The snowdrops are slowly blooming out, out are crocuses, daffodils, and tulips. And also bear garlic! Even the trees and shrubs are discretely sprouting fresh green. You also have more time for yourself, and your loved ones these days. So use it to discover places where you haven't been together before. Locus Map will help you.

Find your destination

So where to go? You want to avoid notorious locations - castles, lookout towers, pubs ... that's all passé. But there are so many beautiful places in your immediate vicinity that few people know about. Geocaching helps you find them! It is common knowledge that geocachers hide their treasures in places that are always somehow interesting. And they often don't lie on busy roads and paths. These may be interesting viewpoints, naturally, historically or otherwise important sites, whose fame has long passed, but thanks to geocaching they have not been completely forgotten. And you can cope with it with basic free membership - it's not about the game, it's more about the inspiration .

So, if you don't already play geocaching, download Geocaching4Locus to discover undiscovered!

How to get there?

Here again Locus Map offers its services. To get to your destination, have a look in LoMaps, you can start guidance to it or turn by turn navigation - Locus Map will find the right route based on how you travel. Are you walking? Locus will use a network of marked and unmarked paths and trails. Or by bike? Locus offers navigable paths and cycle routes. The choice is yours, you can let the app design the route completely or you can plan it in detail in the Route Planner - we strongly recommend it if you want to visit multiple destinations on your trip.

Record your trip

Do you want to know where you went on the trip, what distance and elevation gain you walked? And do you want to show it to your pals on the internet? Just record it. Start track recording as soon as you go, Locus Map will follow your every step. You can track current distance and other track statistics either directly in the track recording panel or on the dashboard - Locus Map works like a cycling computer with it, even without having to sit on a bike :)

Let others know where you're roaming

Share your current location with other family members or friends so they don't worry about you. Locus Map can do this in several ways. If you're really alone, just use My LIVE Location - Locus Map will show your location on a simple map web page. Send the link to it to who you want. If there are more of you and you set out on a trip separately in terms of the necessary social distancing, use Live tracking - use it to track the location of all members of your scattered group.

Plan a bike route to your work

Temperatures are becoming more and more tolerable, so you can go to work on a bike in the morning. If you've never taken a bike to work before, it's high time to start :). You are in the fresh air, a bit of physical effort gets your blood circulating before you enter your office, and last but not least, you avoid the crowds in the public transport. Locus Map and its Route planner will tell you where to go best. When you draw a route, choose a bike profile, and the route will be drawn along bike trails and streets with less traffic. Be sure to watch also the climb on the elevation profile shown.

Enjoy spring in health!

Photos of Tamara Garcevic and Jorik Kleen, Unsplash

Článek Spring is waking up, enjoy it with Locus Map se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

Last time we talked about maps helpful for your winter activities with Locus - LoMaps displaying cross country skiing trails and downhill skiing or ski mountaneering slopes or, areas suitable for snowshoeing and snow biking. We also presented Outdooractive maps containing layer of slope gradients indicating potentially risky areas with avalanche danger. Locus Map, however, can highlight such areas on any map as you will find below.

Slope angle matters

Avalanche terrain is terrain that is steep enough for the snow to slide. Basically, an avalanche releases when the pull of gravity overcomes the frictional forces holding the snow in place. The steeper the slope the more gravity is trying to pull it down hill, and in terms of avalanches, any slope steeper than 25 degrees is considered “steep.” Dry snow avalanches are most common on slopes of 30–45 degrees.

[caption id="attachment_11077" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Photo by Robson Hatsukami Morgan on Unsplash[/caption]

Locus Map can help you plan your ski mountaineering or backcountry skiing trips avoiding such areas . Slope gradient coloring identifies them and indicates the slope angle in three-color scheme. Yellow for <30°, orange for 35° and red for 40°and more. Check the slope coloring at various kinds of maps:

[caption id="attachment_11071" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Swisstopo map[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_11072" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Kompass map[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_11070" align="aligncenter" width="350"] SHOCart map[/caption]

This coloring is rendered from elevation data (available for Locus Map Pro only) and can be set up in Locus settings > Maps > Advanced > Map shading.

Safety first - "My live location " keeps your friends informed where you are

Cross or back country skiing is often an individual sport. Many of us set out to mountains to clear our office-blocked heads being alone.

[caption id="attachment_11078" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Photo by Johannes Andersson on Unsplash[/caption]

Anyway, the weather and snow conditions can turn your brain cleansing trip to a nightmare. In such cases it's often useful to be visible to the outer world. Locus can help your friends or family be informed about your actual location with My live location feature. Share your real-time position with it and your pals will see where you are.

This is how you see yourself in Locus:

This is how others see you on their PC screens:

Turn it on from the Share menu:

Then send a unique URL address displaying your position on map in any web browser to whoever is interested.

Keep your fingers warm

Don't pull your gloves off more than necessary because of controlling your phone - your fingers can lose warmness very quickly in freezing temperatures. Here are a few tips how to keep Locus gloves-friendly:

• keep your position in the map screen center (long tap centering button in the bottom left and check "Hold map center")
• deactivate screen locks so that you can turn the screen on without need to swipe (settings > display > disable screen lock)
• use volume buttons to zoom the map in or out (settings > maps > map control > use hardware buttons)

Enjoy your winter activities even more! Next time we'll show you how to set hands-free and screen-free voice navigation for easy orientation on your cross country skiing trip. Follow our blog or Facebook.

Článek How to avoid risky snow slopes and other safety and comfort tips 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.