Planning A to B

Pick where you’re starting, pick where you’re going, look at what the app came back with, then set off. The planner always shows you the route before it takes you anywhere.

The planning sheet, with a start and a destination set. The green dot is your start, the pink flag is your destination.

Preview Route wakes up as soon as you have both ends. Start Navigation stays asleep until a route has actually been worked out.

The planning sheet. drawn from code

Opening the planner

There isn’t one button marked “plan a route” — the sheet opens itself the moment you tell the app about a place. Any of these will do it:

  • Search for somewhere and choose Set as Destination or Set as Start.
  • Press and hold anywhere on the map and pick the same options from the panel that appears.
  • Open My Markers and send one of your saved spots to the planner.

If the sheet opens with nothing in it, you’ll see two rows — Set start location… and Search for destination… — and tapping either opens the same search you use from the map.

Setting the two ends

  1. Set your destination

    Search for it, or press and hold the spot on the map and choose Set as Destination.

  2. Let the app fill in your start

    If the planner is empty and your GPS has a fix, setting a destination quietly uses your current position as the start. You’ll see it appear as the first row.

  3. Or set the start yourself

    Use Set as Start to plan a ride that begins somewhere else — the pub you’re meeting at on Sunday, for instance. Setting a start replaces whatever was in that row before.

  4. Tap Preview Route

    It stays dim until both ends are set. With only a destination in the list, a line underneath reads Set a start location to preview.

The first route of the session is slow.

While it works, the button reads Calculating… and a line appears underneath: First route loads map data — takes ~1 min. That’s the app loading the routing data off your phone’s storage. Later routes are quick.

Reading the result

Once a route exists, the sheet swaps to a compact card so you can see the map behind it. The card shows the distance and the riding time, and gives you:

  • Start Navigation — begin turn-by-turn.
  • Edit route — go back to the full planning view with your stops and settings intact.
  • Add stop on map — drop another stop by tapping the map.
  • Export GPX and Save to Calendar.
Export and Save only exist after a preview.

You won’t find Export GPX or Save to Calendar in the main planning view. They appear on the result card, because there’s nothing to export or save until a route has been worked out. A padlock on either one means it isn’t available on your plan.

When the destination isn’t on a road

If your destination sits well back from the nearest sealed road, the card splits the numbers in two: an approximate figure for the sealed run, labelled sealed road to with the road’s name, and a second one labelled fire trail to destination in amber. The total is shown underneath. Both are marked with a ~ because they’re worked out as two separate routes rather than measured off one.

Starting the ride

Tap Start Navigation and the sheet closes, the map moves to you, and guidance begins.

You can also drag the sheet down instead of starting straight away. The route stays drawn on the map and a bar appears near the bottom reading Route ready — tap to edit, with a green Go at the end and an × to throw it away. That’s there so you can pinch around the route first and start when you’re ready.

Two things the app will stop and tell you.

Already there. If you’re within about 50 metres of the destination, tapping Start Navigation shows You’re already at the destination. and does nothing else. Navigation that ends the moment it starts is worse than none.

Destination adjusted. Starting from the Go bar when the nearest road access is more than 200 metres from the point you picked brings up a Destination adjusted dialog telling you the distance, and warning that the last stretch may be off-road or on foot. Continue rides it anyway; Cancel backs out.

When a route can’t be found

Three messages cover most of it, and each one points at a different problem:

  • Waypoint is not near a road — move it to a road and try again. One of your stops landed in a paddock, a lake, or a national park with no mapped access.
  • No route found between these stops. Try a different location. There’s genuinely no road connection the router can use — often an island, or a stop just outside the map region you’ve downloaded.
  • Route unavailable. Check your stops and try again. The catch-all. Worth one more go before you start moving stops.

Clearing up

The × in the top-right of the sheet cancels everything — the route, the line on the map, the lot — and the map snaps back to where you are. Dragging the sheet down does not: that leaves the route alive under the Go bar, which is usually what you want.

← Searching for a destination Adding stops along the way →