How HoldMyTrack works

The map

What you see when you open it

The map flies to your most recent activity (the date slider on the Activities tab selects the days around it). The address bar keeps your current position, so a reload brings you back to the same view and a copied link opens it for someone else.

Three ways to look at your history

The switch in the top-left corner of the map changes what it shows.

• Normal draws each activity from the dates you picked as a line. Filter the list by type or distance, hide the ones you don't want to see, and click a track (or its row in the list) to focus it: it is colored by pace, blue where you were slowest and red where you were fastest.
• Fog of War covers the world in fog and clears it wherever you have ever been. It is your whole history, all the time: the date range and the filters don't apply here, and a place you once cleared stays clear.
• Heatmap glows brighter wherever you go more often, over the last 365 days only. Places you haven't visited for a year fade out, so it shows the shape of your life now rather than all time. How bright "a lot" is adapts to your own history, so your busiest route is always the hottest.

Zooming out

Fog of War and Heatmap change what they show as you zoom, because street-level detail disappears when a whole continent is on screen.

• Close in (a state or closer), you see exactly the streets and paths you covered.
• Zoomed out to a country or a continent, whole states and regions clear or light up as soon as you have an activity anywhere inside them.
• Zoomed out to the whole world, the same happens for whole countries.

Whenever you switch to Fog of War or Heatmap, or zoom into another of these levels, a note under the mode switch says which one you're looking at — Country, Region or City view — and fades after a few seconds.

Normal mode doesn't do this: it draws tracks until a few states fit on screen, and shows the plain map when you zoom out further.

Layers

The Layers button on the map picks extra things to draw with your activities. Your browser remembers your choices, and they work the same in all three modes.

• Paths: Bike paths (built for bikes), Shared paths (multi-use trails bikes share with people on foot) and Mountain bike trails (narrow, rough singletrack), drawn from as far out as a whole region, so you can see where the bike network goes and pick a direction. Trails and dirt tracks need no ticking: the map always draws them once you zoom in to a neighborhood.
• Points of interest: see below.

The checkbox on the Layers button hides everything you picked at once, for a clean map, and brings it all back when you tick it again — your picks are kept.

The Satellite button beside it shows aerial imagery with the roads and place names drawn over it, where it's available (in Fog and Heatmap, just the place names); press it again for the map.

Choosing dates

The slider at the top of the Activities tab chooses which dates you're looking at: the activities between its two knobs are the ones listed and drawn on the map in Normal mode. When you open the map, it selects your five most recent days that have an activity.

• Each step on the slider is one day with at least one activity. Days with nothing recorded are left out, so a quiet month takes no room. It shows fifteen of those days at a time, and the dates you picked are written under it.
• Drag a knob, or press the slider near one, to move that end of your selection. Bring the knobs one step apart to pick a single day.
• Go back through your history with the Earlier and Later buttons, five days per press, or hold one down. A knob parked on that edge comes along, which is how a selection grows beyond fifteen days; otherwise your selection stays as it was.

Choosing new dates clears your filters, hidden tracks and selected activities, since they described the old ones. The Stories and Privacy tabs don't use dates, and neither do Fog of War and Heatmap, so the slider is only on the Activities tab. On a phone it sits at the bottom of the screen, under the panel.

Editing and deleting activities

Select an activity on the Activities tab, or check several, and use the toolbar above the list.

• Edit (the pencil) opens the Edit window. On its Activity tab you can change an activity's type and give it a name and a description; with several checked, you can set one type for all of them.
• Fixing a track: the Track tab, for a single activity, removes the points you don't want — say, the half hour your watch kept recording after you got home. Chop keeps only the part between the slider's two knobs, Cut removes the part between them, and Delete point removes the points you click on the map. Undo steps back, and Reset returns the track to how it was recorded. When you save, the distance, times and your Fog of War are worked out again from the edited track. Your original recording is never changed, so an edit can always be undone.
• Splitting an activity in two: if one recording holds two different things — a ride and then a walk — move one of the Track tab's knobs to where the second starts and press Split. When you save, the part after the knob becomes an activity of its own, with the same type, name and description to start with, so you can change them.
• The window's Save saves its Activity, Track and Photos tabs together; Cancel throws all of it away.
• Hide (the eye) takes activities off the map without deleting them, until you show them again.
• Delete (the bin) deletes the activities for good, with their photos and their part of your Fog of War and Heatmap. You're asked first, since it can't be undone.

