The new version of Locus Map adds support for Android Auto, a feature the community has long requested! From now on, you can use your favorite navigation app on the dashboard of a car or motorcycle that supports Google's Android Auto. And there are other exciting features as well.

What you can look forward to:

• Android Auto
• Photos and videos taken during the track recording
• New chart display system
• A more intuitive selection of routing profiles 

Android Auto

With Android Auto, you can launch a mobile app from your phone onto the dashboard of a supported vehicle or third-party device—whether it’s a car or a motorcycle. In this case, the app features a customized interface designed for easier and safer use by the driver.

With the new version of Locus Map, if you have Premium Gold, you can see your favorite map on the car's screen as soon as you start the app. 

What can it do?

Maps of your choice

You can now display any map you have in Locus Map on your car's dashboard. Whether it's our LoMaps in online or offline versions, road maps, hiking maps, satellite maps, or maps from your favorite publisher. 

The map is automatically selected based on your phone's settings, though you can override this setting directly in Android Auto. You can center the map, zoom in and out, and enable or disable rotation.  For best results, we recommend choosing the offline version of LoMap. Not only will this ensure that you can see the map while driving, even if you lose signal, but these maps also support rotating place names on the map to match the direction of travel. 

The map refresh rate is now determined by the location update frequency. In practice, this means one map refresh per second during active navigation. We are working on ways to make the display smoother. 

In navigation mode, Locus Map automatically applies the "Auto" preset and reverts the settings to their original state when navigation ends. So, if you want to customize the automatic map zoom settings based on speed, locate the corresponding "Auto" preset in Locus Map on your mobile phone. 

By default, the app automatically switches between light and dark modes based on the lighting conditions provided by the vehicle. If this behavior is undesirable for your use, you can configure it differently. In dark mode, the map is currently rendered as an inversion of the light mode. In some cases, the result may not be ideal. However, we plan to release a dedicated LoMap dark theme in the future. 

You can also display your custom waypoints on the map, a feature that geocaching enthusiasts—for whom Locus Map was originally created—will particularly appreciate. You can view caches, open a window with their basic information, and start turn-by-turn navigation to them. Hunting for “drive-ins” will now be a breeze. Similarly, you can also display your planned routes on the map. 

Another available layer over the map consists of auxiliary graphic elements that technically minded users will appreciate—these include time and distance circles, azimuth and direction lines, and dynamic elevation data that appears near the cursor. 

And if you really want to go all out, you can overlay a map on top of the base map on the car’s display—for example, using cadastral data from our WMS/WMTS library. There are no limits to our imagination—you know how it is ;). 

Search

Searching for a destination is an integral part of the basic features. Locus Map performs full-text searches for both points of interest (gas stations, restaurants, accommodation, campgrounds…) and mailing addresses. When stationary, you can use the keyboard or voice control via the vehicle’s audio system to enter your search; while driving, for safety reasons, only voice control is available.  The search history is identical to the history in the mobile app, so if you search for your destination on your phone in advance, all you need to do in the car is click on search and select the location from the autocomplete suggestions. You can then immediately start turn-by-turn navigation to the searched locations.

Navigation

The app can navigate to a selected destination, but also along a route that you plan in advance using the route planner in the mobile app or on the website. 

There are several ways to select a destination. As we mentioned earlier, you can choose a custom waypoint, such as a geocache. You can search for a location or address. And you can also simply tap directly on the map to create a destination. Locus Map will fill in the address automatically.

Locus Map offers two route calculation modes – fast and economy. The fast route connects the start and destination so that you spend as little time as possible on the journey. The fuel-efficient mode ensures that you save as much fuel as possible, thereby also helping the environment. The app remembers your last selection and automatically confirms the route after 5 seconds the next time you start navigation. 

Simultaneous use on your phone and Android Auto

Locus Map has one more trick up its sleeve. You can control it simultaneously on both the vehicle’s display and your smartphone. What’s the point of this? For example, you can use your smartphone to dynamically change the navigation content or destination and control certain features that aren’t available via the vehicle’s screen, for example, track recording. 

