Welcome the spring with new Locus Map 3.22

Michal, Locus team

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:

Notification center

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:

unfolded center

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

Downloading is on
Downloading is proceeding
downloading paused
Download is paused

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:

My LIVE location

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

My Live location start

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.

location tracking on a web site

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:

Audio coach in 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.

new training definition

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

wide choice of training parameters

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:

presets in functions panel

There are three default Presets:

default presets

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

cycling preset

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

car preset

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.

advanced mode of presets

Option to edit activates in each preset action menu,

editing of presets settings

tapping it gets you to the panel of settings switches.

panel of preset settings switches

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

preset settings selection

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.

option to download elevation data individually
Elevation data can be downloaded from the detail box of a LoMap.

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!

14 Comments

  1. Rolf
    7. 3. 2017

    Zdravím, no vypadá to super! Jen mám malý dotaz - nebylo by u Live trackingu možnost (třeba volitelně) zobrazovat i čáru pohybu, jak to známe při záznamu trasy v Locusu? Tohle vylepšení by hodně pomohlo!

    • Locus team
      7. 3. 2017

      Dobrý den, služba Moje poloha LIVE běží momentálně ve zkušební beta verzi. Pokud bude po vyznačení linie větší poptávka, budeme o ní uvažovat.

  2. Jakub
    7. 3. 2017

    Už sa neviem dočkať, keď budem mať voľno a vytiahnem bajk do lesa ☺️ ďakujeme Locus team za tradične skvelú prácu!

    • Locus team
      8. 3. 2017

      Děkujeme také za vstřícná slova. Ty jsou pro nás tou největší odměnou a motivací k další práci. Přejeme pěkné jaro!

  3. Holger
    8. 3. 2017

    Hello,

    the new notification Center Indicator - How can I delete the button of the map - permanently?

    thank you
    Holger

    • Locus team
      8. 3. 2017

      Hi Holger,
      the icon/button is deactivated when no news or announcements are topical - you can either swipe the news one by one or dismiss all at once by a button at the end of the notification list.

      • Chris
        24. 3. 2017

        It would be really nice if you added an option to disable this icon as I neither care for any news nor announcements, I just want to see as mich as possible of the map without having to delete any messages first. Sorry, but to me this button is just annoying...

        • Locus team
          24. 3. 2017

          Hi, we are sorry the notification center upsets you so much but it odes not serve just presenting app news but also as downloading status indicator - it informs about downloading maps, elevation data or other data from third party services. It can be emptied at once by tapping a button at the end of the news list.

  4. Jana
    14. 3. 2017

    Super, vyzkoušela jsem tu beta verzi sdílení Live Trackingu. Toto jsem potřebovala, protože se pohybuju často sama po osamocených koutech mimo civilizaci a takhle mě může "hlídat" i osoba, co nemá Locus, kdyby mě třeba na cestách kleplo, nebo bych zbloudila (což já dokážu i s deseti navigacema), tak kam mě mají přijít zachránit :-). Měla jsem na to jinou apku, ale byla velmi nespolehlivá a žrala hodně baterku telefonu, toto fungovalo výborně!

    • Locus team
      17. 3. 2017

      bezva, to rádi slyšíme!

      • Jana
        30. 3. 2017

        Prosím kde se dá nastavit, aby se mi automaticky nestrhávaly LC za další měsíc používání sdílení Live trackingu? Nemůžu to nikde najít, ani žádný návod k tomu... Díky. P.S. ty matematické hádanky v angličtině pro neangličtináře jsou teda náročné, jsem si musela najít tabulku anglických čísel, mezitím mi vypršel časový limit, uááá ! :-)

        • Locus team
          30. 3. 2017

          dobrý den, předplatné zrušíte tam, kde jste si je koupila, tj. v Locus Obchodě > Podle použití > Features > Extensions > Live tracking Premium

          • Jana
            30. 3. 2017

            Děkuju, nastaveno. Prvotně jsem to myslím kupovala z hlavního menu "sdílet-moje poloha live" a po vypršení 30-ti zkušebních minut mě to samo dovedlo k platbě. Já si službu zase ráda zaplatím, ale raději ručně sama před výpravou.

  5. Trista
    12. 9. 2022

    Ridiculous story there. What happened after? Good luck!

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