Stories

A Story keeps a trip as one thing: a hike, a holiday, a race weekend. It's a set of activities you pick yourself, with a name, a description, and its own totals and map. Only you can see your Stories, and an activity can be in as many as you like.

• Making one, or adding to one: select an activity on the Activities tab of the panel, or check several, then choose Add to story (the book with a plus) in its toolbar. Pick New story… and give it a name and, if you like, a description — the new Story opens on the Stories tab — or pick a Story you already have to add them to it.
• Removing activities: open the Story on the Stories tab and click the × at the end of an activity's row (hover the row to see it). Removing an activity from a Story never deletes it.
• Seeing one: the panel's Stories tab lists them all, newest first, and opens the newest. Click another to open it instead: only its activities are listed under it and drawn on the map, the bottom of the panel shows its totals and a line per activity type, whatever dates you had picked. Going back to the Activities tab returns you to the dates you were looking at before.
• Renaming and deleting: the pencil and the bin beside a Story's name. Hover the name to see them.
• Sending someone a copy: the paper plane beside a Story's name opens Send a copy. Type the email address they use for HoldMyTrack. Once they accept it, they have their own copy of the Story and its activities — on their map, in their Fog of War, Heatmap and totals — that's theirs to keep and change: nothing you do to yours afterwards reaches it. Send it again after adding more activities and they get only the new ones. Only people with a HoldMyTrack account receive anything, and you aren't told whether an address has one.
• A copy someone sent you waits at the top of the Stories tab with Accept and Decline, and the tab shows how many are waiting; we email you when one arrives. Accept it and it's copied into your account, which takes a moment per activity; your own Private locations apply to it, and an activity you recorded yourself isn't copied twice. The Story then says who it's from.
• Which activities are in one: a Story badge on an activity's row says it belongs to a Story; hover it to see which, and click it to open that Story.

Stories are a Normal mode view: Fog of War and Heatmap always show your whole history. Deleting a Story deletes none of its activities, and deleting an activity takes it out of every Story it was in.

Photos

Add the photos you took on an activity, and each one shows on the map at the point of the route where you took it. Only you can see them.

• Adding them: select an activity, choose Edit (the pencil) in the toolbar, then the Photos tab. Choose Add photos and pick as many as you like. Nothing is saved until you choose Save, which saves the photos along with the rest of the window; Cancel throws all of it away. If you press Escape or try to leave the page with photo changes unsaved, you're asked first.
• Where they go: each photo is placed by the time it was taken, read from the photo itself, so check that your camera's clock is right. A photo without a time, or with one outside the activity, goes where its location says, if it has one near the route. If neither tells, the photo waits at the top of the list with a slider: move it to the place on the route where you took the photo, and choose Place here. The slider starts just after the photo you picked before it, so photos picked in the order you took them only need a nudge forward. Every photo has its place on the route.
• Moving one, or giving it a caption: choose the pencil beside it in the list. Its slider moves it along the route, and the photo moves on the map as you slide; type a caption if you like, then Done. The bin marks a photo to be deleted when you save; until then you can keep it after all.
• Looking at them: whenever an activity is selected, its photos sit on its route. Click one to see it bigger, with its caption and when it was taken; Full size opens it in a new tab. Photos that would sit on top of each other share one marker with a number on it: click it to zoom in until they come apart, or, for photos taken at the same spot, to step through them with the arrows. With a Story open and nothing selected, the map shows the photos of the whole trip.

We keep a smaller copy of each photo, up to 2048 pixels on its long side, not the original, so keep your originals wherever you keep them now. The copy carries none of the photo's hidden details, its location included. A photo taken where one of your Private locations hides the start or end of the route shows at the end of the visible route, never inside the private place. An account can hold up to 2,000 photos, and deleting an activity deletes its photos.

