New Strava Route Planning Feature Update!

Strava has added a new feature for Subscribers that lets you see photos while route planning on desktop now, and more specifically, lets you see the exact location of said photos. This is a major upgrade over the Strava route-photo feature introduced earlier this year that showed you photos along a created route, but not their location nor allowed you to plan based on them. Additionally, it brings it closer to Komoot’s photo-based route planning features.

Given I use route planning tools and in particular, photos, very regularly to create my routes, I figured I’d give this a spin. I find photos incredibly useful in figuring out whether or not a route is:


A) Safe (especially for cycling, but sometimes running/etc…)
B) The type of road surface/terrain I want: Namely to ensure a road is a road, and gravel is actually gravel-ish, and MTB is something else entirely different
C) Finding pretty spots to see, life is a journey and all that

It’s largely no accident that most of the epic rides/trail runs/hikes/etc I do look amazing on Strava or Instagram. It’s because I spend time to ensure the views are going to be amazing.

So, with that, let’s take a look look at how this works. First up, some technical details that are worth noting:


A) Only photos on *BOTH* activities marked as ‘Public’ and profiles marked as ‘Public’ will show up (meaning, if you have a ‘Followers-Only’ profile, your photos are not part of this, even if a given activity is set as full public.

B) Photos from you within any of your privacy zones are not included either (obviously, since privacy zones are wide swaths of areas, if other people take photos in your zone, that doesn’t matter).

C) Photos excluded from photo sharing (here) are also excluded here, regardless of whether or not your profile or activity is set to public

D) Photos should not contain human bodies (cows are OK), faces, or bikes. According to Strava, that’s being filtered out algorithmically.

E) Included photos will be updated every 48 hours, and photos older than 12 months are being excluded

F) This update is specifically targeted at desktop (web browser), and specifically for Subscribers

Now, to start, crack open the desktop site, and find a place you want to go. You’ll immediately start to see some bubbles with photos on them. This isn’t all the photos, this is just a few ones that the Strava gods have deemed noteworthy. Ironically, having been to those locations many times, I’d argue they missed the boat here on places that should actually be highlighted.