. This adds to the battery problem and can produce bizarre patterns on the gpx file when you stop, but the gps satellite thinks you are moving.

Posted by An Anonymous User ·
1 comment

Comments1

  • Toby Twigger

    •

    Aug 20

    Hello!

    Thank you so much for taking the time to give this feedback - there's a lot here we can and will improve in future versions.

    1. We've had reports of recording stopping from a couple of other users here. Our app developer, Richard, is investigating potential solutions. It's very likely the problem is your phone killing the app to save memory, battery or performance. We'll add a few new solutions that try and address this to stop it from closing.

    2. Not being able to see the underlying map is a great point - I've had this myself out walking locally, where I can't tell if I'm about to start on a footpath or another road! The fully designed prototype (https://goodways.org/2026/07/27/update-12-what-do-you-think-of-our-first-prototype/) somewhat addresses this, but we're going to try letting you make the line more transparent so you can see underneath it. Expect something in the next week or two that hopefully addresses this!

    3. Viewing, editing and downloading activities is absolutely on our roadmap.

    4. Sorry to hear it used lots of battery power. We'll investigate and see what more we can do - we've already tried to make it as efficient as possible but we may be able to improve it further.

    5. Thank you for pointing this out, we'll test it some more. It should be possible to completely pause the recording to save battery.

    Thank you again for all your help testing our apps, please do continue to reach out with any more feedback you have or other things we can help with!