Your Steps Count Now, Even With the App Closed. And a New Phone Brings Everything With It.

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Pamplona, on the Camino Francés. Nobody here is looking at their phone.

Until now, TrailQuest only knew how far you’d walked once you opened it.

You could walk 12,000 steps on a Saturday and, if you didn’t open the app, your friends saw you as inactive, the leaderboard didn’t move, and in the evening you might get a reminder that you hadn’t reached your goal yet. You had.

The last two updates fix that. They also make sure of something I learned the hard way this month: when you get a new phone, or reinstall the app, everything comes with you.

Steps in the Background

TrailQuest can now read your step count about once an hour, even when the app is closed. Your daily total, your streak and your place on the friends leaderboard stay current, and the evening reminder knows what you’ve already walked.

It only does this if you allow it. Android treats reading health data in the background as a separate permission, so the app asks for it separately. You’ll see a card on the steps screen, “Keep your steps up to date”, with an Allow button and a Not now button. If you say not now, the app won’t ask again.

You can change your mind any time in Settings → Background sync.

What the background check reads, and what it doesn’t:

• It reads your step count, and only your step count. Elevation and floors climbed, which the app uses for your HealthSpan score, are read only while the app is open.
• It runs about once an hour, only when your phone has a connection. Android decides the exact moment to save your battery, so it may be a little later.
• Nothing about this changes who sees your steps. Your total appears on the leaderboards and to friends you’ve added, as it always has. Step data is never sold and never used for advertising.

If you switch it off, nothing else changes. TrailQuest works as it did before: your steps update when you open the app.

A New Phone, and Everything Comes With You

On 15 October I moved my own phone from a test version of TrailQuest to the one on Google Play. That meant uninstalling the app and installing it again. I had asked myself whether anything would be lost. I was wrong about the answer.

After I signed in, I was back at the start of the Jesus Trail instead of on the Cesta hrdinov SNP. My HealthSpan score had dropped from 97 to 12. And the app congratulated me, seven times in a row, on trails I’d finished months ago.

None of it was lost on our server. The app simply hadn’t asked. It saw a fresh install, assumed a fresh start, and then saved that fresh start over my account.

If it happened to me, it happened to anyone who changed phones this year. So the fix went in straight away, in two steps:

• Version 1.3.6 brings back your trail and progress, your daily goal, your step history and your inventory. If the app finds an account it already knows, it skips the setup and asks only for the Health Connect permission, because that belongs to the phone, not the account. Finished trails stay finished, without the fanfare.
• Version 1.3.7 brings back the rest: your height, weight, age and gender (TrailQuest uses them for your step length and calories), your units, language and first day of the week, your profile privacy, and your 14-day HealthSpan chart.

Your streak, Trail Coins, shields, boosts, unlocked trails, badges and Pilgrim Passport were already stored with your account, and they still are.

The Newsletter, and Leaving

A few changes about your data, and one about how I write to you.

The newsletter grew up. When we started, I sent it by hand, from my own Gmail, in Slovak and English, to people most of whom I knew personally. That worked while TrailQuest was a bunch of friends. It isn’t any more. Today you walk in six languages and 30 time zones, from California to Japan and Australia, and a newsletter written in two languages and pasted into an email by hand doesn’t do you justice.

So from now on it goes out through Brevo, a European email service based in France:

• in your language, the one you use in the app;
• with an unsubscribe link in every email that works straight away;
• from an address that’s properly verified, so it’s less likely to end up in spam.

Brevo also tells us whether each email arrived, was opened or was clicked. That lets us remove addresses that no longer work and see what you actually want to read about. Brevo handles your email address only on our behalf, and the privacy policy says so.

It’s still me writing it.

The newsletter now has a switch. You’ll find it in Settings → Newsletter. It’s a few emails a month about new trails and features, written by me. If you already have a TrailQuest account, you’re receiving it because of that account, and you can switch it off there in one tap. New accounts see one line about it at the end of the setup. It’s on by default, and off is one tap away.

Deleting your account now deletes everything. When you tap Delete my account in Settings, the deletion now happens in one step on our server: your profile, steps, streak, badges, Trail Coins, friendships, your photo, your sign-in, and your newsletter subscription. You can also ask for it on the web.

The privacy policy says all of this in full, including who sends the newsletter for us.

Trail Buddies: The Season Has Just Begun

The Trail Buddies season started a week ago and runs until 31 December, so there’s plenty of time. Invite a friend who’s new to TrailQuest with your personal link (Social → Friends). They get a Streak Shield and 50 Ŧ to start, and you get rewards as they reach 3, 5 and 7 days.

Results are on 1 January. Places 2 to 4 will choose their prize trail right in the app. How Trail Buddies works.

What Else Is New

• A faster, steadier start. On some phones the app could stay on the splash screen when one of the services it starts with didn’t answer. It no longer waits for them.
• No more freezing on Health Connect on older Android phones, where reading your elevation could block the screen.
• Signing up with Google works for everyone. If your name has an accent or a space in it (á, ł, ö…), the app could close during sign-up. Fixed.
• The Middle-earth map no longer gets stuck while downloading. If the connection drops, there’s a Retry button.
• Under the hood: the latest Google Play billing, a smaller app, and screens that use the whole display on every Android version.