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Feedback on: New Mobile App Interface for Activities (bad UI decisions)


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My opinion:  There are some poor UI choices in the updated Activity viewing interface on the Android app (February 2025 update).  This is the interface you see when you click on an activity in your feed.

1) Half the screen, upon clicking, is Strava’s terrible default map (and not the map chosen by the user, e.g. “Dirt”, etc).  Photos should be the key attraction.  

  • Photos are what make people click an activity.  The new interface hides the most interesting feature and it replaces with Strava's WORST POSSIBLE MAP OPTION (my opinion).  
  • This “default map”, which takes up half the page, should either be updated or killed.  It shows ALMOST NOTHING USEFUL.  No town names, no surface types (dirt vs pavement), no scale bars or mileage markers to indicate distance.  It's just a route shape with little meaningful context -- and takes up half the screen in this view.
  • Clicking the map...  Gives almost nothing extra.  You get town names, but no other useful context.  For instance, if I chose DIRT as my default map, shouldn't this map show surface type?   
  • It seems like an objectively a poor map interface.  Anytime anybody tries to show me where they've ridden using Strava, they give up and open another app instead (Google Maps, RidewithGPS, etc).  It's almost impossible to find a zoom level that shows the road names that are part of the route, while still being zoomed out enough to show context, among other UI issues.  This map doesn’t leverage so many of Strava’s useful mapping/routing features.  It seems like a waste.

2) Photos are hidden beyond a tiny little box/button.  And clicking that box doesn't take you to the full-screen photos!  It gives you a square (i.e. terribly cropped) highlight image. Swiping brings you to the next image, meaning YOU NEVER SEE THE UNCROPPED VERSION OF THE HIGHLIGHT IMAGE!  It gets skipped.  That's seems like a poor design.  

3) When looking at photos in this mode, FIGURE CAPTIONS ARE INVISIBLE.  There's not even an indication that there MIGHT be a caption, so you don't know that you should click the photo to see it.  Want to see the figure captions?  It's like a game of whack-a-mole.  Click.  Is there a caption?  No.  Exit from photo (b/c you can't just scroll to the next one).  Click the next photo.  Is there a caption?  No? Exit photo.  *If your goal is to remove the utility of photo captions completely, well, congratulations.  You did it!*  

4) In the "slideshow" of photos, portrait photos are cut off on the edges, but landscape photos are uncropped and letterboxed.  Why this inconsistent mix?  Just show the entire photo (uncropped) since you are in photo viewing mode.  If you are going to crop a photo, give a clear visual indication that it is cropped, so users can choose to click and see the whole thing.  But it would be better not to crop the image at all.  Exceptions could be made for extreme aspect ratios (e.g., panorama images).

Thanks for (hopefully) considering to this feedback!

25 replies

Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • Author
  • Hub Rookie
  • 3 replies
  • February 23, 2025

That all caps text is much harsher-sounding than I was planning - sorry about that!  I know you folks are working to try to improve things. 

Minor error in my initial post:  The preview of the default map *may* show place names depending on Zoom level and population density of an area.  My first look at this map was after a long rural bike ride (i.e., empty map, except for red route).

I still can't believe how invisible the photo captions have become.  Its doubtful photo captions will be seen at all, unless somebody is using the website, not the app.
 


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • February 23, 2025

How do I get the old App UX back again? This new UX is a disaster. It crashes constantly. Maps are blurred out. Cannot zoom into a map. When I open friends activity in feed it crashes and have to try again. Who tested this mess? It is like a BETA release. Please roll it back. Ghastly.


Forum|alt.badge.img+5
  • Hub Rookie
  • 4 replies
  • February 24, 2025

I agree, the new user interface is terrible for all the reasons mentioned, what were they thinking 🤪


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • February 25, 2025

I don't like it. Strava what have you done 😩


Forum|alt.badge.img+3
  • Hub Starter
  • 9 replies
  • February 26, 2025

Looks like Strava is in a process of enshittification for a while. 

 

Instead of solving problems such as automatic flagging of activities made in vehicles they have removed possibility of URLs to activities, removed all data that I've added over there years and now this awesome AI.

 

I'll be installing an older apk version from internet. 


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • February 26, 2025

For the life of me, roll back the old activity view. No one asked for this. One of the most important things to me is to easily see the heatmap on the map of my or my friends' activities. This new update removes all that along with making viewing photos a worse experience. Strava is a social app, photos should not be a 2nd class citizen that you have to jump through hurdles to view. FIX IT OR ROLL IT BACK!


Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • February 26, 2025

i hate strava devs that made this UI update


Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • February 27, 2025

Since a few days ago opening an activity in the Strava iOS app shows a new full screen view. I greatly miss being able to tap between the “home” and “you” tabs when looking at activities. 
 

I like to open an activity by someone I’m following (which would be displayed in the home tab) and then select one of my own activities in the you tab. Then I could quickly switch back and forth to compare our efforts.


With the new setup you have to completely back out of any activity to see the bottom navigation bar. Please show the navigation bar at all times or at least as a compromise show it once you reach the bottom of the full screen activity.
 

