Help
Answers to the two things people ask about most. For anything else, write to us.
How Routes are drawn
You give wayloop one number, your Goal: steps, distance, time or kcal. wayloop turns it into a length. Then it draws a Route that long on the streets and paths around your start.
- How long. wayloop turns steps into a distance with your Stride (Settings, Body and stride). It turns a time Goal into a distance at the pace of a walk or a run. Every metre of Climb adds time, so on hilly ground a time or kcal Goal gives a shorter Route.
- Back to your start. wayloop tries routes in several directions that end where they start. It keeps the one that comes closest to your Goal, usually within a few percent. If the streets around you leave no room for a route that long, the app says how long the closest one is.
- An end point. With an end point the Route goes there instead of back to the start. If the way there is longer than your Goal, the end point wins, and the app says so.
- Waypoints and POIs. You can add up to three Waypoints, and the Route always passes them, even when that makes it longer than your Goal. wayloop also suggests POIs, places worth passing, but only ones that fit inside your Goal.
- Another Route draws a new one for the same Goal. It keeps away from the streets of the one before.
Your Route preferences
Walks and runs each have their own. You set them when you start using wayloop, and later in Settings, under Routes. wayloop uses them for every Route. Each one is Prefer, Any or Avoid, and some can also be Never.
- New streets is Prefer until you change it. The Route leans toward streets you have not painted yet.
- Park paths is Prefer until you change it. The Route leans toward paths in parks and woods. Paths outside them, and streets through a park, count like any other way.
- Big roads is Avoid until you change it. Every Route already keeps off them a little.
- Unpaved, Steps and Lit streets lean the Route toward or away from gravel and dirt, stairs, and streets with lights. For Lit streets, Never keeps off streets marked as unlit.
- Beaches leans the Route toward a beach or away from it. It only helps when a beach is close enough for the Route to reach.
- Cycleways leans the Route toward or away from paths made for bikes.
- Fewer turns gives you longer straight stretches and fewer corners. The Route says how many turns it has.
- Hills: Avoid steers around steep streets, Prefer looks for them, and Any takes them as they come.
- Never keeps a Route off big roads, unpaved ground, beaches or steps completely. If that leaves no Route, the app says which one is in the way. You can allow it for that one Route, and your setting stays as it is.
wayloop knows a path is unpaved, lit or by a beach only where OpenStreetMap says so. Where the map says nothing, these change nothing.
Where a Route never goes
Motorways, tunnels, private roads and ways closed to both people on foot and on bikes are not on wayloop's map at all. Where the map knows the speed limit, wayloop avoids roads of 60 km/h and up. It takes a road of 80 km/h and up, or one closed to the way you are moving, only when there is no other way.
wayloop's map comes from OpenStreetMap, which can be wrong or out of date. It covers the area around you, so near its edge a long route has less room. A Route is a suggestion. You decide where it is safe to go.
Why a street did not get painted
A street is painted when you walked or ran along it during an Activity. wayloop matches the positions your iPhone recorded to the streets on its map. Then it paints each stretch you covered. When a street stays unpainted, it is usually for one of these reasons:
- Not enough of it. Streets are painted in stretches, from one corner or bend to the next. A stretch is painted once you have covered 85% of it, or all but its last 5 m. If you only cross a street, or turn back halfway along it, it stays as it was.
- It is not on the map. wayloop's map comes from OpenStreetMap. A path missing there, a square, a lawn or the inside of a shopping centre has no street to paint. Your path across it is still drawn, and it still counts toward distance and steps. Pavements are not streets of their own: walking on one paints the street beside it.
- Your iPhone placed you too far off. A position more than about 20 m from every street counts as off the map. Tall buildings and a phone deep in a bag make positions wander. Where the phone lost you for more than 250 m, the stretch in between is not painted.
- Too fast to be you. Paint is for ground you covered yourself. Faster than 15 km/h on a walk or 25 km/h on a run counts as a vehicle, like a car or a bus. That stretch paints nothing and adds no distance. Start the Activity as what you are really doing: a run recorded as a walk can be too fast to paint.
- You had paused. Nothing is recorded while an Activity is paused, so the ground between where you paused and where you carried on is not painted.
- Past the edge of your area's map. wayloop records positions on the map of the area it has open. It does not paint streets beyond the edge of that map during the Activity.
- Steps from somewhere else. Steps that Apple Health counts outside wayloop count toward your Daily goal, but only a position on a street paints it.
Everyone's map works differently. It shows a street once three different people have painted it. Your paint joins it only after you say yes (Settings, Add my paint to everyone’s map). Streets in your Privacy zone are always left out of it. Your own map shows everything you painted.
If a street you walked is still unpainted and none of this explains it, write to us with the day and the name of the street.
Write to us
Email wayloop@adamnoren.se. wayloop is made by a small team, and we read everything.
It helps if you tell us which iPhone you have, the line at the bottom of Settings under About, and what you expected to happen.