Help & Support

Dumb Luck Routes — a live map for group adventures.
How each screen works, and how to get out of the states people get stuck in.

1. Getting started

Creating an account

The first screen offers Register and Sign in. An account is a user name and a password — nothing else is required.

• User name is permanent. It is chosen once and cannot be changed afterwards, because other people's saved copies of an adventure refer to it. The form tells you as you type whether the name is available.
• Password must be at least 6 characters and contain at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter and one digit. A strength meter is shown while you type.
• Email is optional, and the trade-off is stated on the form: with no email address on file, a forgotten password cannot be reset and the account cannot be recovered. You can add one later at Settings → Account.

Signing in on more than one device

The same account works on the phone app and in a web browser at the same time. Sessions do not expire on their own — see Signed-in devices for signing an old phone or a borrowed laptop out.

The browser version can do nearly everything: adventures, the live map, everyone's positions, routes, markers and the thread. What it cannot do is produce your own position, or record a track, or hold an offline map pack — those need a phone with a GPS receiver that keeps running with the screen off, so those screens are only offered in the app.

2. Finding your way around

The Home screen has four cards — My adventures, Group adventures, Import GPX and Settings.

There is also a permanent navigation rail: down the left on a wide screen, along the bottom on a narrow one. It never collapses into a hamburger, so the five destinations are always one tap away.

3. Group adventures

Group adventures lists everything you are part of, in two sections: Organised by you and Joined. An adventure you organise shows its join code beside it; one you merely joined does not.

Joining one

1. Group adventures → Join an adventure.
2. Type the six-character code the organiser gave you. Case does not matter — the field upper-cases as you type.
3. Add a message if you like. It is only read by the organiser, and only matters on approval adventures.
4. Press Join.

What happens next depends on how the organiser set it up. An open adventure admits you straight away and opens it. An approval adventure creates a pending request and returns you to the list — you are not in it, and cannot see anybody, until the organiser admits you.

Creating one

1. Group adventures → Create an adventure.
2. Give it a name, a start time, and optionally a description — where to meet, what to bring.
3. Choose how people join:
   • Approval — a valid code creates a pending request, and nobody enters until you admit them.
   • Open — a valid code joins immediately.
4. Press Create adventure. You are the organiser, and the join code appears beside the adventure in the list. Share that code with the people you are inviting.

The adventure's info page

Tapping an adventure opens its info page. This is where the things you set before moving live: the routes, how those routes are drawn, and your sharing switch. Everything here writes through immediately — there is no Save button, because there is nothing pending.

Leaving one

On the info page, Leave adventure…. Your sharing stops, the position the adventure holds for you is deleted, and the adventure drops off your navigation rail. Getting back on needs the join code again, or a new request.

An organiser cannot leave their own adventure — an adventure nobody organises has nobody to decide who is in it. The way out is End adventure….

4. Sharing your location

Turning it on

Open the adventure's info page and switch on Broadcast my location to this adventure, under My sharing. The first time, the app explains what it is about to ask for and gives you the choice to agree or cancel, before the phone's own permission dialog appears.

Directly under the switch is a line saying what is actually happening — which is a different question from what the switch says. It will tell you if permission was refused, if no fix has arrived yet, if you are standing inside your own private area, or if the adventure has not been started yet.

Before the adventure starts

If you switch sharing on before the organiser presses Start adventure, the app says: "Your position starts going to the group when the organiser starts the adventure. Your phone's GPS stays off until then." That is normal, and it is why your battery is not being spent while everyone stands in a car park.

Turning it off

Flip the same switch. Turning it off deletes the position the adventure was holding for you rather than merely stopping the broadcast — otherwise a last-known pin would sit on everyone's map exactly where you asked not to be.

Sharing also ends automatically when you leave the adventure, when the organiser removes you, and when the adventure ends. If the organiser chose a wind-down, sharing continues for at most two hours after the end so people can watch each other get home — you can stop yours at any point during it, and the cap cannot be extended.

With the screen off

While you are sharing, the phone keeps sending your position with the app in the background and the screen off. That is the point of it: you reach for the phone at a junction, not on the move.

