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Every now and then, one picture says more than a thousand words...
Strava's high-quality heatmap
The picture shows the global heatmap found on Strava's website. It shows Strava users' outings for the chosen activity type (bike, running shoes, water, winter sports), gathered from the last couple of years. A strong colour and a wide trace tell you about "heat" — that there are plenty of people and outings on that path — while a single thin line tells you there have been hardly any. Often even a single outing produces at least a thin line, so if there's no trace at all on some road or trail, then at the very least no Strava users have been there recently.
Strava's heatmap is a useful aid for route planning. It's not worth using on its own, but on top of a suitable base map — Trailmap's default map, for example — it helps with route choices: you can see where the most popular paths run, and whether there's a lot of traffic on paths that aren't even on the base map. In practice, making use of the heatmap means constantly showing and hiding it to see what's on the base map underneath. The Trailmap app's keyboard shortcuts help here:
- The spacebar, i.e. "space" briefly hides the route lines and dims the main map layer, which helps when viewing overlays — for example, if the overlay is Digiroad's "Paved road" layer, the road surface information takes the leading role in the map view
- The Esc key, i.e. "Escape" briefly dims the overlays, which is handy if you have strong overlays selected, such as Digiroad "DR Paved road" or the Strava heatmaps, which stop you seeing the base map underneath where the roads and paths are.
- The number key "3" does the same as the Esc key, but works slightly differently: successive presses hide and restore the overlays. This way you can, for example, bring the overlays into view every so often while drawing a route, and then hide them once you've made the important observations, so the base map shows better.
The heatmap should be read with care: it's a recording of outings and therefore truthful, but it doesn't tell you the season. Some even of the strong heatmap traces only make sense in winter or in summer, and there's no way to see that directly from the heatmap trace — you either have to guess or get the information some other way. But the heatmap's most important benefit is to give extra information for route choices, not to act as your only guide.
Strava's heatmaps
There are different Strava heatmaps: as mentioned above, drawn according to different activity types, or as a combination including all of them. There are also two qualities of heatmap — the high-quality version shown in the first picture, and the basic-quality version shown in the picture below.
Strava's basic-quality heatmap
The difference is significant, and it's easy to wonder why you'd use the basic quality at all. The difference is in how easy the heatmap is to use: neither heatmap is an officially supported Strava service, but both are nevertheless available unofficially, by slightly different means. The basic quality is easier to use, while the high quality takes a bit more fiddling.
The details of both heatmaps and how to set them up can be found in this article on the OSM Wikipedia. Here's the essential part, derived from the article and simplified:
Basic-quality heatmap: https://heatmap-external-{s}.strava.com/tiles/ride/bluered/{z}/{x}/{y}.png?px=256 is the tile map URL, and the "max native zoom" is 12. Put these details into a "custom map" you create in Trailmap and you'll get the map showing in the map view
Note! At the moment Strava's high-quality heatmap doesn't work in the Trailmap web version, only in the mobile app. On top of that, working out the settings that work takes a deep dive into whatever method happens to work at the time. Unfortunately I can't give more detailed support here.
High-quality heatmap: the URL is user-specific, and you can use the instructions in the Wikipedia article mentioned above to work it out. Once you've worked out a URL that works, you need to save it in Trailmap as a custom map. You'll find this function under "Maps" in the main menu, as the option "Custom maps", and there at the bottom of the list choose "Create map".
The picture below gives you an idea of the form; you'll find more information in this support article. Paste the URL you copied to the clipboard earlier into the corresponding field on the form. And change the "max native zoom" for the high-quality heatmap to "15".
Defining a Trailmap "custom map"
It's worth saving the heatmaps as overlays, so they're easy to put on top of different base maps as needed. Finally, switch on the Strava heatmap you created from the "Custom maps" list as an "overlay" — that is, in the list, tick the box second from the left on that map layer's row.
Strava as a service
Strava is clearly the most popular global service where enthusiasts of various activities can store their outings. Transfer usually works directly from all kinds of sports watches, bike computers and mobile apps — Garmin, Suunto, Polar and so on all support syncing outings straight to Strava. So after a ride you don't necessarily have to do anything to get it transferred to Strava.
And once an outing is in Strava, others can see it, and the information about outings can be used not only in Strava but in numerous other apps — Trailmap, for example, can show Strava activities directly on the Trailmap map. You can then look at individual outings ("activities" in Strava terms) or several at once, which gives you a kind of personal heatmap, as the picture below illustrates.
Strava activities in the Trailmap app
Basic use of Strava is free; extra features require subscribing to a plan. Even the basic features are pretty versatile, and Strava benefits from these free users too, because every user extends Strava's data and social network. If you find yourself using the service regularly, or making use of its data in the form of the heatmap for example, I'd recommend subscribing to the annual plan — as well as the extra features, you'll be supporting the excellent work this service has been doing for a long time.