Overview
The Route Thumbnail booster generates a styled map image of your activity's GPS route. The route is rendered as a colored line on a satellite or street map background, creating a visually appealing route preview. This image appears on your Showcase page and can be used as a visual asset wherever images are supported.
Configuration
The Route Thumbnail booster has no user-configurable options. The map style, zoom level, and line color are automatically optimized based on the route geometry and activity type.
Data Requirements
- GPS data from source — The activity must contain GPS coordinates. Activities from GPS-equipped devices (Garmin, Strava, Apple Watch, Polar) work perfectly.
- No GPS = no thumbnail — Indoor activities (treadmill, indoor cycling, gym workouts) and sources without GPS (Hevy, Oura) will not produce a route thumbnail.
- Use Virtual GPS to add a synthetic route to indoor activities if you want a map visual.
How Content Appears
On Showcase
The route map image is displayed prominently on the Showcase activity page. It shows the full route with start/end markers.
On Strava
Strava already generates its own route map, so the route thumbnail is primarily useful for Showcase. The generated image can be downloaded and used for social media sharing.
Tier & Access
The Route Thumbnail booster is available on the Hobbyist (free) tier.
Common Issues
No map generated — The activity has no GPS data. Check whether your source device recorded GPS (some indoor workouts or budget devices don't have GPS).
Map appears zoomed too far out — This can happen with activities that have outlier GPS points (e.g., GPS glitches at the start or end). These are usually transient GPS accuracy issues from the recording device.
Map appears blank or grey — The map tile server may have had a temporary issue during image generation. Re-running the pipeline (via re-post) should regenerate the image.
Route line looks jagged — This reflects the GPS accuracy of your recording device. Wrist-based GPS (most watches) has lower accuracy than phone GPS or dedicated bike computers, especially in areas with tall buildings or dense tree cover.
Dependencies
- Requires GPS data in the activity
- No integration dependencies
Related
- Virtual GPS booster (for indoor activities)
- AI Banner booster
- Elevation Summary booster