Walking map app that tracks the streets you've walked
There are two kinds of walking map app, and they solve different problems. One records each walk as its own route with pace and distance. The other keeps a single map that fills in permanently as you cover new streets.
The two kinds, plainly
Search for a walking map app and you get a pile of results that look interchangeable. They are not. Almost every one of them falls into one of two camps.
- Workout trackers. You press start, you walk, you press stop. The app saves that walk as a route with a distance, a duration, a pace, sometimes a heart rate graph and a calorie estimate. Tomorrow's walk is a separate entry in a list. Map My Walk, Strava, Runkeeper and the walking mode in your phone's built in health app all work this way.
- Cumulative exploration maps. There is no start button and no list of workouts. There is one map of the world, and it fills in as you go. A street you walked in March stays filled in forever. The thing you are building is coverage, not a personal best.
If you cannot decide which you want, ask yourself what you would look at a year from now. If the answer is a chart of your weekly mileage, you want a workout tracker. If the answer is the shape of your own city, coloured in by foot, you want a cumulative map.
Who each one suits
This is not a trick question with one right answer. Be honest about what you are actually training for.
| You want | Use |
|---|---|
| Split times, pace per kilometre, heart rate zones | A fitness tracker. Genuinely. A cumulative map will not give you this and should not pretend to. |
| Training plans, race prep, weekly mileage targets | A fitness tracker. |
| Sharing individual runs with a club or leaderboard | A fitness tracker. |
| One picture of every street you have ever walked | A cumulative map. |
| A reason to take the next street over instead of the same loop | A cumulative map. |
| Something that records without you remembering to press start | A cumulative map that runs in the background. |
Plenty of people run both. The fitness app for the workouts that count as training, the map for everything else, including the walk to the shop.
How FOG works
FOG is the second kind. The entire world map starts hidden under fog. Every street you physically walk is cleared, permanently. Walk it once and it stays clear. That is the whole mechanic, and you can read the longer explanation on what a fog of war map is.
Because there is no workout to open, there is nothing to forget. FOG keeps revealing with the app closed and the screen off, so the ten minutes you spent walking to the bus counts the same as the deliberate two hour loop. Over a few months this adds up to something a workout list cannot show you: the actual footprint of your life in a place.
Along the way it tracks what you have stood in. 241 countries, 3,390 regions and 7,342 named places are collectable, and only by physically being there. Ranks climb with the area you have covered, from Wanderer through Scout, Pathfinder, Explorer and Voyager. For any city you have walked, FOG shows what percentage of it you have lit up, which is usually a smaller and more humbling number than people expect. Browse the cities hub to see how this looks for a specific place.
It works for walking, running and riding, and it works anywhere on Earth.
Background location and battery, honestly
A map that only records while you are staring at your phone is not much of a map. For FOG to work the way it is meant to, it needs background location permission, the kind that keeps working with the app closed and the screen off. On both iOS and Android that is a separate, explicit permission you grant, and you can revoke it at any time.
That is a real trade. Continuous location costs battery. FOG is built to sample rather than to stream, so the cost is closer to a navigation app running in the background than to one held open on screen, but it is not free and nobody should tell you it is. If you already carry a battery pack on long days you will not notice much. If your phone is old and marginal by the afternoon, expect to notice something.
The upside of the trade is that you never have to remember anything. The app is either allowed to see where you walk or it is not, and there is no third state where you finish a good walk and realise you never pressed start.
Starting with the walks you already took
An empty map is a slow start. If you have location history sitting in a Google account or a folder of GPX files from an old watch, FOG can import it, and years of past walks appear on the map straight away. That turns day one from a blank world into a real picture with obvious gaps in it, which is a much better prompt to go outside. The steps are on the Google Timeline import page.
Import is part of the paid unlock. Everything else about it is ordinary: your export goes into the app on your phone and nowhere else.
Price and privacy
FOG is free to explore. One single purchase of USD $5.99 unlocks unlimited ranks, every character and history import. There is no subscription and there never will be.
There is no account and no sign up. No cloud, no analytics, no ads, no tracking. The map never leaves the phone, which is the only sensible arrangement for a file that describes everywhere you go. You can export your data whenever you want.
It is a phone app, on iOS and Android. There is no web or desktop version.
Questions people actually ask
Is there a walking app that tracks the streets you have walked?
Yes, that is what a cumulative walking map does. Instead of saving each walk as a separate route, it keeps one map that fills in permanently as you cover new streets. FOG works this way, with the whole world starting hidden under fog.
What is a good Map My Walk alternative?
It depends what you liked about it. If you want route recording with distance and pace for individual workouts, stay with a fitness tracker. If what you actually wanted was to see everywhere you have been on one map, a cumulative exploration map like FOG is the closer fit.
Do I have to start and stop a walk?
Not in FOG. There is no workout to begin or end. Once background location permission is granted it keeps revealing the map with the app closed and the screen off, so short unplanned walks count the same as planned ones.
Does it drain the battery?
Background location has a real battery cost and it would be dishonest to say otherwise. FOG samples your position rather than streaming it constantly, so the draw is modest, but on an older phone you will notice some difference over a long day.
Can I see how much of my city I have covered?
Yes. For any city you have walked, FOG shows the percentage of it you have lit up. It also tracks countries, regions and named places you have stood in, 241, 3,390 and 7,342 of them respectively, collected only by physically being there.
Does my location data go to a server?
No. There is no account, no cloud and no analytics. The map is stored on your phone and never leaves it, and you can export your own data at any time.
Start with a dark map.
FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.
free to explore · one purchase unlocks everything · never a subscription