Improved segment comparison and replay, route planning with saved places, and optional health data.
Changes since v.0.8.1, ordered by user impact.
Important before updating
An in-place upgrade should work. For this release, we recommend a fresh PostgreSQL database to rebuild derived data consistently.
Back up before resetting: a reset deletes saved plans and manual edits. Preserve anything you need, then start with a fresh database. Keep original GPS and media files and other data folders. See Updating for the installation guide.
Calories and energy estimates
- Active and total calories: Track Overview shows activity-specific estimates separately from external or vehicle work, with model assumptions and limits.
- Body-weight adjustment: Preview and save a weight for each track. It survives reimport and recalculation without changing your default.
- Coverage explanations: Partial estimates explain excluded time. Missing or unsupported data remains unavailable rather than zero.
- Reliable recalculation: Activity changes refresh estimates and charts; failures retry.
- Calculation corrections: Moving power uses consistent moving-time intervals. Cycling and water-sport estimates exclude unsupported work, including altitude changes for water sports.
See calorie estimates.
Segment comparison and replay
- Discovery and selection: Explore trends, individual visits, and the optional segment matrix. Select exact attempts, including repeated visits from one track; selections survive full-track inspection.
- More reliable visits: Movements around a zone's edge stay one visit. Results include only tracks that visit every placed zone.
- More reliable timing: Times are more precise and include stops; gaps and unclear crossings are marked. Incomplete attempts stay out of performance averages, and replay requires reliable timing and complete distance.
- Aligned charts: Compare speed, elevation, power, energy, slope, time, and available heart rate between the same checkpoints. Chart size and detail settings are remembered.
- Reference attempt: A diamond marked R identifies the reference. Finish comparisons show how much faster or slower each attempt was; the opening chart compares time at equal traveled distance, including stops.
- Shared inspection and position map: Move along a chart with the mouse, touch, or keyboard to see the matching spot on the map for every attempt.
- Ghost positions: See where other attempts were when the reference reached a distance, with ahead/behind values, route trails, and an optional lead chart.
- Replay here: Start replay at the inspected position with the same attempts, colors, and reference. Marker numbers match rankings; hover reveals progress.
- Targeted retries: If loading fails, retry only the part that failed. Refresh results after a track changes.
See segment analysis.
GPS reliability and review
- Review: Inspect import failures and GPS problems, compare original and processed paths, center the map on each finding, and see what was cleaned up during import. Highlighted points link to explanations.
- Map and statistics choices: Include or exclude whole sources or individual sections from the map, statistics, or both. The findings stay visible.
- External correction: Download the original or a GPX version, fix it in another tool, and put it back in the GPS folder to import and check it again.
- Improved processing: Smoothing handles variable sampling and missing measurements; altitude spikes no longer affect later points. Recording gaps stay disconnected on maps and in calculations.
- Clearer motion and events: Separate moving, stopped, and unknown time. Short pauses count toward stopped time; visible breaks start at one minute. Select breaks or GPS gaps to locate them on the activity map.
- Import fixes: Preserve GeoJSON elevation and separate lines, zero altitude in FIT files, and date-line crossings. Reimporting avoids transferring unrelated review choices.
See Review and motion analysis.
Maps and points of interest
- Map POIs: Explore peaks, water, huts, food, transport, and more across 21 categories. Tap for details and save visibility and opacity preferences.
- Clearer data status: See preparation, stale data, errors, and offline status. Map lookups tell you when processing isn't finished yet.
- Rendering fixes: OSM Dark works without an API key. Maps recover from tile failures and restore GPS markers; terrain handles missing ocean tiles, and Swiss Topo labels use the correct fonts.
- Mini-map recovery: Activity maps still appear when offline map data fails, and resize with their panels.
Route planning
- Planner hub: Start drawing, open saved plans, or read the guide while preserving your current draft.
- Mountain-bike routing: Added alongside touring bike, road bike, hiking, and car profiles.
- Personal POIs: Save named places with icons and notes, alone or with a route. Move or remove them with shared undo/redo.
- Waypoint editing: Larger drag targets, tap-to-move, insertion, reverse, trimming, and undo/redo work on desktop and phone.
- Saved plans and draft protection: Search and reopen plans, save edited copies, and confirm before replacing unsaved work. Failed saves retain input.
- Elevation and routing: More consistent whole-route ascent and descent, resizable elevation charts, clearer failures, and improved BRouter recovery.
