You already know that Locus Map is a versatile and flexible tool that enables a wide range of uses. That it can serve hikers, bikers, geocachers, runners and cross-country skiers is a given. That it can also help rescuers, conservationists, and the development of new technologies we wrote about a year ago.

This is because of the plethora of features and gadgets the app offers. Often these options are somewhat hidden, as you had a chance to see in the article about the "magic" of long pressing some buttons. Today, we're going to look a little deeper into the menu and bring to light a few features you may not have known about in Locus Map.

Map specialties

Maps are essential and Locus Map can display a plethora of them - online or offline, of different types, dedicated LoMaps, or maps from various third-party vendors. Now we'll take a look at a few features that further enrich the map.

Automatic zooming

With autozoom, you don't have to manually zoom in and out if your hands are on the handlebars or steering wheel - the map zooms itself depending on your current speed. When you're going fast, the map zooms out, and you can see more of the landscape and get an overview of the overall context and progress along the route. Conversely, when you slow down or stop at an intersection, the map zooms in and you can see all the details you need, such as the shape of the intersection.

Unlike conventional navigation apps, in Locus Map, you can set in detail which zooms to display at which speed. This way you can tailor the auto zoom to any activity, from slow walking to driving, and use the presets to activate it when needed.

Auto zoom can be found in the map screen settings. Details here >>

All maps magnification

Many middle-aged people are losing the ability to focus their sight at short distances. For them, Locus Map offers the ability to enlarge all maps from 125% to 800% of the original resolution. You can enable map magnification in the advanced map settings. Details here >>

Terrain shading

The classic map shading, which increases the plasticity of the terrain and aids orientation, needs no introduction:

However, Locus Map offers something extra again:

Slope gradients for ski mountaineering

The popular activity on the snow plains of the mountains brings with it one crucial aspect to watch - the slope gradient. The risk of an avalanche increases with a higher angle. Based on elevation data, Locus Map can color-code slopes exceeding 30°, which is critical for safe movement in open terrain. Steeper slopes are further distinguished by a darker color:

Slope colouring by cardinal directions

Landscape photographers and other hunters of sunrises and sunsets will appreciate being able to tell from a map which slope leans in which direction. The cardinal points are color-coded so you can guess fairly accurately where the shade will be at what time of day:

Quickly turn shading on or off in the map content panel on the left. Details here >>

Auxiliary graphics

The rather generic title in the map settings menu hides some real treasures that can be very useful to you as you wander through the countryside. This section is worth exploring in more detail, but we'll just list the highlights here:

Dynamic elevation

The height of the location on the map is displayed above the cursor. You always know what elevation you are at and the elevation of your surroundings:

Time circles

Intuitively and quickly show us where we will get to in half a minute, a minute, etc., at the current speed:

Cursor to position line

A very fast tool to measure the beeline distance between your current location and any other location. You can also add other values to the line such as elevation difference or azimuth:

Course line

This element highlights the direction of your movement. Useful for water sports on a larger body of water:

Heading line

Highlights the direction of rotation of the phone. For example, it can help you find the names of peaks on the horizon or other landscape features you can see from a viewpoint.

Show view

Particularly helpful for those who have trouble orienting themselves on the map - it shows the viewport you are currently looking at:

More about auxiliary graphics here >>

Specialties for athletes

The primary goal of the Locus Map app is to help people who enjoy being active in the outdoors. In addition to the main functions such as track recording, route planning, navigation, or connection to external sensors, there are also a lot of auxiliary functions that can make these activities even more enjoyable.

Audio coach

The audio coach is appreciated by runners and everyone who needs to know their performance data first-hand, so to speak. When recording an activity (running, cycling or other trail training), Locus Map reports the current statistics of the ongoing activity to the headphones at a selected interval.

A range of parameters is available - in addition to the usual data such as distance, speed, or pace, Locus Map also provides information on elevation, heart rate, cadence, or energy consumption. The reporting interval can be selected as distance or time, and the parameters can also be layered on top of each other. And don't worry that you won't hear your favorite music while running - Locus Map only sounds when it needs to.

You can set up as many audio coaches as you want and use a different one for each sports activity. Connecting audio to a specific route recording profile and starting it automatically is a matter of course.

You can configure the audio coach in the route recording settings. Details here >>

Track naming automation

Locus Map offers several options for naming a recorded track when you save it to your library. The default format is a timestamp, however you can further enrich this or replace it with something else. There is the activity type, start and finish location, country, name of the route you are navigating, start time, and distance traveled.

