Finding and downloading a city

Before you can track walks, CityWalker needs the street layout for your city. This happens once. After that, the map is stored on your device and works without an internet connection.

Adding a city

CityWalker works out which city you are in from your phone's location, so adding a city is usually just one tap.

1

Open CityWalker. The Walk screen detects the city you are in from GPS and shows its name at the top.
2

If that city's streets have not been downloaded yet, you will see a Download city streets card. Tap it to start.
3

CityWalker downloads the street data. Download time depends on city size. Most cities finish in about a minute. You can leave the screen; it keeps downloading in the background.
4

Tap GO on the Walk screen to start your first walk. If you later walk into an area that hasn't loaded yet, CityWalker fetches those streets in the background and credits the walk when they arrive.

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Adding a city manually: To download a city you are not currently in (before a trip, say), open Settings, find the Your Cities section, and tap + Add a new city. Type the city name and tap Add City.

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Note: The surest way to get the right city is to let CityWalker detect it from your location: open the app where you are and it picks the correct city automatically, even when several places share a name (the Victoria you are in, not Victoria, Australia). When you add a city by name, CityWalker also uses your current location to prefer nearby matches. If a specific neighbourhood isn't recognised, try a broader name such as Amsterdam, since the name needs to match a place in OpenStreetMap.

Small cities

Most cities are small enough to download as a single piece. If that is your city, no extra screen appears: the four steps above are everything. Once step 3 finishes, the whole city is ready to walk in. The next two sections cover the cases where CityWalker offers a choice instead.

Mid-sized cities: download all, or just a small area

Not every city is split into regions. Some mid-sized cities are small enough to handle in one piece, so instead of a region picker CityWalker offers a choice: download all of the city now, or start with just a small area. CityWalker uses your current location if you are in the city, otherwise it centres the small area on the city centre.

Starting small keeps the initial download light and is useful if you only plan to walk in part of the city. You can expand coverage later from the Coverage tab. Downloading everything up front is best if you want full city-wide coverage from the start.

The medium-sized city download choice in CityWalker

Large cities and regions

Some cities, particularly large metropolitan areas, are too big to download in one go. For these, CityWalker splits the city into regions (boroughs or neighbourhoods) so download sizes stay manageable and you can focus on the part you actually walk in.

When you add a large city, a region picker appears showing the available regions. CityWalker uses your current location to recommend the one you are in, marked You are here, so it is easy to pick the right one. Tap a region to download it.

The region picker for a large city in CityWalker

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Note: You can add more regions later. Open the city from the Stats tab and tap + Download another region on the Coverage sub-tab. Coverage from walks you have already recorded carries over automatically.

If a large city does not have downloadable regions yet, CityWalker loads a small starting area instead (around you if you are in the city, otherwise around the city centre), the same as the mid-sized option above. You can expand coverage later from the Stats → Coverage tab. If you think your city should have regions, let me know at [email protected] and I will look into adding them.

To see which cities already have regions set up, see the full city list.

A large city without regions, loading streets near the user in CityWalker

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Note: Auto-loading only applies to the small starting area. For cities split into regions, you still pick each region yourself from the region picker.

When a city later gets regions

Some cities start without downloadable regions, so you download them with Just around me or Just the centre and walk in that small starting area. Later, I might add regions for that city. When that happens, the next time you open the app a banner appears on the Walk tab:

Track more of [your city]
[your city] now has downloadable regions. Pick one for a bigger map than just where you started.

Tap Pick a region to open the region picker for that city. Your existing walks in the small starting area stay credited; the new region just expands the area you can track.

If you tap Not now, the banner goes away for this session but comes back next time you open the app. It only disappears for good once you actually download a region.

How loading works

Street data comes from OpenStreetMap through a CityWalker-hosted proxy that caches responses to keep things fast. A few things to know:

Downloads run in the background. You can leave the screen while a city loads, and CityWalker notifies you when it is ready.
Streets load as you walk. For cities that download in a small area around you, if you start walking outside the loaded area CityWalker fetches the missing streets in the background. A Loading streets… notice appears on the Walk screen while it runs.
Walks are credited retroactively. If a walk finishes before its streets have loaded, the walk is saved normally and its coverage is added once loading completes.
You need an internet connection for the initial download, but once a city is loaded, map display and walk tracking work offline.
Download stalled? Open Settings → Your Cities and use the refresh button on the city, or remove the city and add it again. If the problem persists, it may be a temporary issue upstream with OpenStreetMap, so try again in a few minutes.

Importing walks from another app

If you have already been walking with Strava, Garmin, Komoot, or any other app, you can import those walks as GPX files. CityWalker credits the streets from your past walks towards your city progress.

Export a GPX file from your other app.
In CityWalker, go to Settings → Import GPX and tap Choose GPX Files.
Select up to 10 files at once. CityWalker reads them on your device and matches each route against city streets.
If a walk's city is not in your list yet, CityWalker adds it automatically. Download that city's streets and the imported walk's coverage is credited to it.

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Tip: Imports are processed in the background. Your coverage map updates as each file finishes; large batches may take a little while.