Strava’s new Night Heatmaps aim to make subscribers safer in the dark

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go for a run without worrying about getting hurt? Technology has a way of both making us safer and putting us at greater risk while we’re on the road, but a new tool from Strava can help with the former. Strava has announced Night Heatmaps, a feature that shows which areas have more activity (or “heat”) between sunset and sunrise. Yes, Heatmaps is the feature that is accidentally activated revealed the location of US military bases.

The update is welcome as sunset starts very early in some parts of the world, while the night seems to last until late morning. It also comes along with a new weekly heat map, which shows heat levels in an area over the past seven days. Again, this can help you know which trails will be most crowded, but at any time of day. While this extra awareness is great for knowing where to go, some people may also purposefully choose to avoid the busiest times for fear of unwanted attention (there’s no winning here).

In either case, the Nightly and Weekly Heatmaps are only available on subscriber accounts (membership costs $12 per month or $80 per year). It’s also worth noting that Heatmaps exclusively consist of public activities on Stravaso you don’t get the full story of how many people are going where.

Nightly and weekly heatmaps join the global heatmaps (also exclusive to subscribers) and your personal heatmap. You can access them all from the Map tab and filter the Heatmap by activity type.