Google announced that after April 30th, one of its activity tracking apps, called My Tracks, will no longer be available. The company explained that it was a tough decision to shutter the app, but Google wants to invest time in “other, more wide-reaching, mapping projects”. Unlike many other fitness tracking apps available today, Google's My Tracks was squarely focused on the mapping side of outdoor activity tracking.

The app, which Google first launched way back in 2009, records the user’s path, speed, distance, and elevation during walks, runs, and bike rides. Users can view their data, annotate their path, and hear periodic voice announcements of their progress. The app also syncs with a number of third party activity tracking devices like Zephyr and Polar. It also integrates with other Google products, allowing users to view their data in Google Maps, Google Fusion Tables and Google Docs.


Even after My Tracks shuts down, users will still be able to export their activity data to Drive or in other formats like KML, GPX, CSV, and TCX, after that date.

In the announcement, Google provided users with suggestions of other apps they could download to replace My Tracks based on what features they used most in the app. These apps include Google Fit, another activity tracking app Google offers, as well as Strava, Endomondo, MapMyRun, MapMyHike, GPS Logger for Android, and GPX Viewer.

Google also offers two other apps with activity tracking features.

In late 2012, Google quietly added activity tracking to Google Now, an Android-only app that uses Google services to smartly deliver users various kinds of information to help them throughout their day – without them having to ask. The feature delivers a monthly activity report of time spent walking or cycling, measured passively by the phone itself, and displays it alongside the previous month’s data for comparison.

The company unveiled its newest activity tracking app, Google Fit, in June 2014. The app tracks activity but also aggregates data from other apps and devices like Android Wear, Nike+, Runkeeper, Strava, MyFitnessPal, Lifesum, Basis, Withings, and Xiaomi Mi bands. A year after launching the app, Google added a few of new fitness features to Google Fit. The update added the ability to track calories burned and distance travelled, provided the user enters their gender, height and weight in the app.