My Tracks was a
Global Positioning System
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide ge ...
(GPS) tracking application that ran on
Android. The application used a device's GPS capabilities to collect data, allowing real-time review of path, speed, distance, and elevation. Later, this data could be saved to
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...
,
Google Fusion Tables, or
Google Docs
Google Docs is an online word processor and part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. Google Docs is accessible via a web browser as a web-based application and is also available as a mobile app on Android and iO ...
and shared with
Google+
Google+ (sometimes written as Google Plus, stylized as G+ or g+) was a Social networking service, social network owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challe ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
, or
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
. The application also allowed a user to record annotations along the path, hear periodic voice announcements of progress, and sync with select third-party bio-metric sensors.
In 2016, Google announced that My Tracks would be deprecated and no longer available in the
Google Play Store.
An in-app popup alerted users that My Tracks would stop working on April 30, 2016;
History
The application made its debut on February 12, 2009 under a closed license.
A year later on March 28, 2010,
Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
announced the
open-sourcing of the application, stating that "The
collective intelligence
Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence (GI) that Emergence, emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiolog ...
of the development community will create a more powerful, more intuitive, more useful, and more robust My Tracks." The first major re-haul of the application came on July 13, 2012 when Google released version 2.0. This introduced a new interface, support for playing back data in
Google Earth
Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...
for Android, improved charts, and additional statistics. In 2014 the developers announced on the google code project site that My Tracks would no longer developed in the open and that the source code would be removed. The last open source version was 2.0.5 released in August 2013.
Reception
In September 2013, the
Google Play Store listed the application as being installed on 10,000,000 – 50,000,000 devices, with an overall rating of 4.4/5 from over 80,000 reviews.
CNET gave the application 4/5 stars, praising its "Chart, Statistics, and satellite playback" and ability to pause recordings but criticized it for an "unattractive interface" and lack of "athletic-specific features". PCWorld awarded MyTracks 5/5 stars, stating "this app is just about perfect. It is intuitive to use and very stable."
Forks
OpenTracks is an open-source fork launched in 2019.
External links
Former Development SiteOpenTracks
References
{{Android
Android (operating system) software