MyTracks was a GPS tracking application that runs on Android. The application uses a device's GPS to collect data, allowing real-time review of path, speed, distance, and elevation. Later, this data can be saved to Google Maps, Google Fusion Tables, or Google Docs and shared with Google+, Facebook, or Twitter. The application also allows a user to record annotations along the path, hear periodic voice announcements of progress, and sync with select third-party bio-metric sensors. Google has announced that as of the 1stMay 2016, MyTracks will be deprecated and no longer available in the Google Play Store. The app itself continues to work and is still available to sideload via APK repositories. An in-app popup alerted users that MyTracks would stop working on April 30, 2016; Google has confirmed they will be investing in "other, more wide-reaching, mapping projects".
Features
Record path, speed, distance, and elevation
View data live, record annotations along the path, and hear periodic voice announcements of progress
The application made its debut on February 12, 2009 under a closed license. A year later on March 28, 2010, Google announced the release of the source code and open-sourcing of the application, stating "The collective intelligence of the development community will create a more powerful, more intuitive, more useful, and more robust My Tracks." The first major re-haul of the application came on July 13, 2012 when Google released version 2.0 of the application. Version 2.0 introduced a new interface, support for playing back data in Google Earth for Android, improved charts, and additional statistics. In 2014 the developers announced on the google code project site that My Tracks is no longer developed in the open and that the source will be removed on 01/01/2015. The last open source version was 2.0.5 released in August 2013.
Reception
As of September 2013, the GooglePlay Store listed the application as being installed on 10,000,000 – 50,000,000 devices, with an overall rating of 4.4/5 from over 80,000 reviews. CNET gave the application 4/5 stars, praising its "Chart, Statistics, and satellite playback" and ability to pause recordings but criticized it for an "unattractive interface" and lack of "athletic-specific features". PCWorld awarded MyTracks with a perfect 5/5 stars, stating "this app is just about perfect. It is intuitive to use and very stable." However, PCWorld did mention they would like to see a few features added.
Forks
OpenTracks is an open source fork of Google's MyTrack that respects privacy. It is actively developed, in 2020 Version 3.7.x was published.