Points of interest

Playgrounds, dog parks, monuments, viewpoints and historic sites, from OpenStreetMap: a way to find somewhere new to go. The places are the same for everyone; which ones you have captured only you can see.

• Turning them on: open Layers on the map and tick any of the categories under Points of interest — Playgrounds, Dog parks, Monuments, Mesmerizing views, Historic sites. They all start off, and your browser remembers what you ticked. They look the same in Normal, Fog of War and Heatmap, and the fog never covers them.
• Where they show: zoomed in to a neighborhood, each place is a round badge, with its area shaded faintly in gold — its outline from OpenStreetMap, or a dashed circle around a place mapped as a single point. Zoomed out to a city, press Show in this area to load the places on screen; it shows up to 2,000, named ones first. Further out, they're hidden.
• What a place tells you: click a badge for its name, and whatever OpenStreetMap knows about it — a description, an inscription, since when it has been there, its address. Copy address copies the address (Copy location copies the coordinates of a place without one), and Wikipedia opens its article when it has one.
• Capturing one: in the Android app, tap a badge and choose Capture. The app shows how far the place is and which way to go; once you are inside, stay for 30 seconds with the app open. A captured place gets a filled gold badge, on the web too, and its popup says when you captured it. Only the app can capture, since it needs your phone's location.

The places come straight from OpenStreetMap, so a missing or wrong one is fixed there, and the fix reaches HoldMyTrack the next time its places are refreshed. Badges hide while you are editing a track.

Getting your activities in

Everything comes in through the Upload button at the top of every page. Its menu shows what is being imported right now: files uploading, then being processed, including what your phone is syncing. Once an import has finished it leaves the menu for Sync, next to Upload, which lists everything you have imported as Ready or Failed, with why; "View on map" jumps straight to a finished one. If an import fails, Sync gets a red dot until you've opened it.

Files

Choose files from the Upload menu, or drop them anywhere on the map. HoldMyTrack reads GPX, FIT and TCX files, the formats watches, bike computers and most fitness apps export. You can add up to 20 files at a time, each up to 16 MB. A .zip archive isn't imported: choose the files inside it instead, so only the activities you pick come in.

The Android app

The Android app is in a closed test on Google Play for now, so it isn't open to everyone yet. The app syncs your workouts from Health Connect, where most Android watches and fitness apps store them. Its Sync tab lists the workouts from the last 3 months that aren't in your account yet, drawn on the map, with nothing ticked: tick the ones worth keeping and send them, and they show in the Upload menu while they're processed, then on the Sync page and on your map. A row you don't want can be swiped away. Workouts without a route can't be placed on a map, so they aren't listed: indoor ones, and Samsung Galaxy Watch workouts, whose routes Samsung doesn't share with Health Connect. The app can also record a walk, hike or drive by itself when you just want the route; recordings stay on your phone until you choose to sync them. Its Upload screen takes files too: tap Choose files… for GPX, FIT or TCX files, or open one with HoldMyTrack from the phone's Files app.

Importing twice is safe

• The same file again is recognized and skipped; you'll see a note that it was already uploaded, and nothing is added twice.
• The same activity from two places, say synced from your watch and later uploaded as a FIT file, becomes two activities: HoldMyTrack doesn't merge them for you. In the Android app's Sync tab, a walk that covers the same time as one you already have says so, "Overlaps" and its name, so you can leave it unticked. If you end up with two, delete one.

Exporting a map image

The camera button in the map's top-right corner, under the zoom and location buttons, dims the map around a window: that window is your picture. Pan and zoom the map inside it to line it up. Drag a corner to crop, and the window grows back to full size zoomed in on what you kept. The menu above the window picks its shape and size: Custom at HD, 2K or 4K, where the image's long side is 1920, 2560 or 3840 px and the other side follows the window's shape, or a ready-made size for Instagram, Facebook or X. The pixel size shows under the window. Capture downloads exactly what's inside the window as a PNG image, at that size whatever the size of your screen.

The image shows the map as you see it: your tracks in Normal mode, your coverage in Fog of War, your year in Heatmap (a focused track's pace coloring isn't included). It carries the map's required credit to OpenStreetMap and a small HoldMyTrack logo in its bottom corners.