Summary

Locus Map was never developed exclusively as a road navigation app. And we don’t plan on changing that. But if its features suit your needs in this regard, why look for another app for car or motorcycle trips? Besides, we know how annoying it is to switch to a different navigation app once you’ve already found your location in LoMap. 

We’re curious to see how many of you will now use Locus Map for things like commuting to work by car. :) If something doesn’t work as expected or if you find that certain features are missing, we’d love to hear your feedback!

Browse photos and videos from your trip

Everyone takes lots of photos and videos on their trips. Locus Map has long been able to display them over the map, but this time we’ve added the option to keep them all neatly organized right next to a specific track. They appear directly below the map with the track.

You can click on the photos to view them in detail:

Photo display is turned off by default. You can turn it on in Settings > Points and Routes > Show Media. When you launch the app, don’t forget to grant Locus Map access to your media. And rest assured—your photos and videos are processed exclusively within the app and never leave your mobile device. 

Detailed charts

The track graphs have been thoroughly updated. You can now set two curves on either the distance or time axis directly in the route details panel. You can choose from elevation, slope, speed, pace, heart rate, and other parameters. 

Tap a point on the graph to display the corresponding location on the track. This allows you to scroll through the track smoothly. 

You can click on a button next to the main graph to view more detailed information, which displays all available route parameters in separate graphs. The graphs are linked. You can zoom in and out as desired and view real-time values at a selected point along the track.

Simpler router settings

Selecting profiles for route planning in the route planner was a bit of a design challenge for us, but with the latest update, we firmly believe we’ve simplified and streamlined the process while retaining all customization options. And there’s something extra on top of that, but more on that later.

The entire route or just the next section?

This decision is now much simpler—just check or uncheck the "Entire Route" option at the bottom of the route profile selection. Then select the appropriate profile by tapping its name, and you can continue planning:

Custom settings

It's located right below the button next to the profile name: 

If you're in the middle of planning a route and want to change your settings, you can use them to recalculate both the next section and the entire route.

Full compatibility with BRouter profiles

Geek alert! For many of our die-hard fans, the profile customization options offered by the app aren’t enough. That’s why we’ve fully integrated Locus Map with the capabilities of the specialized route-planning software BRouter. This allows for truly detailed configuration of routing profiles. 

You can import external profiles into Locus Maps as BRF files (currently only via the system file manager, but we’re working on direct import as well). In the profile list, create a new profile, select the appropriate external file, and start tweaking the settings:

The possibilities are truly endless, so tech-savvy people can really let their creativity run wild.

Spring is in full swing, so head outside and try out all those new features! We can't wait to hear what you think of them in the comments.

Článek Locus Map 4.33 introduces support for Android Auto and a host of other new features se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

If you think nothing is going on around Locus, the opposite is true. We've almost tripled the capacity of our team in the last two years, and we now hardly pack into our small office during a complete team meeting. Fortunately, we mostly work in the home office, so we don't get in each other's way (and we don't share various now popular infections).

Work on our projects is currently continuing "double-track". On the one hand, development and maintenance of the classic Locus Map Free and Locus Map Pro branch continues. On the other hand, and here lies the focus of our efforts over the last two years, we are working feverishly on the development of a new generation - Locus Map 4 . Which is no longer "just" an application, but also an extensive environment of accompanying services.

What's new in version 3.49

So let's start with the classics . After all, when the new generation of the app is launched, we'll name this series this way. So what's new?

Route Planner

We've simplified the setup of the route generation service BRouter . We've removed the option to select navigation profiles defined directly by this service. On the one hand, this will make the profile selection much clearer, and on the other hand, we are forced to do so by the restrictions of the new Android 11 - Locus Map will no longer be able to access other app directories , including BRouter. However, geeks don't despair, you will simply place your custom profiles in a folder directly in the Locus directory structure and select them in the router configuration - they will be separated by an extra header.

Presets

For those of you who have no idea about this, these are batch changes to your entire app settings . If you want to make the most of Locus, you can't do without them. The versatility of Locus lies in the huge number of functions and settings of the application. However, if you use Locus for various different activities, you always need to reset it. Presets make this process incredibly easy - you can then reset the whole app with two clicks - 1. open the presets, 2. click on the preset. You can change the settings of the function panels, the map theme, the recording profile, the map rotation, and a lot of other parameters at once.

