dmd docs
Settings, Layers & Offline Maps
Everything about how the map looks and what it shows — downloaded offline maps, satellite and weather layers, the theme, POIs, road and label detail, on-map overlays and more. It all lives behind the Layers button.
- Open It
- The Layers button in the map's Section 3
- Map Data
- Offline maps + online layers (satellite, hillshading, weather)
- Appearance
- Theme, language, scale, roads / POIs / labels
- Per Profile
- Most map settings are saved per rider profile
The Map Settings Panel
Tap the Layers button (Section 3 of the bottom menu) to open Map Settings — thirteen categories that cover everything about the map:
Offline Maps, Language, Theme, Scale, Trip Settings…
…Map Overlays, Online Map Layers, Warnings, Country Specific Modules.
Offline Maps
DMD2's maps are vector maps stored on the device, so the map and the routing keep working with no signal — essential once you're off the grid. Download the regions you ride and manage them here.
Reach it from Map Settings → Offline Maps:
Your downloaded maps — each with an on/off toggle and its size.
Download Maps — browse by continent, then country.
Downloading a Map
Tap Download Maps, pick a continent, then the country or region you want. It downloads to your storage and draws immediately — each entry shows its size so you can budget space.
Updating Maps
When a newer version of a map you have is available, an update badge appears and an Update All button refreshes them in one go — keeping roads and POIs current. The badge also rides on the map's Layers button, so you see it without opening Settings.
“Old format” maps
A map can be on your device and draw perfectly, yet be missing the extra databases that come with it — offline address and POI search, and speed cameras for that region. That is what you have if you upgraded from the previous DMD2 and chose to keep your old maps, and it can also happen if those files failed to download. Such a map is marked Old format and counts towards the update badge, so the reminder stays until you re-download it — Update All Maps does exactly that. Nothing is lost in the meantime: the map keeps working for viewing and routing.
Download a Whole Region
Inside a continent — or inside a folder like USA or Canada — a Download All button at the top queues every map you don't have yet, plus any with a pending update. It shows how many maps and the total size, and asks you to confirm before starting. Maps already downloaded are skipped, and they download one after another so you can keep using the app.
Cancel All Downloads
While anything is downloading or waiting, a Cancel All Downloads button appears at the top of every level of the browser, with the number still in the queue. It stops the running download and clears the rest in one tap. Partly downloaded files are discarded; maps already on the device are untouched.
Enable, Disable & Delete
Each map has an on/off toggle — switch one off to hide it without deleting (handy where neighbouring maps overlap), or delete it to free space. Keep the maps for where you're riding switched on.
Storage Location
Maps can live on internal storage or an SD card — the panel shows the current location and free space, and Change sets where new maps download.
Online Layers
On top of the offline base map, DMD2 can draw online layers when you have a connection — satellite imagery, national topo maps, hillshading and live weather. Pick what you want, or leave everything off for the fastest, data-free map.
Reach it from Map Settings → Online Map Layers:
Satellite & Raster — pick one base imagery source.
Hillshading, weather overlays, custom rasters and caching.
Satellite & Raster
Choose one imagery source: ESRI Satellite or a national topo raster (US Topo, Sweden, Australia, Norway, Czech, France IGN…). None keeps the clean vector map. An active raster disables 3D buildings.
Hillshading & GPS Traces
Hillshading shades the terrain for a sense of relief; Public GPS Traces overlays community-recorded tracks — handy for spotting trails. Each is an independent toggle with its own opacity.
Weather Overlays
Live Precipitation, Wind and more, drawn over the map with adjustable opacity — a quick read on what the sky is doing along your ride. While enabled, the overlay refreshes itself every 10 minutes so the picture stays current without touching the map.
Custom Rasters & Caching
Add Custom Raster brings in your own tile source. Auto-Cache keeps online tiles you've viewed so they reappear offline, and Download Current Selection / Download For GPX Track pre-cache whole areas (see below); Clear Auto-Cache frees the browsing cache.
Active Layer Icons
Whenever any additional layer is enabled on top of the offline base map, a row of small round icons appears in the bottom-right corner of the map — one icon per active layer, each with its own glyph: satellite, hillshading, GPS traces, each weather overlay, active fires, fire danger, custom rasters, offline content and the country-module overlays (no-ride areas, danger shading, closures, incident pins). With many layers on, the row caps at five icons and ends in a +N chip.
