Strava’s personal heatmaps feature gets more customizable

Subscribers will soon have access to new data visualization features

Photo by: Strava

Lily Hansen-Gillis January 26, 2021

Starting this week, Strava’s ‘Personal Heatmaps‘ feature will have a new look and more functionality. By Jan. 27, all Strava subscribers will have access to the updated maps.

Cyclists will now have more control over what kind of activities are included in the heatmap. They can choose to include or remove previous activities like swimming and skiing (or any other of Strava’s 33 activities). Previously, only running and cycling activities showed up on the maps.

With the update Personal Heatmaps will pre-generate and update automatically. Before, athletes had to generate or refresh their Personal Heatmaps for a specified time period to see the map of their previous rides. Road and trails where the user has ridden show up as colours on the map. More frequented areas are darker while roads only ridden once are lighter.

New options

Strava has also added new toggle options for more control over information displayed on the Personal Heatmaps. Athletes can choose between all-time activities or view activities for just a specific year. When toggled on, the new ‘Activity clusters’ will let athletes scan the world at a glance and see where they have been active before zooming in. When ‘Activity clusters’ is toggled off, they will get the standard view of heat they are familiar with.

Visually, the heatmaps have also changed their look. Users can now choose between a number of map styles such as winter or satellite maps. They will also have the option to chose what ‘heat’ colour the activities will be displayed in. Strava’s personal heatmaps can be displayed in in orange, red, blue, blue-red, purple, and grey.

The feature is only accessible to Strava subscribers and falls in line with Strava’s commitment to build new and improve existing features for Strava subscribers.