Strava has confirmed the release of two new heatmaps: Night and Weekly Heatmaps. These new features help subscribers to make informed decisions related to their routes, and adapt their activities as the seasons change.
Night Heatmaps are beneficial for subscribers who are completing their activities in the late evening or early morning hours. This heatmap shows heat from activities recorded from sunset to sunrise, helping athletes find the most popular areas for outdoor activities during this timeframe.
The Weekly Heatmap shows recent heat from the last seven days, helping users stay informed about which trails and roads are currently active, particularly during seasonal transitions when conditions may 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,” said Matt Salazar, Strava’s Chief Product Officer.
“We are continually improving our mapping technology to make human powered movement easier for all skill levels.”
Strava’s popular global heatmap can be used to see what areas are frequented. By adding new layers, the two new heatmaps build on Strava’s continued investment in providing subscribers more tools to plan their activities and outdoor routes.
With more than 10 billion activities uploaded by 135 million users, Strava’s heatmaps offer a distinct illustration of where the global community is moving and serves as one of the many planning tools that the platform offers.
Strava powers four different heatmap experiences (Night, Weekly, Global and Personal).
- Night (new): Discover the most frequented areas between sunset and sunrise, for evening or early morning users.
- Weekly (new): Stay updated with the latest data from the past seven days, for adjusting plans around seasonal changes or unexpected route closures.
- Global (existing): The global heatmap allows users to see what areas are most popular around the world based on the community activity uploads.
- Personal (existing): A one-of-a-kind illustration showing the record of everywhere a subscriber has logged a GPS activity. This heatmap is private and only available to the user themself.
The Global Heatmap is available to all Strava users, while the remaining three are for subscribers.
Strava’s public heatmaps utilize de-identified and aggregated data from public activities where activity visibility isset to ‘Everyone’. Activities with the privacy setting (‘Only You’ or ‘Followers’) are excluded from Strava public heatmaps automatically.
To access Night or Weekly Heatmaps on the Strava app or web, subscribers click on the Maps tab and select their desired heatmap. To further customize, subscribers can filter the heatmap by activity type or view multiple heatmaps at once.
In addition to the new heatmaps, Strava subscribers can also leverage other planning tools such as Suggested Routes, Route Planning with photos and Customized Waypoints, and Offline Routes.
