Intro to the MyLocation app

The iPhone has terrific apps for showing you your location: Apple Maps and Google Maps.

But sometimes we are on the move, like walking or biking or driving, or on a train, and we want to see what our direction, speed, altitude, etc are. Or we might want to see a path drawn of where we have gone, and how long we've been on that path.

Or maybe we want to know how far away some location is, specified by touching a point on the map.

You can do this with this very simple app that gives you a quick and easy way to see these things.

The app...

This app contains 4 views: a "Map" view where everything is displayed, a "Settings" view to change where you are reporting in feet or meters, velocity in feet/sec or mph, things like that, a "Share" view for sending screen shots out via text, email, etc, and a "Help" view which basically has this information:

The Map screen shows your current position with a crosshair, along with your live location coordinates, velocity, altitude, and how fast your altitude is changing.

Controls are in the upper right corner:

Follow: turns "follow me" mode on and off. When on, the button is green and the map stays centered on you and moves as you move. Tap to turn follow on and snap back to your location; tap again to turn it off and leave the map where it is. Dragging the map also turns follow off automatically.

Pause/Resume: pauses and resumes the altitude trail. When running it is red and shows a pause symbol; while paused it turns orange and shows a play symbol, and no new points are added to the trail. Tap to resume.

Reset: clears the altitude trail and starts a fresh one from your current altitude.

Record path: records where you travel. Tap to start: your starting point is marked with a green dot, an orange line traces your path, and the distance and time are shown at the bottom. The button turns red with a stop symbol while recording — tap it to stop (the route stays on screen). Tap once more to clear it and start a new route. While recording, a blue pause button appears to its left; tap it to pause distance and time (tap again to resume). You can set how often a point is added in Settings.

Show Altitude: opens a small floating window with your altitude chart (see below). Tap again to hide it.

ALTITUDE PANEL

Tapping Show Altitude opens a window that plots your altitude over time between a top line (the current maximum) and a bottom line (0), so you can watch your altitude rise and fall. Your current altitude is the white dot at the far left; older readings trail off to the right and fade as they age, with a label at the bottom-right showing how far back the trail reaches. Every 25th reading is blue, so you can see the trail moving left-to-right even when your altitude isn't changing. It also shows your current altitude value, and your rate of climb and slope.

The window sits at the bottom-center of the map. The − / + buttons lower or raise the top of the scale to zoom the trail in or out (in 250 steps above 250, then finer 50-unit steps down to 50). The scale also raises itself automatically when your altitude climbs above the top, so the trail stays on-screen.

If updates pause while the app is in the background, a gray dashed vertical line is drawn in the chart to mark the gap, so a sudden jump in altitude is easy to spot.

READOUTS

Velocity: when you are moving, a blue arrow points in your direction of travel, with your speed and its accuracy shown at the tip (for example "3.4 ± 0.5 mph"). The arrow is a fixed size on screen and only shows direction — your actual speed is the number at its tip, not the arrow's length.
Height: your current altitude is shown in yellow in the altitude panel, in the elevation unit you picked in Settings.
Rate of climb and slope: the altitude panel shows how fast your altitude is changing — green with ▲ when climbing, red with ▼ when descending, gray with ▬ when level — in your elevation unit per second (ft/sec or m/sec), averaged over the last few seconds, along with the terrain slope in degrees while you are moving.
Distance & time: while a route is being recorded, a pill at the bottom of the map shows the distance you have traveled (in the Distance unit you picked in Settings — meters, feet, miles, or kilometers) and, below it, the elapsed time in HH:MM:SS. The time counts only while you are actively recording — pausing stops both distance and time (the pill turns gray). Both freeze when you stop and reset when you start a new route.
Measure: tap anywhere on the map to drop a pin and draw a line from your current location to that point. A pill at the top shows two distances, both in your Distance unit: "crow flies" is the straight-line distance to the pin, and "street" is the shortest distance along roads (traced by the indigo line). The street distance needs an internet connection; it shows "calculating…" while it works and "no route" if roads can't reach the point. Tap another spot to move the pin, or tap the ✕ on the pill to clear it.

SETTINGS

Use the Settings tab to choose your elevation unit, distance unit (meters, feet, miles, or kilometers), and velocity unit, how often a trail dot is added, how many seconds the slope readout is averaged over, and how often a point is added while recording a route. Your choices are saved, so the app reopens with the same settings.")

Tap the Share tab to grab a snapshot of the current map — including the crosshair, your route, and any readouts — and send it using the usual iOS options (Messages, Mail, Save Image, and so on). It captures what's on screen, so make sure the map shows what you want before tapping.

Disclaimer: Under no circumstances will any of the data you create with this app be shared with Apple, Google, NSA, China, Russia, or any other entity etc. That is, not by this App anyway!