Misty Steps: walk the fog away

I wanted a reason to walk down streets I had never been down. Leeuwarden isn't that big, but there are whole neighbourhoods a few minutes from my door that I've never actually walked through.

So I made an app that covers the whole map in fog.

Go outside to see the map

Press Start wandering and every place you pass clears in a 50 metre circle. Phone in your pocket, screen off, it keeps going. Afterwards there's a little dotted trail where you've been, and the rest of the world is still white mist.

That turns out to be weirdly motivating. On the first afternoon I cycled 15 km, just to see what was under the fog.

Animals in hiking boots

You walk around as a small pixel animal: a cat, a dog, a sea otter, a capybara (wearing a mandarin), a cow or a horse. All of them wear hiking boots. I'm not going to explain that.

The streets you haven't walked yet

The stats page shows how much of your neighbourhood, city, country and the world you've uncovered, and which streets are still in the mist. Brahmsstraat, 66% walked is a surprisingly good reason to take the long way home.

After every walk you get a little postcard of your route, to keep or to send to someone.

Not just walking

Not everyone can walk, so cycling, skating, a wheelchair or a mobility scooter all clear the fog too. Only cars and trains don't count: above 32 km/h the mist stays where it is.

No ads, no accounts, no tracking

Your trails never leave your phone. There's no account, no cloud and no analytics. The map comes from OpenStreetMap, and to work out which neighbourhood you're in, the app only ever sends a rough location (about a kilometre) or the id of the area. It's the kind of app I want on my own phone, after saying goodbye to big tech.

Get it

Misty Steps is free, Android only, and it's not in the Play Store. It lives in my own F-Droid repository:

• Open fdroid.potloodgum.com on your phone and tap Add to F-Droid (or use Droid-ify). You'll get updates automatically.
• No F-Droid? You can download the app directly from the same page.

If it gets you out the door, you can buy me a coffee. It keeps the mist drifting.