What Is Komoot & How Do We Use It?

You’ll have heard us talking about Komoot on our recent epic ride videos, but what is it exactly? Here’s your lowdown on the route planning and navigation app and how to use it.

In association with Komoot.

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There are three layers of functionality to Komoot. Pre ride planning, during ride navigation and recording, either using the phone app or synched to your head unit, and then post ride, uploading photos, etc.

Given that I’m not on a bike and I haven’t been for a ride yet, let’s start with planning. While you can plot and adjust routes on the fly using your smartphone app, for in depth route planning the desktop version gives you a bit more space and a few additional functions.

First, you’ve got to create an account. As I said, it’s free, although you can choose to purchase maps for offline use – more on that later.

The first screen you see is your feed, with a log of your rides, or other people’s who you’ve chosen to follow. More on that later too. For now, let’s go to the route planner screen.

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– You might have noticed from
some of our recent videos of rides, both near and far, that we often talk
something called Komoot, which is, what, exactly? Well, this and this. A route planning and navigation app. Now, I use it all the time. Originally, that came
about because it’s free, and then, also, because
it plays really nicely with the Wahoo head units that we use. And now, two years after
I first heard about it, Komoot actually also sponsored GCN, which is super cool. Anyway, I’m gonna talk you
through how you use it. There are three layers of
functionality to Komoot. Firstly, planning. Secondly, during ride
recording and navigation. Either using the
smartphone app or synced up to your head unit. And thirdly, post-ride. So, uploading photos,
sharing, that kind of thing. Now, I’m not on a bike, as you can see. I also haven’t been for a ride yet today, so we’re gonna start
with the planning phase. You can use the smartphone app for that, both pre-ride and indeed,
during ride as well, if you wanna change course, but for in-depth stuff, I’d
use the desktop version. There’s a bit more space and
a bit of added functionality, as well. The first step, will be, of
course, to set up an account. As I said, it is free,
although you can make purchases in app of maps, easy for you to say, that you can download and use offline. So, if you don’t have any phone signal, you’ve got the data already on your phone. The first screen that you
see, is a log of your rides or other people’s rides that
you’ve chosen to follow. But we will go swiftly on
to the route planning page. Now, you start by entering a
start point and a finish point, either by clicking on the
map or entering an address. And then you can choose to
either have a one-way route or a round trip. Now, if you know where
you’re going, that’s fine, but if you don’t, and you’re
looking for some inspiration, you’ll notice there are loads of little red bike icons
dotted around the map. Now, these are actually
highlights other people have left to help you with your route planning. It could be anything
from a beautiful view, to a fantastic little cafe. And if you click on
them, you can very simply and quickly add it to your route. Now, the route that I’m
planning is one I’m hoping to do this summer with some mates. It’s starting from here on
the south coast of the UK and going back home. Now, I will enter the
start point, Weymouth, finish point, Bristol! And then, I can click to add in a few highlights along the way. Cider, I’ll take that one, and then maybe a great
road I already know about. To do that, I can just
simply click on the map and add it as a Waypoint. We get a number of
different routes generated by Komoot’s algorithms, and that depends on what
type of ride you choose. So, it could be a super fast road ride, it could be a scenic
back road touring route, it could be gravel, it
could be mountain biking, it could even, actually not
riding at all, but hiking, or running. Although, I’m not entirely
sure why you’d wanna do that. Anyway, for this particular
one, I’m gonna go for a trendy gravel ride
by clicking on this icon. As you can see here. So, this is our gravel optimised route, based on what Komoot
thinks is the best choice of routes for me to
ride from here, to beer. I mean, Bristol. We got all the stats for that route. The ride length, the amount of climbing, the amount of descending,
even an estimation of how long it’ll take, just
as long as you don’t have to stop all that much to
take photos, like James, or perhaps lie down. And one particularly cool
feature is the surfaces and Waytypes summaries function. So, because Komoot uses open cycle maps, or open street maps, then it’s got detailed community
contributed information about just about every metre of the route. Whether that’s a road, or
trail, it will know exactly what type of surface you can expect. And so, in this instance, if
we change it from a gravel ride to a mountain bike ride,
