Snapchat’s ‘Footsteps’ feature will help you maintain your travel diary

Snapchat is introducing a new feature called ‘Footsteps’ to track your location history and keep a log of places you have travelled to on Snap Map. Footsteps is coming to iOS, and iPhone users can start using it right away.

Notably, the feature was under the paywall of Snapchat+, but now you can use it for free on your iPhone. Let’s see how the feature works and how you can access it.

Snapchat’s Footsteps tracks you everywhere you go

Snapchat’s Footsteps feature tracks the places you go using your location data. So, it knows where you are in real time. Of course, you will have to grant it most permissions that it asks you, including your precise location.

Even though it uses location data it doesn’t really stop relying on your memories, it does that too, and the more snaps you save, the more accurate data you get to see on Snap Map. Initially, the feature will consider your memories, which are nothing but old snaps taken at various locations, to maintain your travel diary.

Eventually, as you travel more and visit places, Footsteps will show you the percentage of locations you’ve explored. For instance, it will show you that you have completed 30 per cent of a city.

This feature is similar to Google Maps’ ‘Timeline’. However, since Snapchat can rely on existing memories as well as location data, it has more data of a user, to begin with, hence it may be actually useful for those who travel a lot.

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One thing to note is that only you can see your travel history and all the data gathered by Footsteps. Also, when you are in Ghost mode, Snapchat cannot log your travel data, which is a great thing for those who sometimes do not want to let Snapchat know where they are.  Also, this feature can be easily disabled anytime you want.

Coming to its availability, as of now, Footsteps is limited to iOS devices, however, it will soon be released on Android. When? That’s something that Snapchat hasn’t revealed yet, but we expect to know about its Android availability soon.