Auto-center on current location at app startup?

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1

Hi,

Quick question regarding startup behaviour:

When opening the app, it defaults to a zoomed-out Europe view, and I then manually tap the location button to center and zoom to my current position.

Is there currently a setting to automatically center and zoom to the user’s current location on startup?

If not, would it make sense to offer this as an optional setting? For regular daily use, automatically starting at the current location would reduce one step and make the app feel more immediate.

Cheers.

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2

Hi @r33za
Thanks for your feedback! No, currently there is no option for this.

Can you explain why your initial need is to zoom to your location? Why is it your first step for planning a route, what’s the second step?

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Hi Kira.

For me it’s more about general usage flow than route planning.

When I open a navigation app, I usually expect it to center on my current location automatically. That helps me immediately orient myself and decide what to do next.

With Kurviger, the first action after opening the app is pressing the locate button to center the map. So it’s simply one additional step compared to most other mapping apps. It’s not critical, just a small usability improvement that would make startup feel more immediate — especially for daily use.

If automatically centering on the current GPS location at startup isn’t desirable by design, another option could be defaulting to the user’s region (for example, Australia in my case) rather than a global Europe view.

That would still preserve the planning-oriented startup behaviour while reducing the initial context switch for users outside Europe.

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4

Isn’t starting the app without a loaded route kind of a rare case? I never delete the route before I exit the App - it’s just a waste of time.
With a loaded route, the app zooms on the route automatically.
Still, I would also prefer centering on my location if there is no loaded route. Zoom level? Not more than 300km radius.

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5

For me, a route is a completed session once I reach my destination.

At that point, I either save it or delete it. I don’t usually keep old routes loaded when I close the app.

So when I open Kurviger again, I often start without a loaded route.

In that case, centering on my current location would feel more natural to me. When a route is loaded, I agree that zooming to the route makes sense.

I understand that other users may prefer to keep routes loaded between sessions, and that’s completely valid as well.

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6

It’s good to hear how different users use the app - It helps making it better for everyone. I personally do not bother even closing the app after navigating - just push it to background after saving the track (which I also forget sometimes). I delete the route only when I need to start planing one from scratch, otherwise loading a new one, importing or auto-generating one will delete any remaining route before moving on. Maybe in your use case, a button “save & delete” at the end of navigation would also be helpful to avoid unnecessary taps and keep the app tidy. @Kira is taking notes… :wink:

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Thanks for the input and clarification. We’ll take a look at it. :+1:

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