we can suddenly see that the amount of off-road has jumped, we’re on Singletrack for 27.3 kilometres, and in total, about 35% of the this route is now unpaved. You can also, then, see, on the interactive elevation
profile at the bottom, exactly what surface you can expect to see on either a climb, or a descent. For the control freaks among us, you can, of course, get a bit
more control over the route, by adding in more Waypoints
to force it in the direction that you want to go. And to get more information
to help your decision making, you can toggle through
different types of maps. So, from the Komoot map,
to open street maps, open cycle maps, where you get information on cycling infrastructure and
mountain bike trails as well. Now, the usual caveats
do apply with deviating from Komoot’s actual specified route. Their algorithms are based on data, so what it knows about
the road surface type, and the elevation, things like that. So, if you do choose to go
away from it, then, well, that’s up to you. You can, of course, choose to ignore Komoot’s
algorithms altogether, and, in fact, ignore all
trails and roads at that with the off grid planning function. Probably more useful
for hikers and runners, I would have thought, than cyclists. But that said, I did use it, actually out in Morocco last year when we were able to see from
the Google satellite overlay, that there was, indeed, some kind of path over the Atlas Mountains, it just hadn’t been mapped yet. Also worth mentioning, as a final point on the planning phase, you can, of course, upload a GPX, a TCX, or
a FIT file very easily. And you can either save it
as a completed activity, or import it into the route planner where you can then tweak it
and modify it as you fancy. Now you’re out, there are a few ways in which Komoot can help
you navigate on the fly, either by linking up to your head unit, or by using the app
directly on your smartphone. Now, we touched earlier on buying maps and then downloading them to your phone, this is perfect if you’re going abroad, and you don’t want to
pay for additional data. It’s perfect if you want to save battery, because you can actually
navigate whilst your phone is in aeroplane mode. Or, of course, it’s essential if you’re gonna be going
off the beaten track, beyond phone signal. You could make do with the free version, but then you have to
rely on your own ability to actually get yourself out
of trouble if you get lost. Whereas, if you download the
appropriate maps before you go, should you stray off
course, it can then help to get you back on track. If you’re gonna use your phone only to start navigation, to start recording, you simply hit the giant
Start Navigation button and away you go. It will give you turn
by turn instructions, both audio, so you can stick
your phone in your pocket, and visual, so you can
also strap your phone to your handlebars if you so wish. Now, I tend to use mine
synced up to my head unit. So, Komoot has advanced
integrations with most of the major GPS head units out there. In the case of this Wahoo one, I’ve actually synced my Komoot account in the Wahoo app, and then all my rides
automatically download to the head unit when
it’s connected to WiFi. If, when you’re out riding,
you wanna change your route for any reason, if you
got a mobile phone signal, doing so is super easy. You simply click wherever you wanna go, additionally, on the map,
as if you were planning it in the first place and hey, presto, it will reroute it for you. (exhales sharply) Phew, what an epic. Now, once you have completed your ride, it will automatically save
as a private completed tour. Now, that’s whether you’ve
been using your phone to record it on or, indeed,
in this case the Wahoo, that’s automatically synced up to it. Then, you can click into that activity and you can give it a title,
you can also upload photos, share it with your mates, tag in whoever joined
you along for the ride. Now, it’s super easy to upload photos. If you geotagged them at the
point that you took them, they will automatically upload
to exactly the right place on the map. If you didn’t, then you
can just drop a pin, and upload it from there. You can also, of course,
upload your own highlights, which we touched on earlier on. So, that could be a place,
or it could even be a segment of trail or road. You click on the point on the map, and then you upload your
own photo, give it title, give it a description. If someone’s got there first,
then you can either up vote or down vote their highlight
and add in your own tip or description and your
own photographs as well. So, there we go! Hopefully, you have found
this little snapshot about how to use Komoot rather useful. I definitely encourage
you to give it a go. If nothing else, you could
head over to the GCN profile that we’ve got on there, because we’ve actually got
loads and loads of routes that we’ve been doing over
the past few weeks and months. Including things like North Coast 500, and our English Epic Ride. Make sure you give it a big thumbs up, let us know what you think in
the comment section down below and if you wanna watch
that North Coast 500 video, you haven’t seen it yet, click
through to on screen now.