• On iPhone and iPad, the blue location indicator stays lit in the status bar for as long as it is running. For it to keep working with the app in the background, location access must be set to Always — While Using the App stops the moment you put the phone away, and resumes when you come back to it.
• On Android, a permanent notification is shown the whole time. It cannot be swiped away, and that is deliberate — it is how you can always tell.
• It stops when you turn sharing off, leave the adventure, or the adventure ends — not when you close the app.

Battery and accuracy

Settings → Location → Accuracy controls how often your position is sent to the adventures you are sharing with. Three choices, cheapest first: Eco, Balanced and Precise. Each states its cadence and what it is for. A change takes effect immediately — if the GPS is already running, it restarts on the new setting.

This is the battery setting. It does not change how much detail your own recorded track keeps; that is the recording interval, further down the same screen.

5. The live map

The live map is the screen you actually use while moving: everyone who is sharing, the planned route, and the markers people have dropped. It is built to be read at a glance, through a visor, in daylight.

The two buttons that stay lit

• Follow me — keeps the camera on your own position instead of leaving it where you last dragged it. The button lights up while it is on, and its label tells you if it is still waiting for a fix.
• Heading up — turns the map so the direction you are travelling is up the screen, rather than north. Same behaviour: lit while on, and it says so if it has no heading yet.

Both survive being backgrounded and reopened. Panning or zooming the map by hand does not silently cancel them — the lit button is the state.

The actions menu

The hamburger button on the map opens Adventure actions:

• Adventure info — routes, route styling, your sharing switch, leaving.
• Add a marker — only when the organiser allows members to place them.
• Thread — the conversation for this adventure.
• Neighbours — a toggle for the ahead/behind panel, described below.
• Markers — the list of everything marked on this adventure, tap one to expand it.

The neighbour panel

With Neighbours switched on, a small panel shows who is immediately ahead of you and who is behind you along the route, and by how far. It answers the two questions you actually have while moving, without reading a whole list.

It needs a route on the adventure to measure along. With no route added, there is no "along" to be ahead or behind on.

Tapping the map

Tapping near a marker opens the markers close to that point. Tapping empty map while placing a marker sets where it goes — there is a Cancel button in the banner at the top while you are in that mode.

6. Live members

The people icon in the navigation rail opens the live member list for the current adventure. Each traveller shows their name, their colour, whether they are sharing, and:

• Last fix — how fresh their position is. A stale time is the honest answer when somebody has lost signal.
• Range — how far they are from you as the crow flies.
• Along — how far along the route they are.
• Gap — the distance between them and the traveller next to them in the order.

Sort by Last active, Name, Along route or Range. Along route is unavailable and shown greyed out when the adventure has no route on it.

Somebody who has not turned sharing on appears in the list without a position. That is deliberate — they are on the adventure, they simply are not on the map.

7. Markers

A marker is a pin on the adventure's map: gravel across a corner, the fuel stop, the turning everyone misses, where to regroup.

1. On the live map, open the actions menu and choose Add a marker.
2. Tap the map where it goes.
3. Pick an icon, give it a title (up to 40 characters), and add a note describing what is there and what to look out for.
4. Optionally attach a photo, and set the direction it faces — useful when the hazard only matters coming one way.

Markers are visible to everyone on that adventure and survive after it ends. You can delete your own. If Add a marker is missing from the menu, the organiser has switched member markers off for this adventure.

Photos are stripped of all metadata — including GPS coordinates and camera identifiers — when they are uploaded, before anybody can see them.

8. The adventure thread

One conversation per adventure: text, photos, reactions, pinned posts and polls, all in one place. Reach it from the actions menu on the live map.

• Posting — type and send. A post can carry a photo, text, or both.
• Polls — tick Poll above the composer, write the question in the text box, and add the options. Results update live for everyone.
• Reactions — six of them, on any post. They carry no free text, so they stay available even when the organiser has switched comments off.
• Pinned posts — the organiser can pin a post to the top of the thread so every member sees it. Pinning and unpinning both ask for confirmation.
• Report — the flag control on a post. Reports reach the organiser and the operator.
• Delete — your own posts, and the organiser's on their adventure.

