k-forge / walker

walker help

How to get going, and what to do when something doesn't work.

Getting started

The first time you open walker, a short setup walks you through:

  1. Permissions, one at a time, each with the reason walker needs it. Every one has Not now.
  2. Your first map. Pick the region you walk in and download it. It keeps downloading while you carry on.
  3. Your goals: daily steps and a weekly goal.

You can run it again from Settings → Run setup again. Everything else is in the menu at the top left of the map.

Recording a walk

  1. Tap the round record button at the bottom of the map.
  2. walker waits for a good GPS fix before it counts distance. Outdoors with a clear sky this takes a few seconds.
  3. You can put the phone away. walker keeps recording with the screen off, and the notification shows time and distance, with Pause, Resume and Stop.
  4. To finish, press and hold Stop, so a tap in your pocket can't end the walk. Stop in the notification opens walker and asks first.
  5. Check the name and type, then Save. A recording under a minute or under 100 m is offered for discarding instead.

walker pauses by itself when you stop moving and carries on when you walk again. You can turn that off in Settings → Recording → Auto-pause. It also guesses whether you walked, hiked or cycled. Tap the type while recording, or when saving, to change it.

If Android closes walker

Android sometimes closes apps in the background, especially to save battery. walker writes every point to the phone as it arrives, so a recording is never lost with the app. What happens next depends on one setting:

If walker is closed often during walks, set its battery use to Unrestricted (called “Don't optimise” on some phones) in Android's settings for walker. Some makers close background apps far more readily than others.

Maps

walker's maps are region packs stored on your phone. It never loads map tiles from the internet as you go, so the map works anywhere once a region is downloaded.

Adding a region

  1. Open Map packs → Add region.
  2. Pick a state or province on the map, zoom in to pick a district, or search by name. Zoomed in further, Use this view takes exactly the area on screen.
  3. Tap Check size. This is the first moment walker goes online.
  4. Tap Download. You can use walker meanwhile. A download that is interrupted resumes where it stopped.

A region pack is downloaded from Protomaps, a map service built on OpenStreetMap. The server learns your internet address, the region and the time, never your position or your walks.

Updates and space

walker never checks for newer maps on its own. Tap Check for updates in Map packs when you want to. Delete a region from its ⋮ menu. The top of Map packs shows how much space the maps take.

Backups and a new phone

Your walks live only on your phone, and Android's own backup is turned off for walker. So walker's backup is the one copy you control.

Making a backup

  1. Open Backup & restore.
  2. Enter a passphrase of at least 10 characters, twice.
  3. Tap Back up and choose where to save the file: a folder on the phone, a memory card, or a cloud drive you use.

Keep the passphrase safe. The backup is encrypted with it, and nobody, including us, can open the file without it.

walker reminds you on the map when your last backup is older than 30 days. You can change that in Settings → Backup reminder.

Restoring, or moving to a new phone

  1. On the old phone, make a backup and put the file somewhere the new phone can reach.
  2. On the new phone, install walker, open Backup & restore → Restore, choose the file and enter the passphrase.
  3. walker shows how many activities are in the backup and how many are new, then adds them.

A restore only adds. It never changes or deletes what is already on the phone, so it is safe to restore the same backup twice, or to combine backups from two phones. Your settings stay as they are. Map regions are not in the backup: download them again on the new phone.

Exporting and deleting

Something isn't working

The map is empty or grey

No downloaded region covers where you are. The map says so, and its banner leads to Map packs. Add the region you are in.

walker is “waiting for GPS” or the track is jumpy

GPS needs a view of the sky. Indoors, in deep valleys, or next to tall buildings it takes longer and is less accurate. The GPS chip on the map shows the current accuracy: green bars are good enough to record, amber bars are not yet.

walker ignores fixes worse than the threshold in Settings → Recording → GPS accuracy threshold. In an activity, switch between Raw and Cleaned to see the track with GPS jitter smoothed out.

The recording stopped or has gaps

Android most likely closed walker in the background. See If Android closes walker: allow “Keep recording if Android closes walker”, and set walker's battery use to Unrestricted.

No steps are counted

walker counts steps with the phone's own step counter. The Steps screen says why nothing is counted: the phone may have no step counter, the Physical activity permission may be missing (Steps has an Allow button), or the counter may not have reported yet.

I forgot my backup passphrase

A backup can't be opened without its passphrase, and there is no way to recover it. If the old phone still has walker, make a new backup there with a new passphrase.

A restore added nothing

Every activity in the backup is already on this phone. walker recognises activities it already has, so they are never duplicated.

A map download failed

It stays in Map packs and resumes where it stopped when you try again. If the map data it was downloading has been replaced by a newer version meanwhile, walker starts that region afresh.

Reporting a problem

walker sends no crash reports and no usage data, so we only hear about a problem when you tell us. Write to support@k-forge.dev with:

Please don't send GPX files or backups unless we ask: they contain your location history.