It answers "why does the map look like this?" at a glance — and tapping any icon opens the Active Map Layers dialog: every active layer listed with its name, its source and a toggle to switch it off right there, no trip into settings needed. Toggling one back on before closing undoes an accidental tap; toggles made here stay in sync with the Online Map Layers panel and the country-module screens.
The icons only show on the unobstructed full-screen map (they step aside for panels, placement mode and PiP) and disappear entirely while no additional layer is active.
Downloading Layers for Offline Use
Both download buttons sit at the bottom of the Online Map Layers panel and pre-cache every active layer (the selected raster, Hillshading, GPS Traces and enabled custom rasters) for the area you choose. Pick the zoom range, check the tile count / size estimate, and the layers download one after another with a progress card on the map; finished areas appear under Offline Content, where each can be toggled or deleted.
Download Current Selection
Draw a rectangle on the map by dragging its corners, then download everything inside it.
Download For GPX Track
Pick a loaded GPX file and download a corridor along its tracks and routes instead of a rectangle — ideal for a long ride like a BDR, where a rectangle would cover half the state. Choose the corridor width (1–20 km each side of the line) with the stepper; the estimate updates as you adjust. The same download is available per file, track or route from the GPX manager detail views — Download Map Layers.
Theme & Language
Two quick appearance settings, each its own row in Map Settings and each saved per rider profile.
Map Theme
Map Settings → Map Theme
Switch the map between Light and Dark, Auto (light sensor) to follow the ambient light sensor, or Follow App Theme so the map matches whatever the app's own Theme setting resolves to. A separate High Contrast toggle sharpens the light theme against glare.
Follow App Theme is the set-once option: pick Light, Dark or Auto once in Global Settings → Theme and the map follows the app instead of being switched separately.
Map Language
Map Settings → Map Language
Choose the language used for place names and labels. Changing it re-labels the map in place — no reload needed.
Map Scale
Map Scale tunes how big everything is drawn — make the map bold and glanceable for riding, or smaller to fit more on screen. It's three independent sliders, each a multiplier applied live as you drag:
Reach it from Map Settings → Map Scale:
Map Scale
1.00×–4.00×The global rendering scale: roads, terrain, everything. Turn it up to make the whole map bigger and bolder.
Labels Scale
0.50×–1.30×Text labels only (road and place names). Multiplies on top of Map Scale, so you can size names independently.
Symbols Scale
1.00×–2.30×POI and symbol icons. Also multiplies on top of Map Scale — bump it up to make fuel, food and viewpoint icons easier to spot.
The three sliders in the app, each showing its current multiplier and range.
Map Setup
Map Setup decides how much detail the map draws — which roads, POIs and labels appear, and how early they show up as you zoom out. Trim it to a clean set of main roads for fast glancing at speed, or pack in every track and footpath for exploring.
Reach it from Map Settings → Map Setup:
It opens as four rows — the first three set per-type visibility, the last is a simple on/off toggle:
Map Roads
Road-type visibility, from motorways down to tracks.
Map POIs
Which points-of-interest categories are drawn.
Map Labels
Text labels: road names, place names and more.
Altitude Lines
One toggle for contour lines and elevation text.
Visibility by zoom — the key idea
Inside Map Roads, Map POIs and Map Labels, every type has its own “show from” distance instead of a plain on/off. Tap a type and choose the map scale at which it starts to appear — from hundreds of kilometres out (always visible, even zoomed right out) down to tens of metres (only when zoomed in close), or Hide to switch it off entirely. Each type shows its current distance, and a default marker reminds you of the shipped value.
These distances are what the map's scale bar reads at that zoom, so they line up with what you see while riding — and they shift a little with latitude, exactly as the bar does. The bar only steps 1 / 2 / 5, and some of those steps are wide enough to cover two neighbouring options; where that happens both are tagged with their zoom level (“200 m (z15)”) so you can still tell the two rows apart.
Map Roads — tap a type (left) to pick the distance it shows from (middle). Motorways stay visible from 200 km out; minor roads only appear up close.
Map POIs (right) — the same, by category: fuel shows from further out than a cafe. Map Labels works this way too, for text.
