If you're the sort of person who plans their weekend runs with military precision - or likes geeking out over trail routes before lacing up - Strava's latest app update is sure to get your heart rate up.
The platform’s just rolled out four new features designed to make it easier to map out, track and share your adventures. These include slicker route filtering, a redesigned activity view, and a new batch of social sharing tools.
However, the juiciest upgrade of the lot is the debut of Strava’s new Map Rendering Engine (MRE) - powered by FATMAP, the 3D mapping platform it acquired back in 2022. This new tech brings life-like 3D terrain, satellite imagery and three fresh map layers into the app.
Expect to find the likes of Avalanche Gradient, Gradient, and Aspect - all designed around winter sports and mountain adventuring - making it ideal for skiers, hikers and off-grid trail runners who want more detailed insight into stuff like angles and sun exposure before heading out. You’ll find the new visuals in the Maps tab - and they also now show up when revisiting past activities.
If you’ve ever been buried under a pile of saved routes, the new search and filtering tools will be a welcome relief. They mean you can now browse by keyword, sport type, distance, elevation, creator - and even surface type - making it way easier to revisit or plan the right route for your next session.
Other new additions in the update include a redesigned Activity Details page that brings everything, from your route and stats to photos and videos, into one full-screen view. Segment icons are also now pinned straight onto the map, so you can instantly see where you hit a PB. Subscribers can even tap through to generate 3D flyovers of their sessions.
Finally, Strava Stickers have been given a proper glow-up. You can now swipe through custom templates to share activity highlights, with export options for Instagram Stories, WhatsApp and the like - or simply download them for whatever platform you prefer to brag about your run on.
Strava said in its release that this is just the start for its MRE updates, with more mapping upgrades on the way. But for now, this refresh makes an already solid platform even more personalised, which I'm here for.
It wasn't much more than a month ago that Strava announced a ton of feature updates to its Athlete Intelligence tool, including virtual run/ride data, power insights, and segment analysis on top of all the data provided before.
Strava's app is certainly becoming more powerful with each update, and while not every feature will be for everyone, recent updates suggest that the brand's not slowing down anytime soon.
