Fifty short steps, in the exact order you'll live them: install the app, set it up your way, learn the buttons on your map, ride together in groups, master the dashboard, meet all sixteen tiles — and when you're ready, discover what the Fun version adds. Take one step per ride if you like: everything you record along the way is already complete.
PathXplorer installs from Google Play like any app — no account to create, nothing to sign up for. Open it once and you're on the live map within seconds.
The next seven steps walk through every first-launch screen, in the order you'll meet them.
Tap the gear 
at the top right of the map, then Permissions: every permission the app can use, with its current status in one place — one essential permission, precise location, and six optional ones: background location, activity recognition, notifications, camera, photos & files, and battery optimization. A last card opens your phone's own system settings. Each one explains what it unlocks — grant only what you need, when you need it.
The little indicator on the gear blinks each time a new GPS fix lands — a heartbeat telling you the satellites are talking.
Background location and battery optimization are the two that keep long recordings alive with the screen off.
Top to bottom, card by card:
GPS Update Frequency — how often a point is recorded, from every second to every 10 minutes. An Adaptive interval checkbox lets the app stretch that interval on its own to save battery, and the number in the green dot on the map's gear button always shows the interval actually in use — adaptive included.
Unit System — Metric, Imperial or Nautical: every tile, video and report follows your choice.
Location GPS Format — how coordinates read everywhere in the app: degrees-minutes-seconds (45°30'32"N) with the switch on, plain decimal degrees with it off.
Photo Duration in Video — the default time each photo stays on screen in your generated videos; any single photo can override it in the photo viewer.
Shorter GPS intervals mean more detail; longer ones stretch battery on all-day expeditions.
Recording itself never uses mobile data in any mode — the modes only govern the extras:
Max Data — everything stays live: map tiles, weather, live groups and route calculation. A typical ride costs a few MB.
Min Data — keeps the map drawing and a weather refresh every three hours; skips the heavier extras like live groups and routing.
Zero Data — nothing is downloaded; the map shows what's already cached, and your track records over it exactly the same.
Wi-Fi is always a free window in every mode, and a built-in meter shows approximately what the app has used on this device.
Map Cache — the map areas you have already seen are kept on your phone and drawn again without using data. The card shows how much room they take, and clears them in one tap. This is what makes Zero Data usable at all.
Track backup — your tracks to the phone, an SD card or Google Drive, by hand or automatically after each trip. A Drive copy survives uninstalling the app.
The three-dots menu at the top right of Settings holds the app's tools — and About is the first of them. Inside: your app version and edition, a device information card (handy when reporting a bug), and links to check for updates, rate the app on Google Play, share it and join the beta program — plus the legal documents and the developer's email address.
It's also the way to reach the team: the support link writes straight to pathxplorer@funapps.biz. A question, an idea, something odd on your phone — every message is read and answered.
📖 Next on the menu: this Academy. The page you're reading right now lives one tap away — ⋮ → PathXplorer Academy on your phone, or funapps.biz/academy.html on any computer.
Next on the same ⋮ menu. PathXplorer detects where you parked automatically and marks it with a P badge on the map — this menu line, which reads Parking spots: SHOWN or HIDDEN, shows or hides those badges. Detection always runs quietly either way, so flipping it on after a park still reveals the spot. Tap a badge for the address; long-press to copy a ready-to-paste message with a Google Maps link.
Tap the 🔓 in a P bubble to lock that parking spot — its badge turns gold and stays on your map for as long as you like, no matter how many other parkings come after. Two-week airport parking, a summer campsite: pin it and forget it. Tap 🔒 to release it back to the normal rotation.
Configure your emergency contacts here, before you ever need them. Once set up, an SOS button 
appears on your map: hold it for three seconds and it emails your position to your contacts. Your name, phone, time, coordinates, speed and battery always go out; you choose the rest — map snapshot, recent trail, street addresses, weather, and the photos of the last hour. An SOS leaves over any available network, even in Zero Data mode. Do it once, then hope to never think about it again.
Noticed something odd? This sends the app's technical log straight to the developer, together with a line in your own words about what you saw — in any language you like. The note is optional — but it's what turns a wall of timestamps into a moment that can actually be found. The consent dialog spells out exactly what leaves your phone: the log, your device model and Android version, and your last known position — no tracks, no photos, no contacts. Real field logs have turned reports into shipped fixes within a day.