Controls & Overlays
UI & Controls
Map Settings → UI & Controls
Auto Zoom (zoom & tilt by speed), Turn Preview (the extra flatten-and-zoom-out before navigation turns), Show Scale bar, Hide Zoom Buttons, Use Magnetic Sensor (compass-rotate the map when stopped), plus the follow-toggle tweaks Disable North Up, Disable 3D Travel and Skip Follow Pause North.
With Auto Zoom on, Zoom In Delay sets how many seconds a lower speed must hold before the map is allowed to zoom back in — so a brief slow-down at cruise no longer snaps the view in and straight back out. Zooming out when you speed up stays immediate. Default 8 s; set it to Off for the previous instant behaviour.
Top Speed, Zoom Range, Tilt Range, Pause After Manual Zoom and Turn Preview let you shape the behaviour yourself — see Tuning Auto Zoom below. All of them are saved per profile, so Off Road and Touring can each have their own.
Map Overlays
Map Settings → Map Overlays
Choose which trip-data cards and indicators float on the map, and enter placement mode to drag each into position. See Overlays & Placement below.
Warnings
Map Settings → Warnings
Alert types and outputs — speed cameras, limits, weather and more. Covered fully in the Warnings guide.
Three more entries round out the panel:
Trip Settings
Map Settings → Trip Settings
How Trip A / Trip B count and reset — automatic reset after inactivity, a clock-based scheduled reset (daily / weekly / monthly), and whether auto resets clear both trips. See Trip Settings below.
Country Specific Modules
Map Settings → Country Specific Modules
Region-specific safety and hazard alerts — such as Portugal's Avisos, Catalunya's Pla Alfa and Australian (NSW / Victoria) fire feeds. Switch on the ones for where you ride; details in the Warnings guide.
Free for everyone — no license needed for the panel, the alerts or their map overlays. Unlike Online Map Layers, these are not part of the paid tier.
GPX Settings
Map Settings → GPX Settings
How your tracks and routes are drawn — GPX Overlays (surface and slope colouring), GPX Appearance (line width, opacity, pin size), Warnings and Advanced Settings. It's the same panel as the cog on Loaded GPX Files, so a change made here shows up there too. Full details in the GPX Files guide.
Trip Settings
Trip A and Trip B are two independent trip meters and — like the pair on a car or motorcycle dash — both count at the same time. The A/B switch on the trip panel changes which one you're looking at (and which one its pause and reset buttons act on); the other keeps counting in the background. Everything here is stored per profile.
Reset After Inactivity
Auto-reset the trip when the app hasn't been used for a chosen period — 6 hours up to 5 days, or Off. A 10-second countdown appears first with the option to cancel, and it skips entirely when the trip is already empty.
Scheduled Reset
Reset at a fixed time instead: every day, every week (Monday) or every month (the 1st), at the hour you pick. It fires silently at the chosen hour — or on the next app start if the app was closed at the time. Off by default.
Options
Reset Both Trips makes automatic resets clear A and B together (manual resets still touch only the trip you picked). Only Increment Active Trip brings back single-meter counting — only the selected trip accrues distance and time. Both are off by default.
Tuning Auto Zoom
Auto Zoom moves the map between a close view when you're stopped and a wide view at speed, leaning it into 3D along the way. Below 35 km/h it holds the close end, with steps at 35 and 50 km/h; from 50 it glides steadily wider with your speed, reaching the wide end at your Top Speed — 90 km/h unless you change it — and holding it above. The shipped curve is set up for off-road riding, and long motorway stretches often want something wider, more tilted, and a higher top. Switch Auto Zoom on and the tuning cards below appear underneath it.
Every value here is stored per profile. Set one curve for Off Road, another for Touring, and switching profile switches the curve with it — no restart needed.
Top Speed
The speed at which the map reaches its widest, flattest view. Above it nothing more happens — the view you get at your Top Speed is the view you keep, whether that's 10 km/h faster or 70. Default 90 km/h, adjustable from 60 to 200 in steps of 10.
Set it near the fastest you actually ride. Leave it at 90 and a long motorway run gives you no more zoom-out than a fast B-road does; raise it and the glide from 50 km/h upward spreads across your real speed range instead. It is the far end of both Zoom Range and Tilt Range, and both cards relabel themselves the moment you move it.