Seeing how I stack up to my friends is a great way to keep me motivated so I really miss being able to switch between these tabs easily.


Forum|alt.badge.img+8
  • Hub Rookie
  • 6 replies
  • February 28, 2025

100% agree, the update is really poorly designed.


Forum|alt.badge.img+8
  • Hub Rookie
  • 6 replies
  • February 28, 2025

I wanted to share some feedback regarding the recent mobile app updates, specifically around the activity editing and viewing features. The map functionality has become quite difficult to use, and the quick edit feature often gets in the way and doesn’t save properly. It’s a bit frustrating, to be honest.

I’d be interested in joining or helping create a beta testing group to provide more detailed feedback. It seems like some of the updates are not properly test, and it would be helpful to get more user input before pushing out these changes.


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • February 28, 2025

You guys write like you apologize or something…i do not understand as we (mostly i think) pay for this app every month and what we get is dissapointing.

 

Fact is that this update is total disaster. 
 

It is laggy when  checking the map - even on new powerful phone.

No compas is „OK”, we dont need to rotate back any incidental rotation cause anyway checking map of activity is useless. It has some poor layer now, there is no overlaping of heatmaps so we can no more check if friends took some new trails or shortcuts cause its not visible there. 

There are literally tons of nice possibilities to implement; more segment stats (averages, best 10 etc) segment PR comparison list with selected profile, photos location on Maps, navigation itself..

But you spend time and resources on things noone needed.

It is a great idea above, to create such testing Group, and oh my… if its not there yet, how bad is that.

Please improve and revert these last bad changes, most people will never get here to comment, but will just quietly switch to other app with such experience.


Forum|alt.badge.img

+1 for reversing this terrible UI. It’s incredibly slow to load a post when clicked on because it tries to figure out loading the map first, then separately opening the post and loading it as well. Now if i accidentally select a post it takes much longer to exit out of that post. 


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • March 3, 2025
Cyclo_Saurus wrote:

My opinion:  There are some poor UI choices in the updated Activity viewing interface on the Android app (February 2025 update).  This is the interface you see when you click on an activity in your feed.

1) Half the screen, upon clicking, is Strava’s terrible default map (and not the map chosen by the user, e.g. “Dirt”, etc).  Photos should be the key attraction.  

  • Photos are what make people click an activity.  The new interface hides the most interesting feature and it replaces with Strava's WORST POSSIBLE MAP OPTION (my opinion).  
  • This “default map”, which takes up half the page, should either be updated or killed.  It shows ALMOST NOTHING USEFUL.  No town names, no surface types (dirt vs pavement), no scale bars or mileage markers to indicate distance.  It's just a route shape with little meaningful context -- and takes up half the screen in this view.
  • Clicking the map...  Gives almost nothing extra.  You get town names, but no other useful context.  For instance, if I chose DIRT as my default map, shouldn't this map show surface type?   
  • It seems like an objectively a poor map interface.  Anytime anybody tries to show me where they've ridden using Strava, they give up and open another app instead (Google Maps, RidewithGPS, etc).  It's almost impossible to find a zoom level that shows the road names that are part of the route, while still being zoomed out enough to show context, among other UI issues.  This map doesn’t leverage so many of Strava’s useful mapping/routing features.  It seems like a waste.

2) Photos are hidden beyond a tiny little box/button.  And clicking that box doesn't take you to the full-screen photos!  It gives you a square (i.e. terribly cropped) highlight image. Swiping brings you to the next image, meaning YOU NEVER SEE THE UNCROPPED VERSION OF THE HIGHLIGHT IMAGE!  It gets skipped.  That's seems like a poor design.  

3) When looking at photos in this mode, FIGURE CAPTIONS ARE INVISIBLE.  There's not even an indication that there MIGHT be a caption, so you don't know that you should click the photo to see it.  Want to see the figure captions?  It's like a game of whack-a-mole.  Click.  Is there a caption?  No.  Exit from photo (b/c you can't just scroll to the next one).  Click the next photo.  Is there a caption?  No? Exit photo.  *If your goal is to remove the utility of photo captions completely, well, congratulations.  You did it!*  

4) In the "slideshow" of photos, portrait photos are cut off on the edges, but landscape photos are uncropped and letterboxed.  Why this inconsistent mix?  Just show the entire photo (uncropped) since you are in photo viewing mode.  If you are going to crop a photo, give a clear visual indication that it is cropped, so users can choose to click and see the whole thing.  But it would be better not to crop the image at all.  Exceptions could be made for extreme aspect ratios (e.g., panorama images).

Thanks for (hopefully) considering to this feedback!

Commenting to help Strava see this.

 

I HATE the new UI! It's not user friendly.

 

I tried to delete a photo and deleted my entire activity! I was able to restore it, but of course I lost all the kudos and comments.

 

Apparently, in order to delete a photo, you have to go into 'edit activity' (which is now harder to find), and delete from there. The old simple option of clicking on a photo, and it bringing up the 'delete photo' option is gone. Now, when you click on a photo, there's a 'delete' option, but it DELETES YOUR ENTIRE ACTIVITY!


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • March 3, 2025

I HATE the new UI! It's not user friendly.