Notifications

The app raises notifications for new posts in an adventure's thread. Two things to know:

• They are raised by your own phone, not by a push service, so they arrive while the app is running — which during an adventure it is, because sharing keeps it alive. Outside an adventure the system suspends the app and nothing is raised; you read the thread the next time you open it.
• You are not notified about your own posts, and not about a thread you are already looking at. Opening a thread clears its notification.

There is no per-adventure mute inside the app, on purpose. Your phone already has notification controls and Do Not Disturb, applied consistently to everything on it — turn Dumb Luck Routes down there, where you turn everything else down.

Blocking somebody

Blocking hides that traveller's posts, reactions, markers and poll votes from you. They are not told, and their own view of the adventure does not change. Manage the list at Settings → Blocked travellers, where Unblock reverses it.

9. Organising an adventure

Everything below is on the adventure's info page, under Organiser, and is visible only to you.

Adding a route

Under Routes, press the button to add one and pick from your own tracks — anything you have recorded or imported. Once a route is on the adventure, every member sees it on the live map, and the ahead/behind measurements have something to measure along.

Each route can be given a colour, reversed (for the run home, or a track recorded the other way round), or removed. Reversing is offered to every member, not just the organiser, and the same button undoes it.

Route display

How routes are drawn on this device — one colour or per-route colours, line colour, outline colour, line width, and direction arrows. It is a personal preference: two people on the same adventure can hold different answers and neither is wrong. Reset puts it back to the defaults.

Join requests

Organiser → Join requests lists everybody waiting on your decision, with the message they sent. Three buttons per request:

• Admit — adds them to the adventure.
• Decline — refuses this request. They can ask again.
• Decline & block — refuses it and stops them asking again.

Content permissions

Organiser → Content permissions has three switches: whether members may place markers, post comments, and attach photos. Photos are a separate switch from comments on purpose — they are often the thing you want to stop while leaving conversation alone.

Turning a switch off stops new content. Nothing is deleted; if you want something gone, delete it explicitly.

Starting and ending

Start adventure is what makes positions flow. Until you press it, the server drops position updates and everyone's GPS stays off, however many people have switched sharing on.

End adventure… asks what should happen to everyone's sharing:

• Stop sharing for everyone now — sharing ends immediately and every stored position is deleted.
• Let travellers stop themselves (2-hour wind-down) — sharing continues so people can watch each other get home. The cap is two hours, cannot be extended, and is enforced by the server. Somebody who forgets is not left sharing forever.

You can end sharing for everybody, but you can never switch another traveller's sharing back on.

10. Tracks: recording, importing, trimming

Recording

Settings → Location → Recording your adventures keeps a track of where you went — for you, not for the group. Switch on Record a track while the GPS is running.

• Recording runs while the GPS runs, which means while you are sharing with at least one adventure. A track starts at the first fix after sharing goes on.
• How often a point is kept — an interval in metres. Smaller draws a roundabout as a roundabout; larger keeps a long tour to a sensible size. It cannot be finer than the GPS is reporting, so on Eco a 5 m setting still produces a coarse track.
• Track in progress shows what has been captured so far: start, last point, distance, moving time, points and segments.
• Give it a name and press Save as one of my tracks. The name is required — a list of three tracks called "Untitled" is a list you cannot use. There is also Delete this track, which needs no name.
• By default, saving cuts out any part recorded inside your private area. You can choose otherwise on that screen.

A track stops growing once it reaches the point cap. Save it or delete it to start a new one.

Importing a GPX file

1. Import GPX, from the Home screen or the navigation rail.
2. Pick a .gpx file — from a planning tool, another app, or somebody who sent you one.
3. A preview appears first: name, distance, points, segments, ascent and duration for each track in the file. Nothing has been saved yet.
4. Press Import to keep it, or Choose a different file to start again.

If you have imported the same content before, the preview says so — a second copy is allowed, it is a warning rather than a block. If the file holds more tracks than the per-file cap allows, the preview tells you which ones will be imported.

My adventures

My adventures lists every track you have recorded or imported, with its source, distance, duration, ascent and date. Tap one to open it, where you can Rename, Delete or Edit it. Tracks are private to you.