Everything is set using tags in the track recording profile settings. Here are the details >>

And now something for the experts

As if the primary settings in Locus Map weren't enough, there are other settings that are rather hidden from the general user. We refer to these as "Expert" and they can be used to set up almost anything you can imagine. Just to name a few:

• colors and styles of all possible auxiliary lines above the map and graph curves
• colors and fonts of titles or labels
• detailed settings for hardware drivers
• various tweaks and shortcuts

However, there are also settings that may not work properly on all phones, such as fullscreen, as well as a few options for developers, so it's best not to touch them at all. Either way, you can customize Locus Map in many, many ways.

And how do you activate the expert settings? You can find everything here >>

Locus Map LITE - iOS cherry on top

What does iOS have to do with the unknown features of Locus Map, you ask? The "unknown". This time, however, not for users, but for us developers - until recently, the iOS platform was an unknown and unexplored place for us.

We admit, throughout the history of Locus Map development, we couldn't imagine developing an app for another platform. However, as they say, "Never say never", and so, after less than two years of intensive work, we created our first iOS app - the Locus Map LITE.

Not to be misled - this is not the equivalent of the Android Locus Map. Locus Map LITE is so far just a Locus baby that can only do a fraction of what its "adult" Android brother is capable of. Anyway, we want to teach it as much as possible in the future to make it as much the same as the Android app.

And what can Locus Map LITE do now?

• display your location on an online LoMap or satellite map
• record your activity
• import your route in GPX format
• view your route and waypoint library and synchronize it with the web

You can learn all about it on its brand new page at www.locusmap.app/ios.

Enjoy your summer!

Článek Specialties From the Locus Map Menu se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

We all successfully survived Christmas and New Years Eve celebrations and threw ourselves again into work. And this is the result:  a new version of the best outdoor mobile navigation app - Locus Map 3.29. Actually, we'd like to present results of our work that took us much longer - over a year. And we think our effort was worth it. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet...

Locus Store 2.0!

Select your map quickly according to your location

One of the most common reasons we need a map is we want to know where to go in the area we are at the moment. Therefore, the first thing you see when you open Locus Store either from the Locus menu or from the map manager is map of your neighborhood:

Find the best map for your vacation

If you need a map of a place you want to visit on your vacation, you've got several options how to find it:

1) you can browse the Store in regions and in map providers

2) you can find your vacation place on an overview map and select appropriate map product

3) you can fultext search for your map

4) you can filter the map you need according to the activity on your vacation

Looking for some tips for trips?

Locus Store doesn't contain just maps. You can find also routes of interesting trips and journeys or points of interest there. You can try bike pilgrimage along the Via Francigena or a few nice trips in the Czech republic. Or display the whole database of UNESCO protected sites.

To be honest, so far, the Routes and Points categories are not overloaded yet but we're working on adding more content into them. If you know about some interesting route source you would like to see in Locus Store, let us know!

Need additional features or graphics?

Premium Live tracking for sharing your real time position with groups of your friends or family, custom app graphics like navigation and map cursors, map themes, packages of point icons... all these can be found in Locus Store too. Check categories Graphics and Features.

And remember, everywhere you have the same searching and browsing options as in the Maps section.

Cloud backup of your maps

When you download new maps from Locus Store, it's  time to back them up! From now on you can save them in your personal cloud storage at Dropbox or Google Drive. Similarly as you can do with your tracks, points and settings. We strongly recommend to do it especially with quality paid maps of our map partners, e.g. Swisstopo, Kompass or NeoTreks.

Enhancements for sportsmen

Record your indoor workouts!

More and more of you use Locus for your workouts and training. Especially now in winter a lot of runners visit indoor training centers and need to record their activity there. Therefore, we enabled to switch your Locus GPS into an "indoor mode":

Wanna hear your current elevation on your mountain trek?

Audio coach has become a very useful companion for your running workouts but also for hikes in the mountains. A lot of you, hiking and mountaineering Locusers, wish to be informed regularly about your actual elevation or altitude without need to look on your phone display. So current altitude has been added among the Audio coach parameters:

You see, Locus Map is again even better than before. Improving it according to your needs is our passion and pleasure. Enjoy it!

Článek Get amazing maps easily in brand new Locus Store! se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

Despite many ski resorts are still operating to their full capacity and in many mountains it is snowing, the spring is obviously behind the doors. The days are longer, the snowdrops are in full bloom in gardens and the sun is sending first shy warm rays. Wood and meadow paths in lowlands are slowly getting dry and inviting for first walks and bike rides. Last time we brought here a few useful tips for geocaching that is also awakening. In a nutshell, it's a high time to introduce a new version of your favorite app - and here you are, brand new Locus Map 3.22 is coming!

Attention please, an announcement!