Initially, presets worked in two modes - basic and advanced . However, we've found that basic mode is unnecessary, so now presets work directly in advanced mode . In it, you can choose which specific settings you want to have in the preset.

In addition to these two major changes, of course, the version contains a number of minor adjustments and fixes, as you're accustomed to.

What's up with Locus Map 4?

A lot is happening. A lot is almost done and ready for demanding testing, but still, there's a lot of hard work ahead.

The App

• We're fine-tuning the new ergonomic UI , which includes the expected dark mode. It will also be possible to turn the controls the other way around so both right-handers and left-handers can use it comfortably.
• The route planner has got a lot of new features - graphical representation of surfaces and route types, built-in offline router, the ability to generate a round trip and several alternative routes at once

Cloud Sync

The synchronization of data from the application with our own cloud storage is also in the phase of internal testing. No more worries about losing data when resetting your phone, switching to a new phone, or using Locus on multiple devices at once will be a breeze.

Online LoMaps and LoPoints

We also converted the original purely offline content online so that we could have it available for the new web route planner, and also to solve one of our big pains - points of interest search. After disconnecting from Google, we significantly missed it...

Web Route Planner

We have brought the planner in the application almost to perfection. Now it's its web clone's turn - after all, in the warmth of home with a large monitor, the route is planned more comfortably. Here, however, we still have a lot of work to do - we don't want to offer you any semi-finished product, but a well-tuned piece of software.

There is a lot behind us, but also a lot ahead of us. So we don't want to promise anything, but we firmly hope that we will enjoy next season with the new Locus Map 4.

Then keep your fingers crossed for us!

Článek Locus Map 3.49 released, fourth generation still in development se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

Route planner, one of the main features of the mobile outdoor navigation Locus Map, has become an indispensable tool of many enthusiasts for hiking tours, treks, road or mountain bike rides. Its main characteristics is simplicity of controlling in complexity of background data and route planning options. Together with the wide map selection Locus Map offers, running on a portable device like tablet or mobile phone, planning routes is quite a different experience. Let's have a look at its most useful features:

Routing on-road, drawing off-road

When you plan a trip running along roads or paths, use automatic route drawing powered by cooperating routing services - BRouter or GraphHopper.

Each service has its pros and cons. BRouter works offline and offers a lot of routing profiles:

On the other hand, it needs storage for offline routing data and the route calculation is quite slow and power consuming.

GraphHopper is very fast because calculating a route runs on a remote server and doesn't engage your mobile processor. And you usually plan routes at home with wifi internet connection, right? But alas, it offers just a few basic routing profiles:

When you plan a backcountry trip where there are either no roads or paths or required map/routing data aren't available, use the manual mode:

Check route elevation and estimated on-route time

During planning, all necessary info is at hand. Just slide the chart up:

The chart changes according to your editing:

Detailed statistics show also the gradient chart for even finer route tuning:

Avoid obstacles

Forrest works ahead and it's dangerous to pass? Put it in map and let Locus find a detour!

Plan a geocaching trip

Nice warm weather expected next Saturday and you are a keen geocacher. Let's go for a trip somewhere you don't know and hunt a dozen local geocaches. Put them in Locus route planner, it'll find a way connecting them all!

Want to go on bikes instead? Recalculate the route!

You've changed your mind. The weather's gonna be awesome, wow, you will manage to hunt even more geocaches! You've just planned a walking route... doesn't matter, just push Recalculate all button and select bike as the activity.

Cool tip at the end - gradient-colored route

Would you like to know clearly where is your route steep or flat? It's quite useful, especially when you ride a bike. And what's more, you can plan the route according to it and avoid too steep up-hills... Just set up gradient coloring of your route planning line:

Locus Map route planner is very intuitive but if you need to know everything about its features, check Locus Manual.

Happy route planning!

