Strava has announced three key updates to its service that will affect the social-fitness network immediately.
Based on user feedback, those updates include allowing greater control over the activity feed, changes to the way inaccurate activities are flagged and improved integration with the Apple Watch and its Health app.
Activity feed changes
One of the most notable changes is that there is now an option to view the activity feed in a chronological order, which Strava says has been one of the most requested features ever.
It won’t be activated by default (the standard activity feed is still ordered algorithmically, according to what Strava thinks you might be interested in), but it can be turned on via the settings tab.
Users can now also favourite athletes whose activities they don’t want to miss. Activities by favourited athletes will then automatically appear at the top of the activity feed.
It's also now possible to turn on notifications for when those athletes upload an activity too. This could prove useful for keeping an eye on the training pros/your friends/rivals are doing, or simply for ensuring you always give that special person some kudos.
Auto-flagging for accuracy
There’s surely nothing worse (in Strava terms) than losing a hard-earned KOM/QOM to an inaccurate activity, so Strava says it has improved its auto-detection algorithm and will start automatically flagging activities that “aren’t quite right”.
Strava says that the majority of these flagged activities will simply be “honest mistakes”, such as forgetting to stop recording your ride before getting back in your car to drive home (we’ve all been there, right…), so it isn’t intending to hand out bans for suspected e-doping.
Instead, it’s introducing a feature that allows users to crop out the unintended data from the activity in the phone app, so the activity can be unflagged.
Apple Watch integration
Apple Watch users can now sync activities recorded on their watch directly with Strava thanks to this latest update
Previously, activities recorded in the Workouts app on Apple Watch had to be uploaded to Strava separately, but now the two can sync automatically by connecting the Health app in Strava’s settings.
Once the activities have been synced to Strava, you’ll be able to see your previous 30 days' worth of activities, and add photos, titles and edit them as normal.
