Your first ride

From a fresh install to moving turn-by-turn. There are two things NavForge needs before it can do anything useful — permission to see where you are, and a map region on the phone. Get those done at home on Wi-Fi and the rest takes about a minute.

The first time you open NavForge with no maps installed, this sheet comes up on its own. Tapping Download Maps takes you straight to the region list.

If you tap Maybe later it goes away, but a small banner stays on the map — No map downloaded · Tap to get started — until your first region is in.

The welcome sheet on a fresh install. drawn from code

Step by step

  1. Allow location access

    On first launch you get a short explanation — Location access required — before Android’s own permission dialog appears. Tap Allow, then allow it again when Android asks.

    If you tap Not now, or deny it at the system prompt, a banner sits across the top reading GPS unavailable — tap to enable in Settings. The Settings button on that banner opens NavForge’s entry in Android settings so you can turn it back on. Without location, there is no blue dot, no speed, no lean angle and no navigation.

  2. Download a map region

    With no region installed, the map area is empty and says No map downloaded and Open the menu to download a region. Use the welcome sheet’s green button, or the menu button at the top-left, then Download Maps.

    Only Oceania is open when the list loads. Find your state or country and tap the download arrow beside it.

  3. Wait for it to install

    The card shows a Downloading badge and a progress ring, and Android shows a Downloading map notification you can tap to see progress.

    A region is nine separate files, and every one of them has to finish before installing starts. When they’re all in, the badge changes to Installing… for a short while, then Installed with a green border. The map fills in behind you.

  4. Find somewhere to go

    Tap the search bar at the top of the map, type at least two letters and pick a result. The map flies to it and drops a pink pin.

  5. Set it as your destination

    On the panel that appears, tap Set as Destination. If you haven’t set a start point and your GPS has a fix, where you’re standing is used automatically.

  6. Preview, then go

    The route planner shows two buttons: Preview Route draws the line on the map so you can look it over, and Start Navigation begins turn-by-turn.

    You can go straight to Start Navigation if you’d rather not preview.

The very first route takes about a minute.

While it works, the button reads Calculating… and a line underneath says First route loads map data — takes ~1 min. That’s the routing data being read off the phone for the first time. Later routes are much quicker.

Before you leave the driveway

Download on Wi-Fi, and check you have the room.

New South Wales is a 975 MB download. Victoria is 807 MB, New Zealand 941 MB. NavForge has no Wi-Fi-only setting, so a download you start on mobile data runs on mobile data. It also doesn’t check your free space before it begins, and there’s no way to stop a download once it has started. Start it deliberately, on Wi-Fi, with room to spare.

Two other things worth doing at home rather than at a servo:

  • Take the phone outside for a minute so it gets a proper GPS fix. Indoors the dot can take a long time to settle.
  • Run one short route — a few streets away and back — so you’ve heard the voice and know where the buttons are before you’re wearing gloves.

What riding looks like

Once navigation starts, the map follows you and a strip along the bottom shows distance remaining and your arrival time. A pink Stop pill sits near the bottom of the screen — that’s how you end navigation.

After about ten seconds without a tap, the menu button, the search bar and the row of buttons down the right-hand side fade out so the map is as clear as possible. Tap the screen and they come straight back.

This is what you see before any region is installed. It isn’t an error — there’s nothing to draw yet.

The menu button referred to is the one at the top-left corner of the map.

The empty map state. drawn from code

When you get there

There is no arrival screen. You’ll hear the arrival line, and the navigation overlay disappears — that’s the whole ending. If the map suddenly looks like it did before you set off, you’ve arrived.

If the app is closed mid-ride.

NavForge can pick a route back up after being killed, but two things don’t survive: the road-name line under the turn, and the routing style you chose. Any reroute after that point uses plain motorcycle routing. If you notice the road name has gone, stop and start the route again when it’s safe.

If something isn’t working

  • No dot on the map. Location permission is the first thing to check — look for the GPS unavailable — tap to enable in Settings banner.
  • Map is blank. No region installed, or the one you need isn’t the one you downloaded. Open Download Maps and look for the green Installed badge.
  • Search finds nothing. With no signal, search only knows about regions you’ve downloaded, and it matches from the start of a name. Try the first word.
  • Speed shows a dash. Below about 3 km/h nothing is shown, and the display clears if there’s been no GPS fix for five seconds.
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