Článek Locus Map – plan your routes like a pro se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

by Josef Žajdlík

This year's bike pilgrimage organized by Orel Uherský Brod lead to Fátima in Portugal, starting in Vega de Valcarce with a break in Santiago de Compostela. 120 pilgrims in total, aged from 12 to 80 traveled 750 km and gained over 10 000 m of elevation. In this article, I'm summing up my experience with creating pilgrimage routes for a diversified group of cyclists and traveling in foreign environment with Locus application.

Route preparation

After last year's experience with planning the route to Krakow I resolved to use the routing service Brouter again. Of course it's possible to prepare routes in Locus too but the large PC screen makes the planning much more comfortable. What's more, BRouter web enables direct editing of the routing profile and the calculating algorithm can be fine tuned almost to perfection. Finally, anyone who has already planned a route for a group of a hundred people including kids and seniors riding all possible kinds of bikes can imagine how difficult it is to find routes avoiding traffic as much as possible along with compacted surface at the same time.

The result of BRouter planning usually needs some more adjusting. Not only because you need turns to some interesting places but also in order to make the route straighter when the router tries to avoid traffic too eagerly.  The best tool I used to tackle this was MyGpsFiles. It can edit ready made GPX files easily and, furthermore, display it in Google Earth 3D, which is very convenient for route planning in a completely unknown areas. Last web tool I used for planning is Ride With Gps. It can render the route on a map in the most printer-friendly way. The print has decent contrast and mileage is added to  the route which is very practical.

Locus Map settings

Finalized GPX files were imported to an individual route folder in Locus. Next step was to pinpoint landmarks along the route as points of interest. I'm not going to describe overall Locus setting but I can recommend one thing - set autozoom levels in a smaller range, e.g. 15-17. When you need an overview map on the road, just tap the zoom lock button and enjoy any zoom you like.

I don't use navigation along the route, I just display the route on map and from time to time check we are still on it. Navigation consumes too much energy and as we made deviations from the original route all the time, there was no need of it. Traveling abroad I always use Locus vector maps - LoMaps. They are clear to read and contain a great POI database which I searched very often for nearest restaurants of swimming pools. There's a very comfy feature "Nearest points" for this occasion. It's much better to have such an offline database than rely on online information along the route - it saves battery and the internet connection is not always available.

It may seem strange for somebody but I had better experience with landscape screen orientation. I switched the map to the highest contrast in an external theme called paws_cyclist that can be downloaded here >>. This can be quite an individual approach and everybody can choose display and theme settings best suitable for their style of riding. I have automatic function panel hiding on because the buttons just decrease the map space during the ride and they can be easily turned on by double tapping the screen. I also use a simple dashboard with basic parameters like distance, time of ride, clock, battery status, elevation, steepness % and track recording pause button. It's very handy e.g. for quick coffee breaks. If you don't pause the recording Locus and GPS keeps looking for the signal and wastes the precious energy (and also records nonsens trackpoints if you haven't "movement only" turned on). During the ride a very useful tool is to tap the route on screen and read the remaining distance to the finish in the popup box.

After my experience from the previous events I decided to use Locus on a different device than I use for calling/texting etc. It's quite impractical to remove the phone from the holder every time I make a call and also the device quite suffers from being at mercy of the weather. That's why this time I launched an older spare phone, uninstalled everything from it, left only Locus + BRouter. Turning it to the "aircraft" mode with wifi off the phone was holding charge for an incredible time - it was no problem to ride over 100 km without need to plug it in a powerbank. Despite this I recommend to take it with you for the case the battery runs out just in time you need to find accommodation at night.

My experiences from previous cycling events also inspired me to build a special mobile holder on a handlebar bag. A phone packed in a common closed holder often suffers overheating on sunny days, restarts itself or stops working at all. It's also handy to place the paper map next to the mobile so you don't have to switch the screen on so often. The handlebar bag has more advantages - you can place all valuables in it - camera, money, passport etc. When you have a break, just unhook the bag and go for the coffee - nothing precious stays on your bike.