This is how the new notification center works - you'll find its button in the upper left corner of the main screen:

The center button appears on the screen always when Locus wants to tell you something. E.g. when you download maps, routes or elevation data from Locus Store. Or when we post some news on our website, or when we remind you of downloading your map gifts, informing about polls, messages from devs etc. When you tap the button you unfold the list of announcements:

The button changes its appearance according to some actions in background. E.g. it works as a downloading indicator:

[caption id="attachment_10414" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Downloading is proceeding[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10416" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Download is paused[/caption]

Individual announcements can be swiped away from the list or the whole box can be emptied by tapping a button in its bottom. When nothing is to be announced, the notification center button is not displayed.

Look, I'm just on a trip!

This is how our new service "My LIVE location" works. You surely know our Locus Live tracking that works practically the same way but only among Locus apps. The advantage of this solution is that you can share your location in the real time with anybody in the World who has access to the internet. The new feature can be found in Menu > Share:

If you like you can show a message to those who will track you and then just tap the green START button.

In the next dialog you can copy to clipboard or share via all available services the URL displaying your real time location.

The URL can be opened in any internet browser. You location is displayed on a microsite map and is updated every 15 seconds. A menu on the left shows your actual speed and elevation.

The service is running in BETA mode so far and can be used for free for 30 minutes. If you like it you can subscribe to Live Tracking Premium service in the Locus Store and share your real time location with your friends without limits.

Would you like a personal coach?

Monitoring of sports performance during workouts became massively popular after coming of smartphones. Apps like Runtastic, Runkeeper, Endomondo and so on are installed in almost each phone of everybody who goes running, skating or bike riding. Sports trackers, as these apps are called, not only record stats of such activities but they also announce these numbers directly to the sportsman's earphones. Locus Map can record track stats from its very beginning but its ability of commenting the workouts has been modest until now in the "Training manager".

The feature is named Audio coach in the new Locus 3.22 and its settings can be found in the track recording settings:

Firstly it's necessary to create a new training and define its intervals (lap distance or time) and events to be monitored - track distance, speed, pace, heart rate etc.

The news is the interval monitoring - Locus announces performance in the last interval which length you define:

So what, it looks like another unnamed app can be uninstalled from your phone... ;)

Do you often reset Locus? Presets can help!

Locus Map is a very universal app working excellently not only when mountain hiking, bike riding, running or doing other outdoor sports but it can also navigate in car or help professionals collect geo data or locate targets for rescue squads. This versatility and heaps of features, however, has its drawbacks - using Locus for more activities means a lot of re-setting. Speaking of adjustments to your screen layout, changing type of navigation recalculation, switching vector map themes, increasing map resolution or repositioning map cursor.

With new Presets you can reset whole Locus with two taps.

Using Presets needs a bit of settings in the beginning - above all, we recommend putting Presets button in the function panel:

There are three default Presets:

1. basic settings as you know it after the first Locus start, 2. cycling - with hidden control panels and a dashboard

and 3. car - map rotation on, location cursor moved, target-priority auto recalculation on, road theme of maps and others.

The Preset is activated by tapping it.

If you want to add another Locus Preset, just save your current Locus settings by tapping the blue + in the bottom right part of the Preset box. Then just rename the new preset.

If you're an experienced Locus user you can get to re-setting of the default presets - check "Advanced mode" in the topbar.

Option to edit activates in each preset action menu,

tapping it gets you to the panel of settings switches.

By tapping the blue pen button in the right you get to the preset settings selection menu:

Presets run in BETA mode so far and they don't contain all settings options Locus normally offers. There are only the most used preferences that resulted from our recent user survey.

Elevation data without maps

You probably know that when you purchase one of our LoMaps you get also a package of elevation data of the map area with it. Elevation data are necessary for rendering terrain shading, for calculation of elevation profile of a planned route and for many other useful features. Until now using of elevation data has been subject to downloading of related LoMap. As it is possible to use maps of many other providers in Locus we decided to abort this rule and enable detached download of elevation data. Of course, necessity to purchase the relating LoMap for using the elevation data remains.

[caption id="attachment_10432" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Elevation data can be downloaded from the detail box of a LoMap.[/caption]

Many minor changes as the topping

The end of this blogpost is, again, traditional - this, our friends, is not all. There are numerous minor changes, improvements and fixes done, the whole list is available in menu > about application. Just by random choice there is new display of points on map by tapping their icons in the list, option of repeated notification in point guidance, option of direct sharing of the map cursor position with other map apps (Share > Other map apps), option to insert an existing point to a route, improved POI displaying in LoMaps and many more.

We wish you all a beautiful spring with Locus!

Článek Welcome the spring with new Locus Map 3.22 se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.