Please note: I’m not quite done with the WillCycle app, but am hoping to quite soon make a beta version available.
Why an app?
If you look at the map of any traffic-free route guide on WillCycle, using your phone, you will find you can use it to navigate the route. The navigation functionality in the web map will even give you turn-by-turn voice guidance. It works well, and even allows you to participate in Fairy Trails and Treasure Hunts, but there’s a catch that is beyond my direct control. The way ALL browsers on mobile phones work is that, as soon as the screen switches off, any JavaScript running in the browser also stops, and the navigation functionality depends on JavaScript. There’s no way around that, I’m afraid, besides creating a native Android app.
A native app has other benefits, too. For starters, it can do offline routing, and make use of offline maps. While most people nowadays have plenty of data to use on their phones, mobile signal can be patchy in some rural areas, and that’s where an app, with offline functionality, really helps.
What can the app do?
Lots of things! Several of them are absolutely unique to WillCycle. Let’s break it down a bit, shall we?
Navigation
At it’s heart, the WillCycle app is bicycle satnav. You can choose to follow any of the traffic-free routes on WillCycle, a route you created, or “free” navigation. Free navigation is where you tap a destination on the map, and let the app work out a route for you. The app uses the same multi-map as the website, showing all the traffic-free routes at once, on a map. You can also filter the routes (just like on the website). For example, you may want only routes that are child-friendly, have café stops, and aren’t very hilly. Simply setting the filters according to your preferences will result in only those routes being shown.
As you can see from the image of the app’s Home screen above, you can Browse the existing traffic-free routes available on WillCycle, tap Navigate, for free navigation, or go to My Routes, to follow a route you either cycled (and recorded) before, or one you designed, using the WillCycle Route Builder.
But it gets better!
Navigation in the app is weather-aware. The app will tell you about wind speed and direction, and will warn you about approaching rain. Those directions are dynamic, and if the wind and/or rain data changes while you’re out on your ride, the WillCycle app will update you. For example, you might hear navigation cues like “In 100 metres, turn left, after which you will have a tailwind”, or “On your present course, you can expect rain in around 15 minutes”.
Location Sharing
I love the location sharing feature! Picture this: you’re doing a charity fundraising ride, and you want people sponsoring you to be able to track your progress. That’s easily done in the app! Tap Share Location, then enable live sharing (it’s disabled by default, for obvious reasons). The app will generate a unique link – simply copy that, and paste it onto your fundraising page, share in a WhatsApp group, or whichever other option you prefer. Anyone with that link will, once you start location sharing in the app, be able to follow your progress on a map.
“But Will, what about afterwards, when I don’t want the world to be able to track me?” I hear you ask. Just as easy: simply tap the Regenerate new sharing link text, and the old link is instantly invalidated. Zero privacy concerns! This means you can choose to live-share your location with someone (or lots of people) only once, and you can control how long they can follow your progress. After your big charity ride, you may want to share your location with a significant other, while out on a ride, so you can easily generate a new sharing link, and share that just with them.
But it gets even better!
Imagine you’re meeting a cycling friend, and you agreed to meet somewhere along the road. If you share your live-sharing link with your friend, and they share theirs with you, you’ll both receive dynamic routing guidance to meet up. If your friend discovers a bridge along the way is closed for maintenance, and they have to divert, your navigation guidance will auto-update their changed course. They would find the same, if you had to deviate course for any reason. It’s not just limited to that, though: ever been to Glastonbury, or any large festival, and struggled to find your friends? You can use this same feature there!
Games
Life’s too short to not have some fun along the way. The WillCycle games are unique, and allows you to have cycling games, out there, in the real world.
Bike Profiles
The app supports multiple bike profiles. This originally started off, because I built in a bumpiness recorded feature. The idea is simple: when cycling traffic-free routes listed on WillCycle, while running the app, the app will record the bumpiness grading of the route. When enough people do that, the bumpiness rating should be quite accurate. To use this feature, you need to calibrate your bike, which involves cycling for some 30 seconds on the smoothest road/path possible to find near where you are. You would also need to ensure you always mount, or carry, your phone in the same manner on that specific bike. Bumpiness data “fades” over time. After all, when a route is brand new, the surface might be very smooth, but a few years down the line, that might look wildly different. Why would you care about bumpiness? Because some people are in pain on very bumpy routes, and if you’re going to cycle that route anyway, why not aggregate that data into the pool everyone else adds to? Besides, you might prefer less smooth routes, and knowing the bumpiness in advance can help you avoid smooth routes.
But there’s more to Bike Profiles than simply bumpiness recording! Had a new chain and cassette fitted? Great, add it to that bike in the app, and track the mileage you get from components.
Touring Routes
On WillCycle, I sell GoCycle, multi-day touring route guides. These route guides are highly-detailed (they even tell you where escape points (usually train stations) are along the route, and contain a wealth of additional information. All for less than the price of a cup of coffee and a croissant! That has to be one of the best bargains around, especially when you factor in that I have personally cycled each route, to ensure it’s fit for purpose, and contains no surprises. If you purchased any of those route guides, it will show up under Touring Routes for you. In addition, if you create your own multi-day routes, using the WillCycle Route Builder, those will also show up for you (and nobody else).
Touring Route functionality was explicitly designed to cater for cycle touring. The Internet is full of stories of people who designed very detailed LEJOG (Land’s End to John O’Groats) routes, broken into daily segments, only to find some unforeseen event forced them to have one shorter-than-planned day. Suddenly, their entire route plan is thrown into disarray, and they might have to stop/start different route segments in the middle of each day. The WillCycle app’s Touring Routes makes that no issue at all (at least in terms of routing) and it offers a flexible way to manage your route. Simply stop along the route whenever you want, and seamlessly continue the next day. Oh, and if you fancy a rest day, that’s catered for, too!
Settings
I grew up using the decimal system, and have adapted to life in the UK (after over a quarter of a century of living here) to using miles for distance, but all other measurements I use remain metric. Plenty others prefer to mix metric and imperial, too, yet apps like Strava (which the WillCycle app is intentionally NOT competing with!) offer a binary choice between metric, or imperial. And if you opt for imperial, you get lumbered with temperatures in Fahrenheit!
The WillCycle app allows you to choose between kilometres, or miles for distance, the same again for speed, and between feet, or metres, for elevation. You’re free to mix and match as you see fit. You can also turn voice guidance on, or off, and you can choose whether or not to auto-pause route recording, when you’re having that essential café stop. You can also select the default map to be displayed, download more regions data, for offline routing, or connect to Strava.
A special note on Strava: while the functionality is there in the app, I’m currently negotiating with Strava, to allow anyone to auto-add their ride data to Strava. If you have a paid-for Strava membership, the data analytics they offer is massively superior to anything on WillCycle. Remember I said the WillCycle app is intentionally designed to NOT compete with Strava? This is part of that.