Bike pigrimage

This year's pilgrimage of our team was aimed at Fátima in Portugal, honoring the 100th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's revelation to a few kid shepherds in this now well known place. The starting point was in a Spanish village Vega de Valcarce, placed on another pilgrim route leading to Santiago de Compostela.

An ordinary day on such a biking pilgrimage looks approximately like this: getting up at 6-7 a.m., morning routine, Holy Mass served in a nearby church or right in the place of the overnight stay (usually a gym or a similar big hall). A breakfast after the mass, prepared early in the morning by our magician cook and her assistant. Eating usually standing up in front of the hall, then getting on bikes and leaving in groups of 3-10 cyclists. The route is not planned rigidly, it's just recommended so that the groups adjust the route as they need - visiting places of interest, landmarks, cafés and restaurants along the route is individual. Food is also individual - some have supplies from home, some eat in bistros or fastfood along the way. The only condition is to get safe and sound to the place of another overnight stay where there is the dinner ready, again prepared by our great cook (imagine you prepare meal for 120 people on a single cooker). After the dinner we share our daily experiences and shortly after that we go to sleep to gain strength for another day on a bike.

This year we slept in Vega de Valcarce, Portomarino, Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra, Ponte de Lima, Porto, Aveira, Coimbra and Fátima. We had loads of new experiences: bike crashes, wild fires in Portugal and also incredibly beautiful views of the landscape, lots of very nice and hospitable people, and of course the spiritual atmosphere in Santiago and Fátima. See attached photos.

Greetings to all of you from a bike pilgrim

Josef Žajdlík

Článek Fátima pilgrimage with Locus se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

You know we didn't hang around in summer - your mobiles and tablets were given several new Locus versions since last "big" update. However, they weren't versions in the main 3.X line but in the subsidiary 3.18.X line and those we call just "additionals" or "revisions". In order to issue the new 3.19 we waited for something really special. And as it is a tradition in Locus team, again there is quite a lot of it.

USA: maps, maps, maps!

We must boast a bit... we are happy to announce we have partnered with the provider of NeoTreks maps(ex-AccuTerra) that belong to the best you can get for your outdoor adventures in the area of the United States. You can find them now in our Locus Store - NeoTreks Land Cover maps and NeoTreks Land Use maps. While the first one depicts in detail the character of the terrain  and vegetation coverage of the land and provides a clear and easy-to-read background for your further mapping, Land Use displays a layer of land property owners and managers. That might come in handy in many situations. Both maps, of course, contain detailed network of trails for all possible outdoor activities, counting more than a quarter million miles. American National parks with their amazing nature and landscape await you and look forward to being thoroughly explored now with Locus. And don't worry about the internet connection -  NeoTreks Maps can be used offline only.

[caption id="attachment_9854" align="aligncenter" width="800"] NeoTreks Land Cover[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_9853" align="aligncenter" width="800"] NeoTreks Land Use[/caption]

After saying goodbye to MapQuest we had to solve quickly the demand for a quality satellite map for U.S. users. We found it in the aerial map of  USGS agency. The map is available online in zooms up to 18, it can be cached and also downloaded for offline use within the limit of 10000 tiles a day. You can find it in the online tab of your Locus map manager.

[caption id="attachment_9857" align="aligncenter" width="350"] The Golden Gate bridge in USGS Satellite map[/caption]

Brotherhood with BRouter

We've written about BRouter routing service a few times here - it's officially the only one offline router working with Locus (not mentioning geek-friendly GraphHopper) and your offline navigation and fast route drawing can't live without it. Its interconnection with Locus has proceeded to another level - we succeeded to implement much more BRouter profile setting options to Locus. And right the amount of options of navigation profile settings is BRouter's most appreciated property and that's why many users had the route calculated on the BRouter website and then imported it to Locus which is quite complicated. There's no need for this any longer - Locus offers a whole range of navigation profiles that can be selected when navigating  by BRouter:

Another improvement of navigation

Many of you wished Locus navigation displayed not just one but two navigation commands at once - two voice commands weren't enough. Therefore, we inserted another small box with navigation command, its distance and junction shape under the main "arrow" box. The navigation is smoother now and you know about the direction changes in proper advance.