The one button that matters. Tap it and PathXplorer starts recording everything — every second, every metric — until you tell it to stop. It keeps going with the screen off and the phone in your pocket.
Nothing else needs setting up first. Tap REC and ride; you can shape how it all looks afterward.
While you're recording, REC becomes STOP. Tap it and your track is closed and filed in your playlist automatically — no naming, no saving dialog, no chance to lose it.
The middle button changes with what you're doing. While recording it's PAUSE — for a long lunch you'd rather not have in your average speed. Paused, it becomes RESUME and picks the same track back up.
When you're not recording, that same middle button becomes 
— and this is what it opens: every track you've ever recorded — the screen is titled Track List — ready to replay, rename, share or delete. The bar at the top searches them, merges two rides into one, and imports a .pathx track from another PathXplorer user. Pick one and watch it play back live, tiles and all.
Rides where you took pictures carry a 📷 count in their stats — and a green Photos button that opens that ride's own photo album, every shot pinned to the exact spot on the track where you took it. The album is also where you curate the ride: remove a picture from the track, or set how long each one holds on screen during playback and in your generated videos — the default you chose in step 3, adjustable photo by photo here.
During playback, the full-width Playback Slider sits above the dashboard — and every control on it is live:
Start flag & finish flag — the green dot and the checkered flag mark the ends of the replay. Drag either one to trim the ride down to just the part you want to watch.
The playhead — the green-ringed thumb is "now". Drag it anywhere in the ride and the map, the tiles and the photos all follow.
◀ ▶ — play the ride forward, or run it in reverse.
15s · 60s · 60× · 10× — the replay styles: 15s and 60s squeeze the whole ride into a clip of that exact length, 60× is a fast overview, and 10× is the opposite — a slow, maximum-zoom, turn-by-turn replay of every corner (free like the other three). The ✕ tucks the slider away.
Tap 
and a recording becomes a video, a photo, a PDF report, or a file of the raw ride. Choose what you want, and the app generates it and hands it to your phone's share sheet — Instagram, WhatsApp, email, anywhere.
Video — your ride replayed as an MP4, in four lengths. The two fixed formats show their exact clip length right under the label, for this ride:
15s and 60s — the whole ride squeezed into exactly fifteen seconds or one minute, whatever its real duration. The social-media formats.
60X — the ride at sixty times real speed: a fast flyover of the whole route, so a two-hour drive becomes about a two-minute film.
10X — the opposite of fast: ten times real speed at maximum zoom, the turn-by-turn replay that lingers on every corner.
Photo — a static image of the full track. PDF Report — the printable report of the next step. PathX File — the complete ride for another PathXplorer user (track, data and photos in one file). CSV File — the raw data. GPX File — the track for Garmin, Strava, Komoot and most GPS apps.
This is the button behind everything on this site: the videos, the reports, the shared tracks.
Pick PDF Report in the share sheet and PathXplorer lays your whole ride out on a single page: the route map with departure and arrival addresses, a side column of times, distance, coordinates, waypoint count and GPS accuracy, step count and bearing, the weather at start, middle and end — then elevation, speed, G-force and lean angle, each with its own graph, statistics and a 3D map of where it happened.
You choose which sections to include before exporting. Print it, archive it, or send it to anyone — it needs no app to read.
The report shown here is a real ride up Mont Royal in Montréal — exactly as the app produced it. Click it to open the full PDF.
PHOTO appears while you're recording, and only then. Tap it, shoot, and the photo is pinned to the exact spot on your route — with the direction you were facing. It shows on the map, in playback, and drops into your video where you took it.
Tap 
and pick a user name and a group name — no account, nothing to sign up for. Everyone in the group moves on your map, refreshed every minute, and a green dot on the button means you're sharing. While sharing is on, the map also carries a small blue tag in its corner: your group name and how many members are live right now. New to it? Join the group called world and watch explorers move around the planet.
The bottom-left button cycles through the map styles — it always shows the name and colour of the NEXT style, so you know what's coming before you tap.
Right beside it, this button cycles the view: flat 2D, tilted 3D, and 3D+ with buildings rising from the map. It works live, in playback and in your videos.
Turn your phone sideways, too — the map takes the left of the screen and your full dashboard lines up on the right.
A group is a name your friends share. While sharing is on, everyone in the group appears on everyone's map — live, each behind their own avatar — whether you're converging on a meeting point or riding single file. It's free, and it works across the planet.
