Forty-two short steps, in the exact order you'll live them: install the app, set it up your way, learn the buttons on your map, master the dashboard, meet all fifteen 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 — precise location, background location, notifications, activity recognition, camera and battery optimization. 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:
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.
GPS Update Frequency — how often a point is recorded, from every second to every 10 minutes. The number in the green dot also rides on the map's gear button, so you always know the current setting at a glance.
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.
Unit System — Metric, Imperial or Nautical: every tile, video and report follows your choice.
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:
Full Data — everything stays live: map tiles, weather, live groups and route calculation. A typical ride costs a few MB.
Eco Data — keeps the map drawing and a weather refresh every three hours; skips the heavier extras like live groups and routing.
No 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 exactly what the app has used this month.
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), the beta-testing program, and links to updates, this site and support.
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 switch 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 two seconds and it sends your exact position by email — with a map snapshot, the nearest address and your recent trail. 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 and your last known position, nothing else. 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, ready to replay on the map, rename, or turn into something. 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 (a Fun-version treat). 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. Under each choice, the dialog shows the exact clip length 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 Fun treat, and 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, readable by other 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, coordinates, battery 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 95 km ride to Montréal — max lean 41.5° — exactly as the app produced it. Click it to read the whole thing.
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 in real time, and a green dot on the button means you're sharing. New to it? Join the group called world and watch explorers move around the planet.
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 fifteen.
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 four.
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 (look up an address, switch a gauge on), double-tap copies the tile's current value to the clipboard — coordinates, speed, anything — and long-press moves the tile.
Local time and UTC side by side, with 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 above 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 together, with a live sparkline of your recent climb and descent — the shape of the hill you're on, at a glance.
Three ring gauges in one tile: your current speed in the large center ring, session average on the left, session maximum on the right. The scale adapts automatically to your fastest speed so the rings 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 to six decimal places — about 10 cm of precision.
Double-tap to copy your exact coordinates — perfect for sending your position to someone.
The nearest street address to your position, laid out street-first across the tile. Tap to look up where you are right now; double-tap to copy the full address.
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, choose Walk, Drive, or Bike, and PathXplorer draws the route to it — and the full-width Destination tile shows how far you have left. Clear destination wipes it when you arrive.
On the Fun version, destination route calculations grow tenfold.
The crosshair plots lateral (cornering) and longitudinal (braking/acceleration) G — the red dot is right now, and the blue envelope grows around your session's peak forces 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 — the numbers at the bottom corners show max left and max right, with your current angle in the center.
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 cadence (steps per minute) and stride length — 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 — the arrow shows where the wind hits you from, not just a compass direction. Alongside it: wind speed and your head/tailwind component, red when it fights you, green when it pushes you.
The current sky in one word — Clear, Overcast, Rain… 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. Playback gains the 10× speed mode to replay a long ride in moments.
The Free version includes 5 geotagged photos per track — Fun removes the limit entirely. The Address tile starts refreshing itself as you move, address lookups become unlimited, and destination route calculations grow tenfold.
Videos and PDF reports generated on Fun carry no PathXplorer promo badges — clean frames, 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; 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 41 steps will wait for you, one ride at a time.