If you want to walk 10,000 steps a day, these are some of the walking apps that can help to make it happen.
There’s no better time to stretch your legs in the great outdoors – and some of the best walking apps can help you make the most of your time. Here is a selection of apps that we recommend. Nearly all offer excellent functionality for free, with some offering paid or subscription options for more advanced features.
Step tracker:
NHS Active 10 (Pictured)
This app is great for beginners and gives motivation to take brisk walks. The app tracks your walking and you can earn rewards for every brisk minute of walking you do. The aim is to complete at least 10 minutes of brisk walking each day. You can track your progress and set your own goals.
StepsApp
This app is user friendly and works like a pedometer to count your steps daily / weekly / monthly. There are motivational features like the “steps bot” for friendly competition with friends, helping you to easily monitor activity, burn calories, and improve fitness.
Fit bit App
Despite its name, you don’t need a Fitbit watch as this app uses your phone to log steps, distance, calories, active minutes, pace, and maps routes (with GPS). It can connect in with other apps like MyFitnessPal and Strava, whilst encouraging motivation with step goals, challenges, friend leaderboards, and badges.
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Step tracker:
Walk 15 (Pictured)
Another app that is great for beginners and motivates through its fun step challenges for individuals, friends, or workplaces. There’s even a chance to sign up to the “Swindon” team and compete against other European cities during European Mobility Week each September.
MapMyWalk
With the MapMyWalk app you can track and map every walk. As the name suggests, while you’re walking the app maps your route using GPS. I like the fact that you can save your favourite paths and add new ones too. The app also allows you to see what your friends are doing on your activity feed.
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Strava (Pictured)
Strava is a highly-rated fitness app. Whilst it is primarily built for runners and cyclists, Strava is a solid, reliable app for tracking walks, offering accurate GPS, social motivation (kudos, following friends), and good basic data (distance, pace, time) for free.
Gamification
World Walking
The World Walking app combines real world steps that you record on your phone with a virtual journey of your choosing. As you clock up the steps, you will be able to see your progress on a route, whether that’s from Trieste to Ljubljana or from New York to Toronto. You can join routes with friends to compare progress.
At the time of writing, the app is only available to i-phone users.
Stepdog
StepDog is a popular Apple Watch and iPhone app that gamifies step tracking by giving you a virtual dog that evolves as you hit daily goals, motivating users with cute animations and challenges. You will need to take out a subscription to unlock additional features.
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Walking Route apps
Go Jauntly (Pictured)
Go Jauntly is a community-driven walking routes app aimed at discovering local routes. The routes contain photos, step by step directions and a map, as well as other useful information – be it historical, art, or where the nearest bus stops or toilet stops are. Swindon Travel Choices has been loading Swindon routes onto this app, so we would love for you to download it, search for “Swindon” and enjoy the walks.
Wiltshire Walks (Subscription required)
This app is free to download and shows over 250 GPS-enabled walking routes around the beautiful county of Wiltshire. There’s a variety of terrains, distances and difficulty.
To unlock the routes you will need to pay for a subscription, but a month’s subscription is less than a price of a cup of coffee, so offers good value if you are planning to explore the county regularly.
Pokemon Go
Whilst not marketed as a walking app, you need to walk to get the most out of the Pokemon Go game. The app encourages players to go outside, walk around, and explore their local communities to find and catch Pokémon and visit real-world landmarks that serve as PokéStops and Gyms. By walking, you hatch eggs, gain weekly rewards and complete special research tasks.
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