The Petivity Dog Tracker app features a powerful interactive map that can show you where your dog is right now and where they've been in the past. Here's how it works:

Your dog's location on the map

Your dog's location is shown as a circle labeled with a dog icon. Your dog could be anywhere inside the circle (not necessarily in the center), which will vary in size on the map depending on how accurate the satellite fix is (or was).

If the circle and the dog icon are green, that indicates a "live location". It's where we think your dog is right now during a live-tracking session.

If the circle and dog icon are blue, that indicates the "last known location". It's where your dog was the last time we received a background location fix from them.

Your location on the map

Your location (determined from your own phone's GPS) is typically shown as a blue dot on the map.

Interacting with the map

The map view is always shown North-up, just like a paper map.

The folded map icon at the bottom-left of the map lets you swap between a pictorial map view, and a photographic aerial ("satellite") view. The aerial view is especially useful out in the country where there might be no roads or other landmarks.

The compass icon at the bottom-right of the map swaps to our unique "Dog Finder" view that's great if it's dark (or if you don't like reading maps!). It will point you directly towards your dog as you move your phone, and tell you exactly how far away they are.

When you start live-tracking, the map automatically scales and pans so that it includes both you and your dog even if as you each move ("auto-zoom"). You can pan and zoom around the map with your finger(s) and if you do so, the map will stay where you've put it even if you or dog moves. Tap the Zoom to me and my dog button to return to auto-zoom mode.

Going back in time

When the map opens, you'll see your dog's last known location. You'll also see a series of faint overlapping orange disks that show you any background location fixes from earlier in that day. This gives you a "heat map" of where they've been.

You can tap the left and and right arrows above the map to move backwards and forwards by one day (up to a maximum of seven days ago). Again, you'll see a series of overlapping orange disks (the "heat map") showing you where your dog has spent time.

If you press and slide your finger left and right on the timeline at the bottom of the map, you can wind time backwards and forwards within the current day. You'll see a single pawprint icon on the map showing where your dog may have been at that moment, according to the most recent location fix we had at that time.

Back to the future

If you do use these controls to look at the past, you can return to the present by tapping RESUME LIVE-TRACKING (or START LIVE-TRACKING, if necessary).

If you slide your finger on the timeline to the right beyond the current time, the map will gray out because we've already agreed that having information about the future can be extremely dangerous.

Location tracking