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Strava has announced the release of two new heatmaps: Night and Weekly Heatmaps features further empower subscribers to make informed route selection decisions, as well as adapt adventures with confidence, even as the seasons change.
For subscribers completing their activities in the late evening or early morning hours, Night Heatmaps help athletes easily find the most popular areas for outdoor activities during this timeframe – showing heat from activities recorded from sunset to sunrise,
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.
Salazar further comments: “We are continually improving our mapping technology to make human-powered movement easier for all skill levels.”
Today, users can leverage Strava’s popular global heatmap to help users see what areas are frequented. By adding these new layers, the two new heatmaps are indicative of the platform’s continued investment in providing subscribers with more tools to confidently 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 serve as one of the many planning tools that the platform offers.
Strava powers four different heatmap experiences:
- Night (New): Discover the most frequented areas between sunset and sunrise, ideal for evening or early morning users.
- Weekly (New): Stay updated with the latest data from the past 7 days, perfect for adjusting plans around seasonal changes or unexpected 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 the 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, with each providing unique insights to the active community.
Strava’s public heatmaps utilize de-identified and aggregated data from public activities with visibility set 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 even view multiple heatmaps at once.
In addition to the new heatmaps, Strava subscribers can also leverage other planning tools like Suggested Routes, Route Planning with photos and Customized Waypoints, and Offline Routes.
Whether discovering new places to run or adapting to seasonal changes, Strava surfaces behaviour driven, data powered, insights which empower athletes to plan their next adventure with confidence, backed by insights from a global community.
