- Open the app outdoors and allow access to your location. Title, walker name and place are optional. The place will be public and you choose it: a city, a town, a neighbourhood or a reference that does not reveal an address. Once a route has started, the ⌖ button next to that field fills it in with the name of the locality.
- Choose how you want to draw. With no option enabled, Walking Lines draws a plain line following your route.
- Press Start and walk. Each new position accepted by the GPS adds a point to the drawing; on screen you see the line, the distance, the time and the number of points.
- You can turn on Paint and change its options while walking: changes apply to the following points, so a single route can combine different gestures. If you turn on Soundscape, you will also need to allow microphone access when starting.
- Press Stop when you finish, or to pause. Then you can Save the route, Discard it, or Continue: recording resumes as a new island and the line does not join the previous stretch. Whatever you walk during the pause is neither drawn nor counted as distance or time, but its separation does enter the drawing to scale: the pause is a compositional tool for opening white areas and deciding how far apart each stroke sits. While a pause is open the GPS stays on —so the island starts where you press Continue and not where the receiver finishes waking up—, which drains battery until you save or discard. Saving sends it to the notebook and tries to publish it automatically; with no connection it appears as local and you can use the Upload button later.
It is worth waiting a moment for the phone to find an accurate position before setting off. If the signal is lost —on the underground or inside a building— the recording keeps the points already obtained and tries to recover the GPS automatically.
Full project document.