Zoom Range
Two sliders — the map scale held up to 35 km/h (default ≈ 20 m) and the one held above your Top Speed (default ≈ 100 m). Values read as the scale-bar distance in your own units, with the raw zoom level in brackets — a smaller distance is closer in.
Those distances are exactly what the map's scale bar will read at that zoom, so what the slider promises is what you'll see. The bar itself only steps 1 / 2 / 5 — … 500 m, 200 m, 100 m … — and those steps are wide: at UK latitudes everything from zoom 14.4 to 15.7 reads “200 m”. Set both ends inside one step and the map still zooms, but the printed distance never changes; the card warns you in amber when that happens. For a change you can see, leave at least one step between the two ends.
The In between line on the card shows the derived middle of the curve live as you drag: the 35–50 step, then the glide from 50 up to your Top Speed. The sliders apply the moment you move them, whether riding or parked — and if you'd rather set an end by example, ride to a view you like, open this panel and tap Use current on that end. The up-to-35 value can't go below the at-speed value; the slider stops there.
Tilt Range
The same two speed ends for map lean, in degrees — up to 35 km/h and above your Top Speed. 0° is flat top-down, 60° is the maximum. Defaults are 60° stopped and 38° at speed.
Unlike the zoom pair, these are not ordered — setting the at-speed value higher than the stopped one is perfectly valid, and is exactly what to do if you want a stronger 3D view on fast roads. Tilt only applies in the 3D travel mode; flat Bearing Up and North Up stay flat.
Pause After Manual Zoom
When you zoom by hand, Auto Zoom stands down for this long before taking the view back. Default 10 s, up to 60 s.
Covers the remote controller, mapped buttons and the on-screen +/− buttons alike. Every press restarts the clock, so holding a zoom level through a section just means pressing again. When the pause runs out, Auto Zoom returns to its own level for your current speed — not to your manual one. If you keep wanting a different zoom at some speed, that's the cue to open Zoom Range and tap Use current on the matching end. Set it to Off to have Auto Zoom resume immediately.
Turn Preview — the zoom before a turn
While you navigate, Auto Zoom has a second driver besides speed: as a turn instruction approaches, the map first flattens its 3D lean to show more road ahead, and only if the turn still doesn't fit on screen does it zoom out to bring it into view. Right after the turn the view returns to your speed-based curve. If Auto Zoom ever seemed to zoom out on its own near junctions — this is the feature that was doing it, and it now has its own switch and sliders, directly under the Auto Zoom cards.
Turn Preview
The switch for the whole behaviour. Default on — the long-standing DMD2 behaviour. Off, speed alone drives the camera, even while navigating.
Switch it off if you prefer a perfectly steady view through junctions and read the turn from the instruction bar instead. The two sliders below appear while it's on.
Turn Preview Distance
How far before the turn the preview begins — 150–800 m in your own units, default 350 m.
Above 60 km/h the window keeps growing with your speed in proportion to this base, so it always covers roughly the same riding time — at the default that's ≈ 600 m by 100 km/h, and the card's footer shows the figure for your setting live. The preview always releases 50 m before the turn.
Turn Preview Max Zoom Out
The most the preview may zoom out below your speed-based level — 0–4 levels in half-level steps, default 2.
Tilt comes first: the view flattens to reveal more road, and zoom only moves if the turn still doesn't fit. At 0 the preview is tilt-only and never touches zoom. It also never goes below zoom level 14, so a Zoom Range already sitting that wide gets less travel than the slider says — the card's footer states the effective figure for your curve.
Auto POI — Points of Interest as You Ride
Auto POI is one of DMD2's most useful map features: it constantly searches for the kinds of place you care about — fuel, food, viewpoints and more — and drops proximity markers on the map (and in the Nearby POIs overlay) as you ride, so the next fuel stop or lookout never sneaks up on you.
Reach it from Map Settings → Auto POI:
Enable Auto POI
The master on / off switch.
Three category slots
Tap a slot to choose what to watch for — Fuel, Viewpoints, food and many more. Clear empties a slot.
Search Radius
The heart of Auto POI — how far away a place may be to count: 500 m, 1, 2, 5 or 10 km, measured from your line when you're following one and from you when you're not. Explained just below.
