Finding and downloading a city

Before you can track walks, CityWalker needs the street layout for your city. This happens once. After that, the map is stored on your device and works without an internet connection.

Adding a city

CityWalker works out which city you are in from your phone's location, so adding a city is usually just one tap.

1

Open CityWalker. The Walk screen detects the city you are in from GPS and shows its name at the top.
2

If that city's streets have not been downloaded yet, you will see a Download city streets card. Tap it to start.
3

CityWalker downloads the street data. Download time depends on city size. Most cities finish in about a minute. You can leave the screen; it keeps downloading in the background.
4

Once it is ready, tap GO on the Walk screen to start your first walk.

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Adding a city manually: To download a city you are not currently in (before a trip, say), open Settings, find the Your Cities section, and tap + Add a new city. Type the city name and tap Add City.

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Note: The surest way to get the right city is to let CityWalker detect it from your location: open the app where you are and it picks the correct city automatically, even when several places share a name (the Victoria you are in, not Victoria, Australia). When you add a city by name, CityWalker also uses your current location to prefer nearby matches. If a specific neighbourhood isn't recognised, try a broader name such as Amsterdam, since the name needs to match a place in OpenStreetMap.

Mid-sized cities: download now or as you walk

Not every city is split into regions. Some mid-sized cities are small enough to handle in one piece, so instead of a region picker CityWalker offers a choice: download the whole city now, or load just the streets around you and fill in the rest automatically as you walk.

Loading as you walk keeps the initial download small and is handy if you are only exploring part of the city. Downloading the whole city up front is best if you want complete city-wide coverage tracking from the start.

The medium-sized city download choice in CityWalker

Large cities and regions

Some cities, particularly large metropolitan areas, are too big to download in one go. For these, CityWalker splits the city into regions (districts or boroughs) so download sizes stay manageable and you can focus on the part you actually walk in.

When you add a large city, a region picker appears showing the available regions. CityWalker uses your current location to recommend the region you are in, marked You are here, so it is easy to pick the right one. Tap a region to download it.

The region picker for a large city in CityWalker

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Note: You can add more regions later. Open the city from the Stats tab and tap + Download another region. Coverage from walks you have already recorded carries over automatically.

If a large city does not have downloadable regions yet, CityWalker loads the streets around you as you walk instead, the same as the mid-sized option above. If you think your city should have regions, let me know at [email protected] and I will look into adding them.

A too-large city loading streets near the centre in CityWalker

How loading works

Street data comes from OpenStreetMap through a CityWalker-hosted proxy that caches responses to keep things fast. A few things to know:

Downloads run in the background. You can leave the screen while a city loads, and CityWalker notifies you when it is ready.
Walks are matched retroactively. If you record a walk before a city has fully loaded, the walk is saved normally and its streets are credited to your coverage once loading completes.
You need an internet connection for the initial download, but once a city is loaded, map display and walk tracking work offline.
Download stalled? Open Settings → Your Cities and use the refresh button on the city, or remove the city and add it again. If the problem persists, it may be a temporary issue upstream with OpenStreetMap, so try again in a few minutes.

Importing walks from another app

If you have already been walking with Strava, Garmin, Komoot, or any other app, you can import those walks as GPX files. CityWalker credits the streets from your past walks towards your city progress.

Export a GPX file from your other app.
In CityWalker, go to Settings → Import GPX and tap Choose GPX Files.
Select up to 10 files at once. CityWalker reads them on your device and matches each route against city streets.
If a walk's city is not in your list yet, CityWalker adds it automatically. Download that city's streets and the imported walk's coverage is credited to it.

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Tip: Imports are processed in the background. Your coverage map updates as each file finishes; large batches may take a little while.