How a session works

A session is one walk, run or ride. You start it, you move, you finish, and you decide whether to save it.

Four stages: tap start and the app checks location access, move while the screen shows distance, time and pace, finish and confirm, then save to claim a cell and bank XP. — Nothing is recorded until you save.

Starting

Before anything begins, the app checks whether it can read your location and tells you plainly what it found. If access has not been granted it asks. If it was refused earlier, or location is switched off on the device, the screen says which of those it is and takes you to the right settings page.

Location is read only while a session is running, in the foreground. There is no background tracking, and the app does not record where you are between sessions.

If you cannot or would rather not share location, a demo route is available. It draws a synthetic loop so you can see how the screens behave. It is labelled as a demo throughout and it never counts for anything.

While you move

The route draws itself as you go. Above it sit three numbers: distance, elapsed time and current pace. That is the whole screen, deliberately, so there is nothing worth looking down at.

A signal indicator shows whether the app has a good fix, a weak one, or is still searching. Weak signal does not stop the session, it just tells you why the line might wander.

You can pause and resume as often as you like. Paused time does not count toward your total. Nothing needs a tap while you are actually moving.

Finishing

Finishing asks you to confirm, so a session cannot end by accident, and the same confirmation catches the back button. Once confirmed, the app works out what the session was worth and shows you a summary before anything is written down.

The summary carries the route, the distance, the time, the pace, which cells you crossed, and a score for how clean the GPS signal was. See Movement verification for what that score means.

Saving

Saving is a separate, deliberate press. Until you press it, the session has changed nothing.

A session has to cover 200 metres or last five minutes before it can be saved. Below that the summary explains why the button is not there.

Saving does three things at once. It banks the XP for the session, it claims one new cell, and it refreshes your hold on any cells you already held and crossed. The detail of the second and third is in Capture and the map and Holding your ground.

One saved session a day

Only the first session you save each day earns XP or affects the map. Later sessions still record and still show you a summary, and they bank nothing.

This is a deliberate ceiling. It means the game cannot be won by having a free afternoon, and it means a person with twenty spare minutes a day is competitive with anyone.