Walk the boundary

Some boundaries are easier to walk than to find on a satellite map: a field edge under trees, a fence line, a path through a wood. Walk it, and Geo Measure draws it as you go. Walking the boundary comes with Geo Measure Pro.

On iPhone and iPad

1. Start. Choose Walk the Boundary on the start screen, or in the + menu (on iPhone, the + on the card while no shape is selected; on iPad, the + in the toolbar or the panel). The first time, allow location access While Using the App, with Precise Location on.

2. Walk. Put the phone in your pocket and walk the edge. Geo Measure keeps a point every few meters, with the screen locked too. The bar over the map shows the points so far, the distance walked, the area so far and the accuracy of the last position.

3. Finish. Once an area’s walk has gone at least 30 m and four points and comes back within 10 m of where it began, the bar says Back where you started and offers Finish. Stop ends a walk anywhere.

Where the walk goes. If an area or a distance is selected when you start, the walk carries on from its last point. Otherwise, or when a circle or a hidden layer is selected, it becomes a new area. Walked points are joined by straight lines, whatever the routing menu says.

Nothing is written until you stop. The walk is drawn on the map as it will be added, but the document stays as it was until Stop or Finish, so you can look around, zoom and undo other changes while you walk. Stop adds the whole walk as one step (Undo takes it back), and the document is saved. The menu item reads Stop Walking while a walk is under way.

Pause in the bar stops taking points, for a gate or a phone call; Resume carries on.

How often. A point every Point Spacing, set in Settings › Tracking: 1, 3, 5, 10 or 20 m (5 m by default). Positions that cannot be trusted are left out first: stale or inaccurate ones, a jump out and back, and the wander of a phone standing still.

The screen. Keep the Screen On While Tracking (Settings › Tracking, on by default) stops the screen from locking by itself during a walk. Lock it with the side button whenever you like: the walk goes on.

Every walk is also a file

Stop or Finish also saves the walk as a document of its own, named for the date and time it began, in Files › On My iPhone › Geo Measure › Walks (On My iPad on an iPad). Whatever happens later to the measurement it went into, the walk is still there.

If iOS closes Geo Measure

A walk survives the app being closed: when Geo Measure starts again it carries the walk on, and opens the document it was walking into if that one was saved. Choosing New or Open… during a walk ends the walk in the document it was walking into first.

On the Mac and Apple Vision Pro

Track My Position (in the + menu, or Measure › Track My Position, ⇧⌘T, on the Mac) adds a point to the selected area or distance each time you have moved the Point Spacing, from positions 15 m or better. With nothing selected, or a circle or a hidden layer, it starts a new area. It runs while Geo Measure is open on screen, and each point is its own step of Undo. A bar over the map shows Tracking your position, the points so far, the accuracy and Stop; Stop Tracking in the menu ends it too.

If the shape it adds to is deleted, the next position starts a new area. Tracking stops, and says why, if that shape is hidden or a circle is selected while it runs.