One of the most used and popular apps on Android for tracking your routes during runs, cycling sessions or other exercise activities outside, My Tracks, will be closed down by Google starting April 30th, 2016. My Tracks has been around for years and currently has somewhere between 10 million and 50 million installs with a 4.2 rating. More than tracking your route and recording the paths you take while on excursions, My Tracks also records your distance traveled, and it can also calculate your speed and elevation, all of which can be viewed later on through maps, charts, and stats pages for a more comprehensive look at all the data.
Google doesn’t explicitly state what the exact reasons are for bringing this app offline, but they do mention that they’ve had to come to a tough decision in shutting the app down so they can put more effort and focus towards other mapping projects, which suggests that maybe it hasn’t been getting as much use in recent times thus leading to Google’s choice to close the app and stop support. What this means for users is that they’ll need to make the necessary arrangements to export their data to another location, and even though there are still a few months of time before April 30th comes along, there’s no reason to wait as moving to a new app sooner than later can be beneficial.
Should users choose to continue interacting with My Tracks up until the shutdown period, Google states that they can still export their data after April 30th, but they do not give a time frame of how long they will let users access that data to export it out. Over on the announcement page Google gives a handy series of steps to moving the data elsewhere should users want to keep any of it, and alongside that useful information, there is a list of other alternatives to My Tracks which can provide a similar if not the same experience. Apps like Endomondo, Strava, Map My Run, Map My hike, and of course, Google Fit, are all options that can tracks routes and provide fitness related data during exercise, all of which also have a wide following and work pretty well.