Your profile

Open Profile from the menu under your avatar to see your history at a glance. Only you can see it.

• The activity grid has a square for every day, one block per year, darker the more you did that day.
• Totals for your whole history and for each year: activities, distance, active days, and your longest streak of days in a row.
• Trends shows the last 12 months as one bar per week or per month. Hover a bar, or tap it, to see its distance, number of activities, moving time and climb.

Settings and privacy

Country, timezone, language and theme

Open Settings from the menu under your avatar.

• Country sets your units: miles and feet in the United States, Liberia and Myanmar, kilometers and meters everywhere else.
• Timezone decides which day is today. Each activity keeps the date and time where it was recorded: a morning run in Tokyo is on its Tokyo date wherever you look at it from, and counts on that day on the date slider, the activity grid on your Profile and in trends. Timezone stands in for an activity whose place isn't known. It is set from your browser when you sign up; change it if you have moved.
• Language is the language of the pages, the map and our emails. It starts on automatic: whatever your browser is set to.
• Theme is light or dark, or follows your device. It is kept by this browser only, so each device can have its own.

When you first sign up, HoldMyTrack asks for your country and timezone before showing your map.

Private locations

Mark the places you don't want your tracks to reveal, like home or work, as Private locations: circles you place on the map, each with a radius from 50 meters to 2 kilometers, up to 20 of them. Wherever a track starts or ends inside one, that part is hidden everywhere, your own map included, and so is a stretch past the circle's edge, a different length each time, so the ends of your tracks don't outline the circle. Its distance and stats count only the visible part. A track that only passes through a private location is shown in full, since passing by reveals neither where you started nor where you stopped.

Open them from the Privacy tab of the Activities panel on the map. Changes apply to your whole history: the affected activities show as Pending in the list for a moment while they are updated.

What we store

We don't keep your health profile — only the geographical data you trust us with, and the photos you choose to add to it: where each activity went, when, and the elevation along the way, plus a smaller copy of each photo you add. Heart rate, cadence, calories and any other body data in your files are never read, stored or shown, and the Android app doesn't ask Health Connect for them.

The file you uploaded is kept as it is, so your activity can be rebuilt when you edit its track or change your Private locations. HoldMyTrack only ever reads the route out of it, and it is deleted along with the activity.

The privacy policy has the whole picture: who else handles your data, the cookies, how long things are kept, and your rights.

Downloading your data

To get a copy of everything in your account, open Settings on the website and choose Request a download. It usually takes a few minutes; we email you when it's ready, and you download it from the same place, signed in, for 7 days. You can ask for a new copy once a week, counted from when the last one was ready. A big account comes as several zip archives of about 2 GB each: extract them all into one folder. Inside:

• originals — every file you uploaded or synced, exactly as it arrived, before your Private locations were applied;
• tracks — every activity as a GPX file, as your map shows it, with Private locations cut away and your track edits applied;
• photos — the copy of each photo HoldMyTrack keeps;
• account.json — your account and settings, every activity's details and which files are its, your Stories, Private locations and captured places.

Deleting your account and data

To delete your account together with everything in it — every activity and the files you uploaded, your photos, Stories, Private locations and captured places — open Settings — on the website, or from the menu in the Android app — choose Delete account… at the bottom, and type your email address to confirm. In the app, this also deletes the recordings on that phone that haven't synced yet. You're signed out everywhere at once, and the data is gone within a few minutes. It can't be undone; backups keep it for up to 8 weeks (privacy policy).

If you can't sign in any more, email hello@holdmytrack.com from the address the account uses and ask us to delete it. We reply once everything is deleted.

If you signed in with Google or Facebook, you can also remove HoldMyTrack's access on their side: in Google, under your Google Account's Security → Your connections to third-party apps and services; in Facebook, under Settings & privacy → Settings → Apps and websites. Removing it there stops that sign-in from working but doesn't delete your HoldMyTrack account; delete that in Settings, as above.

Still stuck?

Questions and bug reports are welcome — see Contacts.