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!
I agree with all of these comments, really bad user interface, strava what were you thinking!?
it was way better when you could simply click on a photo and it brought up a full screen image
also just clicking on the map of someone’s activity brought up the interactive map showing that activity.
Also the compass has disappeared to revert the map to north.
please sort it out!
100% about the dumb updates! I can't add anything here other than my agreement. Here's hoping Strava fixes the Android app ASAP.
While they're at it, I'd also like to kill the "forced edit" pop-up. I edit what I want to, and this just adds another click before I can really do all I want.
Activity when opened from notification won’t load map or images. I hope they will revert it back because it is unusable right now. Don’t know who signed this off.
Definitely dislike the new interface and the change which removed the map segment visualization. I have to say that was one of my favorite features who b allowed me to scan segments quickly. Now.. I don't even want to review my segments because of all the extra steps. Who approved this terrible regression?
And here I thought I'm the only one who hates the new interface! I even sent an email to Strava about this. I just hope they bring back the classic strava post look!!
And there's a new bit… there were hopes it's an April fools prank but it appears it's not:
@Jane - tagging you as you were bringing things up with the product team… are they aware of all this feedback? Perhaps the initial thought could be “well, people don't like change in general, there will always be complaints” etc, but the recent UI changes are really harming the app usability… 
Does anyone hear us?
Hi, Strava was my the most used application. I used it more then Facebook or Instagram. New version is unusable - UI is terrible and slow, Photo sharing works only for16:9, why does is destroys our photos? I have been paining a subscription for two years, but I have started thinking to return to just Garmin again. Please revert the last update 
I'll add on a new one I just encountered: when you view an activity and change the map, to satellite view for example, and then select one of the segment highlights, the map reverts to Standard! It also doesn't remember your layer preferences, but I think we know that.
Personally I'm not a fan of the new map engine. I don't think Strava will backpedal on making it the daily driver eventually, but the least they can do is replicate all of the classic map's functionality.
I’m really missing the “Elapsed Time” under the new UI within the workout details. We only get the moving time right now but on 200km or longer rides I really want to know how long people took for the entire adventure. Right now, I need to look it up on the desktop - prior the update it was visible within the app :(
please Strava bring Elapsed Time back to the app!
@nikoniko At least in the IOS app I see the elapsed time in the speed section.
@Jan_Mantau ah - on Android it’s also there. I swear it was gone for some time! 
Photo description workflow is very clumsy.
Adding a description to photos is very slow and clumsy (click in several levels, clickout to main UI, click back in again for the next photo. Ad nauseam). If strava won't roll back to previous UI, then it might be best to be able to scroll thru the images at the "camera roll" level, adding/editing descriptions rather than having to bounce back out to the main map UI.
Brah does the development team even Strava? This is the worst photo interface I've ever seen!
Brah does the development team even Strava? This is the worst photo interface I've ever seen!
Judging by the quality of UX they don’t, not really, at least probably not using very much of formally present features. I wonder if they have any testers or maybe nowadays they just hire vibe coders who hope AI will make something for them.
Brah does the development team even Strava? This is the worst photo interface I've ever seen!
On Monday the beta seemed to have an improved workflow for this. After editing you backed out to image roll and could scroll on to the next image. Come Wednesday, after a couple of more updates, it was back to original, clumsy workflow.
Previously, on iOS, when scrolling through the activity feed, if I wanted to see a picture full screen I just tapped on the picture and that was it.
Now all of the sudden when I do this, I have to wait for the activity details to load, the picture opens on the top of the screen, the activity details get shown below the picture and I have to tap again on the picture to see it fullscreen?
Why is that?
I don’t want to wait for the activity details to load, since I don’t care about them, I just want to see the picture in full screen. On top of that I have to tap, wait, and tap again to look at that picture, while before it was a single tap and a lot faster.
Hi,
recently map engine became so terrible that I’ll most likely resign from subscription.
You removed compass - so now it is not possible to set map to north
POIs do not display (I mean peak names etc)
Crapy 3d map is default one - it is not readable
Winter activity like backcountry ski displays as some 3d not readable at all visualisation and there is no possibility to turn it to normal 2d map.
In general map engine is a total mess now, it is useless!
100% agree with this! Strava needs to change back! To see the full image I have to click like 3 times. Gets annoying. Was better to quickly swipe and see the full image before clicking on it for better detail.
change it back!
Is it just me or does it happen to anyone else where there is no map at all half the time when I click on an activity. So I can’t see where the person or I have ridden. I then go back and click into it again and then I can see the map/photos.
Ignore this, I don’t know how to delete
I agree, changing the view of photos in the app is a backward step. It was much better when one could select the full size photo and scroll through them while also being able to read the caption\description.
It's dreadful. What have they done? Turned the maps into something useful and shareable into something that isn't even a map, or a map covered in text.
The map while you're using the app keeps turning, without me requiring that feature.
And can we switch off the AI judgement of my activity? The few lines that read like a toddler wrote them? "Wow, you really smashed your average walk today by a whole two minutes" my arse.
@mattkynaston one of these things can actually be turned off: at any AI blurb, tap Say More, then Give Feedback, and then Leave Athlete Intelligence. Not very straightforward but well, at least the option is there. I wish we could opt out of other additions too, especially the “quick edit” is driving me crazy...
@mattkynaston one of these things can actually be turned off: at any AI blurb, tap Say More, then Give Feedback, and then Leave Athlete Intelligence. Not very straightforward but well, at least the option is there. I wish we could opt out of other additions too, especially the “quick edit” is driving me crazy...
See, if they'd made it clearer how to switch it off, which would be a really simple button to have added, maybe I might not have cancelled. Thank you! 
It’s been six months since this awful update. Could you please just bring back the ability to scroll through images in full screen?