Hide Beyond
The zoom level past which Auto POI icons drop off the map: 2, 5 or 10 km, or Always to keep them at every zoom. Explained just below.
Extend if none found
When a category has nothing within the Search Radius, keep widening the search — up to 100 km — so the slot is never silently empty. Explained just below.
Hide Beyond — decluttering the zoomed-out map
Auto POI icons are drawn as markers rather than as part of the map style, so unlike the fixed POI symbols on the map they don’t thin out on their own as you zoom out — on a wide view they can pile up. Hide Beyond is the cut-off: once you zoom out far enough that the map’s scale bar reads more than the distance you pick, the Auto POI icons drop off the map and come straight back as you zoom in again. Nothing is lost while they’re hidden — searching carries on and the Nearby POIs overlay keeps listing what it finds.
The default is Always, which keeps the icons visible at every zoom exactly as before. Pick 2, 5 or 10 km to declutter: a low value keeps the wide view clean and only shows icons once you’re zoomed right in, a higher value keeps them around for more of your zoom range. The distance is measured the same way as GPX Appearance → Hide Waypoint Labels Beyond, so the same number means the same thing on both, and it follows your Distance unit — imperial riders see miles.
How it searches — on the line vs all around you
What Auto POI hunts for depends on whether you're currently following a line. A “line” here means an active navigation or simply riding on top of a loaded GPX track or route — you don't have to be navigating, being on the line is enough.
On a line — navigation or a GPX track / route
Auto POI searches ahead along the line, and your Search Radius sets how far off it a place may sit. At 500 m — the default — you only get what's directly on your way; open it up to 10 km and places a detour away join in too, spread out along the road ahead rather than piled up around the bike. If nothing's inside the window, the search keeps scanning forward down the line until something turns up.
Each result is flagged by how close it sits to the line: a green dot means it's on the line (within ~500 m — reachable straight off the route); a red dot means it's a detour off to the side.
Off the line — free riding
With no route or track active, Auto POI searches around you, out to your Search Radius — biased ahead in your direction of travel while you're moving, or a full circle when you're stopped. A tight radius like 500 m naturally finds little in open country — that's what Extend if none found is for.
There's no line to measure against, so there are no on / off-line dots — every hit is simply the nearest of its kind.
Extend if none found — the empty-slot safety net
Pick a tight radius and some categories will come up empty — no fuel within 500 m of a mountain route, nothing to eat for the next while. With Extend if none found on (the default), an empty category quietly widens its own search: on a line it first scans ahead to the end of your route, then looks around you in growing steps — 10, 25, 50 and finally 100 km — and stops at the first find. Results found this way carry the red detour dot, so a far-away fallback never masquerades as a stop on your route.
- On — a category always shows the nearest option it can find, even if it's far. You'll never watch the fuel range shrink without knowing where the next station is.
- Off — a category with nothing in range simply goes empty. Tidier, but silent.
This replaces the old automatic fuel-only fallback — the safety net now covers every category, and it's yours to switch off.
On the map
Here's Auto POI while following a route with a 10 km Search Radius — fuel and restaurant markers strung out along the road ahead, and the Nearby POIs overlay listing the nearest of each category:
The Nearby POIs overlay (left) shows the nearest of each category with its green (on the line) or red (detour) dot and an Along track label — here the restaurant is right on the route while the nearest fuel is a short detour. The markers follow the route ahead, with a few detour options off to the side — the wide radius at work.
Overlays & Placement Mode
The floating cards on the map — trip stats, altitude, heading, clock, road name, the progress card and more — are the Map Overlays. Turn each one on or off, then drag them exactly where you want.
Reach it from Map Settings → Map Overlays:
Enable / disable each overlay (GPX & Nav Progress is always on).
Placement mode — drag each overlay into place.
Using Placement Mode
Tap Position Elements at the top of Map Overlays to enter placement mode. Every overlay fills with example content so you can see it, and you can:
- Drag any indicator to reposition it — positions are remembered per orientation (portrait and landscape independently).
- Tap an indicator for its own options (such as size).
- Auto Arrange lays everything out tidily in one tap.
- Done saves your layout and exits.
Continue Reading
Next up — Navigation & Routing: turn-by-turn guidance, routing profiles and search.
Navigation & Routing Map Overview