Know what is being divided
Suppose a city boundary covers 100 square kilometers and the deduplicated explored area inside it is one square kilometer. The illustrative result is one percent. This example explains the ratio; it is not a claim about any actual city or the precision of a particular GPS trace.
The current implementation represents exploration through a grid and a corridor around accepted movement. Overlapping cells are counted once. At the city edge, the calculation clips relevant cells to the actual polygon rather than counting an entire rectangle around the city.
Keep the boundary visible in the explanation
A city name is not a geometric definition. Administrative boundaries can include parks, water or undeveloped land and can differ from the area people casually mean by the name. Two apps can therefore produce different percentages without using the same denominator.
Nowhop checks boundary provenance and geometry before use. The currently verified production set is Seoul Special City, Tokyo’s 23 special wards and Paris commune, not every city worldwide. If the required data cannot be obtained or validated, recorded movement stays useful while the city percentage remains unavailable.
Read a small change correctly
Revisiting an explored corridor can add distance without much new area. A new path at the boundary may contribute only the portion inside it. Changing Fog strength, selecting another theme or zooming out must not change the mathematical total.
A percentage is also limited by the accepted observations. Apple’s location guidance explains why device information can be incomplete or inaccurate. Treat this as a personal exploration measure in the development build, not a survey result or a completion target for every accessible street.
Questions this guide answers
Why is my city percentage still tiny after a long walk?
The denominator is area, which may be large, and repeated corridors are deduplicated. A long route does not necessarily cover a large share of a city’s administrative area.
Does 100 percent mean I visited every business?
No. Area, street coverage and venue visits are different measures. The exploration calculation does not verify entry into buildings or participation in activities.
Should an unsupported city display zero percent?
No. Missing boundary data is unknown, not a verified zero. The app should preserve the recorded movement without presenting an unsupported denominator as a valid statistic.
Sources & scope
Official pages reviewed for this guide on October 31, 2026. Features and availability can change; check the linked provider before choosing.
Nowhop behavior is based on our implementation specification. Public demos use samples. Read our editorial approach.
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