The film here is real: five friends converging one by one on Montréal's Mont-Royal belvedere, then the six riding off in single file, seen from the sixth rider's phone — half an hour on the road in one minute.
Tap and pick a user name (@you) and a group name (#yourcrew) — no account, no password, nothing to sign up for. Anyone who enters the same group name is in the same group.
The group name is the only key: share it only with people you want on your map. New to it? Tap the popular group world and watch explorers move around the planet.
Tap the disc beside your name and choose your drawing: twenty-eight pictograms, five colours each. The avatar is how friends spot you at a glance — "I'm the purple sun" needs no translation, which is why the picker carries no words at all.
If someone in your group already wears the avatar you land on, the picker opens on a free one instead — two purple suns would defeat the point.
Nothing is shared until you flip the switch. While it's ON, your position goes to the members of this group every minute and you see theirs; flip it OFF and you vanish from their maps immediately. The green dot on the GROUP button reminds you you're sharing.
Sharing needs the Full data mode (Step 4) — or simply Wi-Fi, which is always a free window in every mode.
Tap Invite friends to #yourcrew, or the share icon beside the group name: PathXplorer builds an invitation — your avatar, your @name, your #group over a city-wide map — and hands you a link to send by any messenger. Friends with the app tap it and land on the join dialog; friends without it land on Google Play.
The map on the card is deliberately city-zoom: it says "he's in Montréal", never "here is his street".
The link never joins anyone silently. Your friend sees who invites them — your avatar face-to-face with theirs — and exactly what joining means, in their own language. Join & share accepts and turns sharing on; Cancel walks away. And the switch stays theirs, to flip off at any time.
Every member rides behind their avatar. When someone appears or arrives, their @name shows for a few seconds, with how far away they are — tap any avatar to see it again. When riders bunch up, their discs stack into a pile with a count badge; zoom in, and the pile unpacks.
Group tracking rides on top of everything else: your recording, your tiles, your photos and your videos are exactly what they always were — the group only adds friends to your map. And if the worst happens, SOS (Step 7) turns your avatar into a red SOS disc on every member's map: the people closest to helping are the ones already watching you ride.
This is the principle PathXplorer is built around: the recording is always complete — every metric, every second — no matter which tiles are on your screen. Your dashboard, your generated videos and your PDF reports are just views of that recording, composed whenever you like.
Ride with three tiles; produce with all sixteen.
Grab the small handle at the bottom edge of the map and drag it up or down. The dashboard grows from a full-screen map to a full instrument panel, snapping to complete rows of three.
Shrinking it never loses anything: hidden tiles keep recording in the background and come back with live values the moment you drag the panel open again.
Long-press a tile, then drag it to its new spot — the others slide out of the way, exactly like the icons on your phone's home screen. Put your favorites in the top row; the layout is yours and it sticks across rides.
Because everything is recorded regardless, you can keep just a few big, glanceable tiles while you move — then resize and reorder after the ride, before generating your video: the video uses the dashboard exactly as it is at that moment. The PDF report goes further, with its own checkboxes to pick the sections you want.
Ride minimal for safety and clarity; produce rich for the story.
Every tile obeys the same three gestures: tap acts (for instance, it looks up an address), double-tap copies the tile's current value to the clipboard — coordinates, speed, anything — and long-press moves the tile.
Local time large at the bottom with its seconds, UTC time and the UTC offset stacked above it, and the date. During playback it shows the recorded wall-clock time at that exact point of the ride — paused minutes included.
UTC is what pilots, sailors and race logs use — no timezone confusion when comparing tracks.
Elapsed recording time. In playback and videos a small countdown appears below it — the time remaining to the end of the track.
Total distance traveled in your chosen units. Like Duration, playback adds a countdown of the distance still ahead on the track.
Altitude, vertical speed and slope grade in one tile. The vertical speed carries an arrow and turns red to show which way the ground is going.
Three arc gauges across the top of one tile: your current speed on the large centre arc, session average on the left, session maximum on the right, each with its label underneath. The scale adapts automatically to your fastest speed so the arcs stay readable from walking pace to highway speed.
Your direction of travel as a compass with cardinal direction and degrees. It also builds a session rose — a distance-weighted picture of every heading you've traveled this trip.
How many GPS points your track has so far, alongside the actual recording interval in seconds — proof of how detailed the recording really is.
