“Strava’s ‘Weekly Snapshot’ makes me feel bad”: should you be able to turn it off?

Strava recently introduced a new feature called ‘Weekly Snapshot’ that gives you a running total of your week’s exercise on your feed, but many users are unimpressed and would like the option of disabling it.

What is Weekly Snapshot? This nice lady from Strava explains it all…

@strava ✨New Strava feature✨ Weekly Snapshot is your motivation dashboard. 🚀 Get an extra boost of motivation as soon as you open the Strava app. Available for all users at the top of the feed, the Weekly Snapshot shows the total activities, time, and distance you’ve logged across all sport types – and compares those stats to the same point last week. You can tap on it for a more detailed look at your progress, but Weekly Snapshot makes it easy to see how you’re trending right on the Home tab. #strava #stravacycling #stravarun #stravarunning #runningmotivaton #motivation #run #running #runmotivation #motivation #bike #bikemotivation #hike #exercises #exercisemotivation #workout #workoutmotovation #training #trainingtips #workoutroutine #workouttips ♬ original sound - Strava

If you can’t spare 37 seconds to watch the video, Weekly Snapshot is pretty much what it sounds like. It quickly tells you the number of activities you’ve clocked up so far this week, the total duration, and the distance you’ve covered. The idea, says Strava, is that it’s a little scorecard to keep you motivated.

All good, then? Not quite.

“I do not enjoy how this serves almost entirely to make me feel bad about my effort so far in the current week,” says a Strava user called _windrunner. “This is detrimental to my experience on Strava. 

“My training schedule each week is highly variable due to plenty of factors such as work, personal commitments, weather, etc. I should not have to see a feature telling me I haven’t been working as hard when I have been putting in more or the same amount of effort as my schedule allows.

“Please enable a toggle for this feature so we do not have to see it.”

There are strong words from qrohlf: “This seems less like a feature designed to service users’ needs, and more like a feature designed to produce a KPI [key performance indicator] graph with an upward slope. It’s actively making my experience with Strava and perception of the Strava brand worse, and I would love a way to disable it.”

Over on TikTok, J’ananas says: “I hate it. It’s a toxic feature that’s just stressful and means literally nothing: especially if you’re recovering after a huge effort. I wish I could make it go away.”

Some people have criticised the fact that the Weekly Snapshot aggregates miles from different types of activities, so if you both cycle and run, say, the distances you’ve covered are lumped together.

We could go on, but if you want more you can check out a whole thread on Strava’s community hub.

On the other hand, Weekly Snapshot has fans too.

Rc4der says, “I like, I just enter the app and I see where I stand compared to last week. I honestly don’t mind if I have lower numbers.”

Merizedmes says, “I’m a fan; it’s a good reality check.”

Maybe some Strava users just can't handle the truth, not that there's many in a postion to be throwing any stones on that one here at road.cc Towers.

We've approached Strava for a comment. In the meantime, whaddya reckon?