- GPX export: Exports contain the route; personal POIs remain in the saved plan.
Google Health beta
Automatically match heart rate to GPS tracks from independent devices. Record GPS on a Garmin and heart rate on a Fitbit, for example. MTL Explorer matches recorded times after import, without device pairing or manual linking.
The optional, read-only connection also imports exercise, sleep, steps, daily activity, body measurements, and health observations. Available data depends on your account and devices.
Setup requires your own Google Cloud project with Google Health API access and a Google Account linked to an active Google Health profile. Google may limit new API projects; check the setup requirements before you start. The supported personal setup uses Testing mode, which requires reauthorization after seven days. Imported history stays available. Setup and sync may still encounter errors or interruptions.
- Track and segment heart rate: Aligned graphs and averages show available coverage. Optional cardiac-cost comparisons relate heart rate to estimated work.
- Health overview: Explore activity, vitals, sleep, and body charts by date or calendar period. Latest values shows the most recent measurements, independent of the chart period. Choose Intraday to see one day in detail: all charts zoom together, down to one-second heart rate and individual body measurements.
- Records and routes: Filter stored records and add available exercise routes to the GPS archive.
- Resumable sync: Recent data refreshes while older history imports in resumable batches. Settings shows progress, gaps, and retries for recent data, history, and routes.
- Connection controls: Renew expired access without repeating server setup. Disconnecting keeps imported history; deleting it requires separate confirmation.
- Synthetic demo: When enabled, explore generated health trends and matching track heart rate without a Google account. Use your own installation to connect real data.
See the Health guide.
Filters and statistics
- Filter refinements: Preview results and category counts before Apply, with validation and date shortcuts. Shared criteria stay selected, and geographic drawing returns to the filter controls.
- Map colors: No coloring now stays selected when you switch views, and Reset returns each view to its default colors.
- Statistics hub: Preview the latest activity and browse Overview, Trends, and Tracks. Settings and search are preserved when returning.
- Chart and browser controls: Reorder and resize trend charts with saved preferences; clear track searches easily. Unreliable timing stays unavailable.
- Consistent media filtering: Map media and statistics use the matching tracks' time range, showing all media or only track-related items. Empty or undated selections show no media.
See media filtering.
Photos and video
- Image previews: Better support for newer iPhone HEIC files, efficient resizing, and retained orientation, aspect ratio, and PNG transparency.
- Recovery and downloads: Thumbnails reload automatically when the server is busy, and a photo without a preview still opens. Retry reloads the photo and its filmstrip thumbnail. Download original files, including HEIC.
- Video compatibility: Offer compatible playback when audio works but video does not, with improved streaming and playback from the beginning.
- Activity and demo media: Clearer mini-map counts and retries. Demo photo generation resumes without repeating completed work.
Settings and background processing
- Release updates: A notice and Settings badge link to release notes and manual update instructions for the app and self-managed components. Optional checks tolerate blocked network access; browser updates wait for Reload. See release updates.
- Navigation: Admin becomes Settings with grouped sections. Mobile keeps common tools in the main toolbar and other tools under More.
- Processing progress: Clearer counts distinguish completed work from files needing review or reaching processing limits. Failed GPS files link to diagnoses; acknowledging notices keeps the findings.
- Import recovery: Pending GPS and media imports resume after restarts and retry temporary failures. Incomplete storage scans preserve imported records.
- Memory and performance: Lower memory use, capped import and media processing, less repeated exploration work, and improved service recovery.
- Support details: Preview and copy component versions without private settings or logs.
- Stored diagnostics: Filter browser and server events and inspect full error details. Browser reports survive reloads and retry temporary connection failures. See logs.
- Optional demo analytics: Umami is available to public demo operators and remains off by default. See web analytics.
Updating
Read the database notice above before upgrading. Review the updated installation guide for custom mounts and configuration, then follow Updates.
- Keep your original GPS files in place. After the update, MTL Explorer re-imports eligible files once. Wait until Settings → Processing is done, then click Reload when the map asks.
- Docker Compose: use
docker compose(with a space). The olderdocker-composecommand is no longer supported. - Replace your Compose file, not only the images. Memory limits are lower
than in 0.8.1 and rely on new database, routing, and search settings in the
same file. Start from the new file and copy over only your own folders, ports,
and any limits you raised; set
memswap_limitto the same value as a raised limit. Update the copy in your NAS container manager too. See Updates and container memory limits.