Improvement in track recording

As you probably all know, Locus records tracks within pre-defined recording profiles. Each profile has different parameter values depending on the activity it represents - recording of MTB track is different than of walk, hike or morning run. Quite often there was a mess in the records when users forgot to switch profiles and the track wasn't recorded as they wanted or it was stored in a different folder or a wrong training scheme started with the recording. That's why we simplified the approach to switching profiles.

If you use the sliding record panel, now a selection menu appears before recording start, offering selection of profiles and other options - now you 'll never mess up your records:

Many of you start the track recording by the widget. From now on you can see your actual active profile on it. If you need to change the profile, tap the icon and you'll get into the settings part.

Users of the compact bottom control panel got better view of their profile too - just tap the tool button and they see the icon of the profile on the place of settings button. Tapping it, again, gets you into the profile settings.

Items Tab is dead, long live the Map items screen!

Management of the Items, i.e. autonomous files KML and KMZ that can be visualized above a map in Locus and also in Google Earth, has always been a hassle. And not only for our users but also for ourselves. As a result we abandoned the original solution in the data manager tab and implemented a brand new Map items screen that manages items much more intuitively.

[caption id="attachment_9867" align="aligncenter" width="350"] New Map items screen can be found in menu > Functions[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_9871" align="aligncenter" width="350"] The Map items button can be inserted also to the function panel on the main screen[/caption]

Files are sorted into folders, they can be easily visualized or hidden or added from your phone memory, from SD card, from Dropbox... In the previous version we introduced Active items in the left action panel that cooperates with the new screen:

[caption id="attachment_9869" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Files in folders sorted by their origin and meaning[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_9870" align="aligncenter" width="350"] You are well aware of your items and their details. "Home" button puts you quickly on the main screen, "plus" adds new items[/caption]

And, of course, that's not all yet...

We can't end the new Locus version blogpost otherwise. Again, we fixed a lot, revised a lot, improved a lot... Locus Map is a very complex software and the Android environment provides much space for its development but also it brings a lot of threats in the means of thousands of makes and sorts of devices and also versions of the OS itself, on which Locus must run flawlessly. And that means really loads and loads of work for us.

By the way, we added an option to measure distance really fast on the screen with two fingers (settings > Maps > Map objects > Quick measurement):

[caption id="attachment_9855" align="aligncenter" width="800"] The Golden Gate is cca 1.2 miles long[/caption]

What else? It is possible to edit style of multiple tracks, to display absolute time of sunset and sunrise in the topbar, guidance displays also ETA and time to target etc. etc. The complete list of changes is available as always in menu > About application.

Enjoy the new Locus, the autumn is here in full scope!

Článek NEW maps, NEW improvements, NEW Locus Map 3.19 se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

Locus Map offers a wide range of settings for navigation or guidance in terrain or along roads. Ordinary navigation, for example in a car or on a bike, is absolutely without problems, just listen to navigation commands and check the display ocassionally. However, if you need only the voice commands for the navigation it's necessary to make some adjustments. These are useful for activities when your hands are occupated or you don't have the phone just in front of your eyes - nordic skiing, nordic walking, running... That's why I tried to find the most convenient solution how to set it up.

First thing, you have to check your TTS (text-to-speech) settings (Menu > Settings > Language and Units > TTS settings). There's no problem with major languages like English, German or French. Some minor languages must seek help from extra apps like e.g. Vocalizer TTS.

Second thing that you'll need is routing service for calculating routes. If you don't want to be online all the time, try GraphHopper or even better BRouter. Personally I prefer BRouter. Not only it works with better updated data but also it offers more route calculating profiles. It often offers "wet" and "dry" variant that might come very handy when running or hiking.

Thirdly, you have to make clear what you expect from the journey and decide according to it if to choose navigation or guidance along a route. Voice commands at direction changes work in both cases but guidance doesn't recalculate the route. Instead, Locus notifies of the distance and direction of the nearest routepoint. That might seem to be a disadvantage but in free terrain it can be actually pretty useful. "Outdoors" we may easily get to places where the navigation doesn't know any roads and then it won't recalculate the route. Locus, however, offers option to enable automatic switch from navigation to guidance.