 

I tried to delete a photo and deleted my entire activity! I was able to restore it, but of course I lost all the kudos and comments.

 

Apparently, in order to delete a photo, you have to go into 'edit activity' (which is now harder to find), and delete from there. The old simple option of clicking on a photo, and it bringing up the 'delete photo' option is gone. Now, when you click on a photo, there's a 'delete' option, but it DELETES YOUR ENTIRE ACTIVITY!


jdujic
Forum|alt.badge.img+4
  • Hub Rookie
  • 6 replies
  • March 3, 2025

Please roll back this ill-advised change nobody asked for. This is probably the worst feature to ever appear on Strava since I remember (last 5 years). I can grant that the last couple of years there was a steady stream of (mostly) improvements (save for lame “Athlete Intelligence”), but this one rolled everything back.

The new UI tries to cram the map, stats and photos onto a single page, and fails in every aspect. There was nothing wrong with the previous design where the front page entry contained a “summary” and users could click on the map, on the activity heading or on a photo to delve into appropriate details. Perhaps that was not the greatest UI experience in the universe, but it was decent enough and everyone was used to it. The new one is just bad, however I approach it. Other posters provided more details, but in my opinion this is just so bad it should be reverted wholesale.

Remember that subscribers are Strava’s bread and butter, and I can tell you for sure that you are about to lose at least one with this stupid move.

 


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The new strava app is crap it doesn't show other people's feedback in order not happy 


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • March 5, 2025

I just registered here and post for the first time so I can join to say: yes the photo UI change was terrible. You can't view the full image or the description without "opening the photo," then once you open it you can't do anything other than go back and repeat for the next photo... no swipe left or right for the next image... who tested this and let it pass UX??


Forum|alt.badge.img+1

For the worst is the loss of segment information when you click on the map. I used to tick the segments to see where they were in the map, now you have to go through the segment list and click one by one which opens in standalone map. Not very useful or quick to interact as before.


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • March 9, 2025

I HATE the new UI! It's not user friendly.

also to add to your very vell summarized feedback. It also KEEPS CRASHING. LIKE CONSTANTLY. The map flyover feature or simply clicking into the map to see the route results in crashing, reopening and then crashing again. 

 

please fix. why did the destroy a perfectly good strava... i don't get it 


Forum|alt.badge.img+2
  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • March 10, 2025

Absolutely agree with everything in this thread. The new UI is attrocious!

When I click on a photo, I want to see a photo. Not a cropped version of it with a slide-up panel taking half of the screen!

Fire and replace your UX designers and replace them with UX people who have used Strava as an athlete for at least 3 years. This is pretty much an essential job requirement and it’s clear that the current UX people don’t know what their product is all about.


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • March 12, 2025
AgeingBrit wrote:

How do I get the old App UX back again? This new UX is a disaster. It crashes constantly. Maps are blurred out. Cannot zoom into a map. When I open friends activity in feed it crashes and have to try again. Who tested this mess? It is like a BETA release. Please roll it back. Ghastly.

not even Beta, that shite is pre-alpha stability.... whoever signed off on enrolling this version should be fired.... seems liks there was no thorough testing whatsoever.

 

it's unusable simply said


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • March 13, 2025

There is not a single comment/complaint/suggestion here re: these recent unnecessary UX/UI updates that I disagree with. Elementary UX guidelines: fewer clicks to get to something a user is looking for (for me, photos are the biggest thing) = better, smoother experience and less likelihood of abandonment.
 

Abandonment example: this update has me scrolling past friends’ activities and not clicking in for more details (even though I’ve always been interested and always loved to see more) because of how much of a pain in the ass it is. Photos are three clicks away. Such a loss of functionality, experience, and joy - and for what? What were these updates meant to improve? They only detract from Strava. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, I still have such a love for this app, but if these changes are kept in place that love is going to slowly drain away. Disappointing, considering so many people pay a hefty price for a premium product.

 

Really hoping the Dev & UX Research teams (is there a research team?) see the feedback in this thread and listen to what their users want and need. Also, if you’re hiring UX Research folks, please hire me, I love this stuff. 
 

(also freaking love dark mode, that one is a big win and shows that the team - eventually - listens to feature requests…eventually. hoping that’s the case here as well, before paying users begin to churn)


Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • Hub Starter
  • 1 reply
  • March 14, 2025

The new view of photos, hiding behind the activity looks horrible… please change it back, that when I click on a photo → I want to see the photo!!!! Not the activity! When I click on activity → yes then I want to see the activity….

 

it was perfect, why did you change it?


Jana_S
Forum|alt.badge.img+28
  • Hub Expert
  • 399 replies
  • March 14, 2025

Hi ​@Figo, there's actually an existing thread on this topic, you might want to join the discussion: 

 


Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • Hub Starter
  • 2 replies
  • March 14, 2025

The recent changes in the Strava app have made managing photos and activities frustrating. When trying to delete automatically added photos from Zwift, it’s too easy to accidentally delete an entire workout. This happens because the delete option is in the same place as the three-dot menu in the top right corner of the screen.

 

A small adjustment to the interface could prevent users from unintentionally losing valuable training data.


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