Your live latitude and longitude, in the format you picked in step 3 — degrees-minutes-seconds, or plain decimal degrees to six places, about 10 cm of precision.
Double-tap to copy your exact coordinates — perfect for sending your position to someone.
Until you ask, the tile shows a single dash. Tap to look up the nearest street address to your position; double-tap to copy it in full.
On the Fun version the address refreshes automatically as you move.
Tap the destination pin on the map to open this screen. Type an address or pick a recent one — your favourites (★) come first, each with its distance — then tap Route to … at the bottom. The button beside it unfolds the settings in place: Walk, Drive or Bike, and what to refuse on the way — No highways, No tolls, No ferries. A Nearby row looks around the place you picked or around you: attractions, events, fuel, restaurants. Too far for a road — another continent? PathXplorer keeps the destination and draws an arc with the distance as the crow flies. The full-width Destination tile shows the address, the distance left, the travel mode and your arrival time. On the map, tap the checkered flag to see the whole trip, or long-press it to go and look at the destination; while recording, the start flag does the same for your trace — and so does the finish flag once you tap STOP. The red X clears the destination, after asking.
Free gives you 10 destination routes a day, Fun gives you 50.
The crosshair plots lateral (cornering) and longitudinal (braking/acceleration) G. At rest it is empty and X / Y / Z read 0.0; once you move, a red dot marks the force of the moment and a blue envelope grows around your session's peaks in every direction. The strip on the left tracks vertical G the same way. Ring and strip scales adapt to your session peaks, and X / Y / Z live values read out beside the crosshair.
A motorcycle half-circle gauge: the red needle is your live lean, the green dome is your left side, blue is your right. The white wedges carve out your trip maximums, and the numbers in the bottom corners show max left and max right. At rest the half-circle is plain grey and both corners read 0°.
The gyro auto-zeroes itself — mount your phone, ride, and the gauge calibrates. Your lean angle also appears in generated videos.
Steps taken this session, with your pace, your stride length and your cadence in steps per minute — all computed on-device from the step sensor.
Ambient temperature next to the "feels like" value, which accounts for wind — including the wind you create by moving. On a motorcycle at highway speed, the difference matters.
A wind rose oriented to your direction of travel: a black marker for your heading, a red arrow for where the wind hits you from, and the wind speed in the middle of the rose. Beside it, your head/tailwind component — red when it fights you, green when it pushes you — and in the corner the apparent wind angle, AWA.
The current sky in a few words — Clear, Overcast, Light rain shower… Beyond what's displayed, every track also records humidity, rain, snow, UV index and pressure at each point.
Fun unlocks the three weather tiles — Temperature with feels-like, the Wind rose with head/tailwind, and Condition — and with them, weather woven into your tracks, videos and PDF reports: humidity, rain, snow, UV and pressure recorded at every point of the ride.
The GPS interval range opens up at both ends: 1 and 2-second recording for maximum detail in the corners, and 2 or 10-minute intervals for multi-day expeditions where battery is everything.
Adaptive interval — a checkbox under the interval scale, free for everyone. Tick it and PathXplorer watches your motion signature: hold a steady speed on a straight line and recording relaxes by one step; the moment your course bends or your speed changes, full detail is back on the very next point. The map badge flips its colours and shows the relaxed interval while it works. At 1 s it is the best of both worlds: every corner in maximum detail, long straights at a lighter battery cost.
The Free version includes 5 geotagged photos per track — Fun removes the limit entirely. The Address tile starts refreshing itself as you move, and the daily limit on destination route calculations goes from 10 to 50.
Videos and PDF reports carry a discreet header with the app version and edition and a small PathXplorer credit — ready for your own channel or your students.
Tap any Fun feature in the app — a locked tile, a faster interval — and the upgrade dialog appears — Subscribe Now, or Maybe Later. It leads with what Fun gives you: no ads ever, 1- and 2-second GPS precision, battery-saver intervals up to ten minutes, and every dashboard tile unlocked. The subscription is handled by Google Play and cancellable there anytime. It costs $3.65 US per year — about a penny a day, with local pricing adjusted by country. The full Free vs Fun comparison is on the home page.
The price you subscribe at is yours for as long as you stay subscribed — future price increases never touch existing subscribers.
Install PathXplorer free and start recording everything — the other 49 steps will wait for you, one ride at a time.