If you travel through a city to a particular target use turn-by-turn navigation with route recalculation. Tap Navigate to, define your target, check Compute instructions. In this case Locus automatically recalculates your route if you leave your original one.

Locus settings

Menu/Settings/Display

• I recommend switching all automatic display switch-ons off so that the phone screen won't turn on uselessly in your pocket.
• Then check Disable screen lock checkbox. You might need to check the screen and you don't have to put your gloves off to unlock your phone, just switch it on with the HW button. All the same, I recommend to tap Hold map center button in lower left corner.

Navigation

should be set up as follows:

• Source: BRouter (or GraphHoppher)
• Auto-recalculation: route priority or point priority depending on what you think matters - the route you're walking along or the target you want to get to.
• Distance for recalculation: 200 m
• Out of route notification: ON. After unfolding the menu set the distance to 100 m and TTS for the sound.
• Advanced settings: Strict route following OFF.  Maximum allowed deviation: 2 km (if you want navigation to switch automatically into guidance, set some lower value depending on the terrain character). Snap to route OFF. Number of commands Medium and Two commands at once ON.

Guidance settings

• Notification ON, notification type TTS.
• Set next trackpoint: 60 m
• Set notification of the next direction change: ON and TTS.
• Out of route notification: ON. Alert distance 70 m and Repeat notification every 30 seconds. Sound settings again Text-to-speech.
• Advanced settings: I recommend to switch Strict route following OFF and switch Notify on every trackpoint ON.

GPS settings

Here I recommend to switch on two notifications: Position acquired and Position lost. Set different sound to each of them to recognize easily the GPS status. Then, uncheck Track recording which is useful when you use Locus for recording your tracks and make a break for a snack in a pub. Just pause the recording and GPS goes off automatically. If you leave the feature on Locus will beep when you lose your GPS signal.

I'm sure all these settings aren't ideal for all activities. Also, the app can't create navigation settings profiles yet which can be worked around by making several settings backups and naming them "bike", "hike" etc. After launching Locus just restore one of the backups and Locus is set up as you need. It's not perfect solution but it works. And I believe one time Locus will provide navigation settings profiles.

And that's sort of all I wanted to tell you about the voice-only navigation in Locus. Thank you all who made it all through the article and wish you a lot of nice kilometers hiked with Locus in your earphones.

Josef Žajdlík

photo author and Emma Bishop

Článek Tip for the weekend: voice-only navigation se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

Quite a few new users often ask us how come that Locus Map can't navigate offline? That's obviously important for outdoor activities. Just make a few steps behind the last barn of your city and you're out of GSM signal. Especially in the mountains. The answer is, however, that Locus Map CAN navigate without internet. It just needs a little help.

Big BRouter

Locus Map in default settings offers navigation with help of YOURS online navigation service. Other online services like OSRM and MapQuest are also implemented. If you want offline navigation, you have to install cooperating routing app BRouter, available at Google Play Store >>. Locus Map identifies it in the system and adds it automatically into the routing services portfolio.

A couple of steps to make...

...so that BRouter works properly in Locus:

• firstly, launch BRouter itself
• select Download manager
• zoom in and select the area you need for offline routing
• set BRouter as default navigation data source in Locus menu > settings > navigation > navigation data source

And that's all in a nutshell. When you need routing service during route planning or navigation from point to point, Locus will navigate you without internet connection.

Some geek stuff

Although BRouter user interface doesn't look much like it, the app offers quite a lot of various settings, creating custom navigation profiles etc. A rich source of info and tips is this wiki-blog >>. BRouter provides also a web app, enabling route planning on a big PC screen and consequent export to GPS file and then to Locus Map.

What if I don't want BRouter

An alternative to BRouter is routing software GraphHopper.  We're working on a GH add-on and despite it's still in development, considering its communication with Locus, it performs very well on the other hand. You won't find it at Google Play yet - all necessary links and relevant information gather in this forum thread >>. May be in near future we'll see much more...

Článek Locus Map CAN navigate offline se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.