Trimming a track

The editor cuts a track back to the part worth keeping — the drive to the start, the lunch stop, the wrong turn, the streets around your house.

1. Open a track and press Edit.
2. Tap the track to put the cursor on a point. The line shows what currently survives; the cursor sits on the exact point you aimed at.
3. Trim away from the cursor with ◀ 10, ◀ 1, 1 ▶ and 10 ▶. Each trim takes the cursor point with it and leaves the cursor on the new edge, so pressing again carries on from where the last one stopped.
4. Undo steps back through every trim, and shows how many steps are left.
5. When the shape is right, press Apply.

A cut taken out of the middle becomes a break in the track rather than a straight line joining the two sides — which is what actually happened.

11. Maps and offline map packs

Settings → Maps chooses what the map is drawn over. It is stored on this device and never sent to the server, and it changes nothing about your routes, markers or anyone's position — those are drawn on top and keep their own colours. The preview map at the bottom of the screen restyles the moment you apply a change, so you can see what you picked.

OpenStreetMap

The default. Free, no account, and it needs a connection.

Offline map packs

Downloaded regions the phone keeps, so the map keeps drawing when the signal dies. On the phone only — a browser has nowhere to put one.

1. Choose Offline map pack. The download section appears.
2. Pick your country or region from the first dropdown — it says how many maps each country publishes.
3. Pick the area within it from the second, which shows each pack's size. Or, if you do not know which country publishes the area you are heading into, pick it on a map instead.
4. Press Download. Progress is shown while it runs.

Downloaded packs are listed with their size, and each has a Delete button. Choosing a pack from that list also switches the map source to offline. Download over Wi-Fi and before you leave — packs are large, and the moment you need one is the moment you cannot fetch it.

Map colours — an offline pack can be drawn Light (the default, easiest to read through a visor in the sun) or Dark, for night. Both styles ship with the app, so switching costs no download and no second pack.

Another tile server

Your own tile server, or a service you hold an account with. Three fields:

• Tile URL — must be https and must carry {x}, {y} and {z}. Plain http will not load; the phone blocks it.
• Attribution — shown in the corner of every map. Most tile servers require a specific credit; check theirs, because you are responsible for whatever their terms require.
• Deepest zoom — how far in the server has tiles for. Too high and the map dissolves when you zoom in on a marker; too low and it stops sharpening early. 19 suits most.

The Use this tile server button stays disabled until the fields are usable, and the text underneath says exactly what is wrong.

12. The private area around home

A circle you draw around somewhere you would rather not be watched — your house being the obvious one. Inside that circle this device sends nothing. Other travellers still see you as present on the adventure; you simply have no position on their map until you move out of it.

1. Settings → Location → Home private area.
2. Tap the map to place the centre.
3. Set the radius.
4. Press Save private area (or Update private area if you already had one).

Until you press save, the screen says so plainly — a circle drawn on screen protects nothing, and the difference between drawn and in force is the one thing that screen will not blur. Remove private area takes it away.

Recorded tracks respect it too — travelling out and back in leaves a gap rather than a line drawn across your doorstep.

13. Settings, profile and your data

Profile

Display name, phone number, email and your map marker colour. Each of the first three has its own sharing switch, off until you turn it on, and shared only with the people you are travelling with. There is no directory of users and no way to look somebody up from a username.

Account

Add or change your recovery email (and resend the confirmation link), and change your password.

Signed-in devices

Every device this account is signed in on. Sessions never expire, so revoking is the only thing that ends a device's access — this is the phone you sold, the browser at the library, the laptop your mate borrowed. Press Sign out beside it. The device you are using is marked and cannot revoke itself.

Blocked travellers

Everybody you have blocked, with the date, and an Unblock button.

Data & export

Download my data builds a ZIP containing every adventure, every marker, every photo, every comment, plus your profile fields and switches. Large libraries take a few seconds to build.

Delete this account is on the same screen, and it does what it says. It asks for your password first.

Which version am I running?

The version number is at the bottom of the Settings screen. Every page also carries a footer naming the licence, the source, and the exact commit the build came from — Dumb Luck Routes is free software under the AGPL.

14. Fixing common problems