Follow Me on the Map

With Follow Me on, the map in Ride Mode and Navigate moves with you as you ride, so your dot stays in view and you never have to drag the map to find yourself.

How the Map Keeps Up With You

Your dot moves freely through the middle of the map. The first time it gets within about a tenth of the screen of an edge of the open part of the map (clear of the panels), the map zooms out one step. The next time your dot reaches an edge, the map centers on your dot and from then on moves with you, keeping your dot in the middle so it's always on screen. The map never turns.

Tapping Center on Me, or picking Follow Me back up after a pause, starts fresh: the map may zoom out one step again the next time you near an edge.

Zoom In at Intersections

While the map is following you and you're moving, it zooms in as you come up on a junction of roads or trails, about 9 seconds before you reach it, so you can see the turn up close. Once you're through, it zooms back out to where it was. It works with any road, track or trail drawn on the map, including on a downloaded map with no signal.

Zoom In at Intersections is on until you turn it off, either in Map Settings under Following or in the You tab under On the Trail. Your choice follows your account to your other devices.

Your Dot

Your own dot has an arrow built into it and a soft beam ahead of it (Red, White and Blue unless you pick another Dot Style in Map Settings, a Pro feature). The arrow always shows which way you're facing: the direction you're riding while you move, and your phone's compass when you're stopped, so it turns as you turn. The beam is long while you ride and shorter when you stop. The dot takes its stopped look as soon as your phone reports you've stopped, or after a short while with no new location (about 8 seconds; in Ride Mode on Android phones and tablets using the basic map instead of Mapbox, about 25 seconds with Balanced and about 37 seconds with Max Battery Saver, which update less often). It stays true when you turn the map. On the Mapbox map in the iPhone, iPad and Android apps, if your device has no compass reading while you're stopped, the dot shows a round centre with no arrow instead of guessing a direction; the basic map and the website keep pointing the last way you were heading.

The Follow Me Button

Follow Me sits on the map just left of the round Center on Me button.

Follow Me is on until you turn it off. Your phone remembers the choice for Ride Mode and Navigate alike, and you can also switch it in the You tab under On the Trail: Follow Me on Maps.

From 2.1 these switches are also under Following in Map Settings (the round Map Settings button on Ride Mode's and Map Mode's map): Follow Me, Zoom Out at the Edge and Zoom In at Intersections. Turn Zoom Out at the Edge off and the map centers on your dot and moves with you the first time you near an edge, without zooming out first; it's also on the You tab under On the Trail. The zoom switches work while Follow Me is on.

With Follow Me off, Center on Me still centers the map on you once, and Navigate doesn't move the map by itself, even while you record or follow a trail.

In Navigate the map holds still while the Measure tab is open, and when you jump to a place with search.

In Full Map

In Full Map, Follow Me stays on the map as a round arrow button next to Center on Me, so the map stays as big as it can be.

On Each Device

• iPhone and Android phones: Follow Me and Center on Me sit on the right, just above the bottom panel. If the panel fills the screen, fold it to see them.
• iPad and Android tablets: both sit at the bottom of the map, just left of the buttons panel in Ride Mode, and in the bottom corner in Navigate.
• Website: Navigate has Follow Me too, and shows your arrow when your browser reports your direction (most phones do while you move; computers usually don't). Ride Mode on the website shows the route instead of a live map, so it has no Follow Me button.

The website has no compass, so on onmylead.com your dot keeps pointing the last way you were heading when you stop.