there is new leadership at Stravaand they want everyone to know that the platform is about to get a ton of new features, starting with the highly requested dark mode, a family subscription plan, nightly heatmaps, and of course, ai.
Dark mode as a concept has been around for a long time, but it has been recurring fountain of consternation for Strava users on Reddit forums. For those people, the good news is that dark mode is coming later this summer and users can choose between permanently keeping the app in dark mode or matching the settings on the user's phone. More good news: it will be available to both subscribers and free users.
“A lot of investment had to go into an app that launched in 2009 to get to a place where we could launch dark mode,” says Matt Salazar, Strava's chief product officer. “I think one of the things I would like our community to know is: Hey, we listen to all your feature wishes. “We are committed to picking up the pace and releasing those features sooner.”
As for ai-enabled features, there are quite a few. The most important is Athlete Intelligence Beta, which creates digestible summaries of your training data. According to Salazar, it uses large language models to interpret your data and “provide it to you in plain English.” For example, it will give users information about how well they did in a particular workout, analyzing what individual statistics mean in relation to overall goals, and providing some suggestions on how to improve. It will also be taken into account if you are trying to prepare for a race or recover from an injury.
“It's not a chatbot situation,” Salazar says, noting that Strava made a deliberate decision not to implement a chatbot. To put it in context, Whoop added a ChatGPT-powered trainer to its app last year, while then-Fitbit CEO James Park also ai-feedback/”>teased an ai chatbot for Fitbit on Made by Google in October. “It's more of a summary aspect, but I think that's really where athletes will find value.”
Strava is also adding something called ai-enabled Leaderboard Integrity. Simply put, it will weed out cheaters by using machine learning to flag “irregular, unlikely or impossible” activities recorded on the platform. For example, it might alert you that an incredibly fast electric bike ride has been mislabeled as a normal bike ride and ask you to correct it.
Making Strava more attractive to women is also on the agenda. On that front, the app is adding nighttime heat maps. (Heat maps show popular routes among users of a fitness app.) The filter allows athletes to see which roads, trails, and trails have heavy traffic between the hours of dusk and dawn. It's not a perfect solution, as many athletes, myself included, often choose to avoid running or cycling at night for safety reasons. This only tells you if a route is popular; It would be a little more helpful if you could also see information about how well lit that route is or if it is in a highly populated area. However, the measure is intended to help athletes who do Choose to participate in evening activities to be more informed.
Lastly, Strava is also adding a family subscription plan to make the premium features more affordable. You can add up to three other people to a plan and there are no restrictions on who you can add. Salazar said the company is still determining pricing, however, and there is a possibility that the final price of the subscription will vary by region. The plan will launch in some test markets this summer, with a global launch planned for the end of the year.
