Strava Brings Back Chronological Ordering, Adds Athlete Favoriting

Strava-Chrono-Feed

As part of Strava’s apparent ‘Make Strava Great Again’ 2020 campaign, the company has rolled out yet another new feature to their 50 million athletes: The ability to put your feed back how it should be: Chronological order.

You might remember back in 2017 Strava switched to a ‘Personalized’ setup, which basically meant they tried to figure out the most interesting activities, regardless of date, and surface those to the top of your feed. Essentially what Facebook and other social media platforms were doing. You might also remember people were pretty upset about it. And, mostly still are. Today though, that changes.

Once you update your Strava app to the latest version (iOS is version 140, and 140.10 for Android), you’ll be able to go into the settings and change the feed ordering. It’s a quick change. Simply tap your Profile, then Settings, then tap “Feed Ordering”, and after which select “Latest Activities”.

IMG_6519 IMG_6521

At which point, the world will be right again. Order is returned, albeit only for *new activities*. Meaning basically, only this point forward. So don’t expect immediate gratification, for that, go eat a cookie.

From that point forward you’ll see your feed is ordered correctly. Well mostly. There is one minor caveat: It will actually double-sort chronologically into two groups. First is those activities you haven’t seen yet. For example, if someone uploads later, this will group those activities into the pile at the top of unseen activities (still by date), and then after that you’ll have all the ones you’ve already seen. It’s kinda like Instagram’s ‘You’re all caught-up’ feature, except without that helpful little bit of text.

Note that neither the ‘You’ or ‘Clubs’ feed changes, those have always been chronologically ordered already.

clip_image001 clip_image001[8] clip_image001[10]

Oh – last tip – you can do this on the Strava website too. Go to the drop-down menu under your profile picture, select Settings > Display Preferences > Feed Ordering. However, at present I’m not seeing that live yet.

In any case, you can check out this short video I put together that covers all the stuffs and a few thoughts on why Strava is making these changes at such a rapid pace:

And honestly, that’s really all there is to know about this feature. It just works. Mostly, because it always used to work, and now they made people happy by stepping away from the Silicon Valley ‘we know better than our users’ think.

The next bit here is the ability to favorite a given athlete. This allows you to then bubble that athlete’s posts to the top of your feed, that way you don’t miss them. To do that, simply tap on someone to pull open their user profile. Then, tap on the ‘Following’ button arrow dropdowns, and you’ll see a new option at the bottom to both turn on notifications, as well as favorite:

IMG_6571 IMG_6573

This will effectively bubble their most recent workouts to the top of your feed until you’ve seen them.

Once you do that, you’re good to go. Oh, and in case you’re not following (or favoriting) me, here’s my Strava profile.

I had a good conversation with Strava, and their new CEO, about this a few weeks back. I actually think they (finally) get it. Most importantly, they were very open about what they screwed up over the last year or two. Which isn’t to say they’ll always get it right. We saw that with the stumbled Apple Watch integration update post-release bugs.

But, the last few months have been a steady drip of new features. We’ve had more tangible new consumer-focused features that people actually want in the last 6 weeks than we’ve had in the last year or two. And with a glimpse of the future, it’s going to be much more than just drips soon.

Oh – wait, one more thing. Strava says they’re interested in expanding their beta program, specifically around the feed. So, if that’s your cup of orange tea, you’ll find that here.

Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

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81 Comments

  1. M8ey

    I hope Strava listen and stop “fixing” the data they get from Garmin, Wahoo etc. My gripe has always been how Strava adjusts my Power readings, Averages etc so I always saw it as a Facebook of Cycling and not a serious place to view stats

  2. Roger

    140.10 for Android

  3. Mark

    My Android version still hasn’t been updated. I think it does it automatically.

  4. Chris

    Just updated my to the latest version in the Apple App Store and it shows 13.9.0.0 (r20813)

  5. Jeffrey F.

    Oddly, the website version (which is now live, at least for me) says “The feed is ordered chronologically by when activities were uploaded to Strava”, which perhaps makes more sense than what it shows in the screenshots above (“… by when new activities are finished”). I wonder which it actually is….

    (It reminds me of the programming adage “When the comment disagrees with the code, they’re probably both wrong” )

  6. Patrick Felstead

    iOS version 140 isn’t letting me favourite an athlete, I just get the old “Following” button with no dropdown arrow.

  7. Arno Strine

    Disliked for “‘Make Strava Great Again’ 2020 campaign”

    • The Real Bob

      Lighten up Francis

    • Good thing I didn’t make the hat then!

      [Funny tidbit: I actually tried. Well, I tried to create an orange one on a platform like RedBubble, VistaPrint, etc… – but turns out it’s incredibly difficult to do low-volume on-demand printing on an orange hat. None of the major platforms I could find support orange hats. I found a smaller one-off place that could do it, but had pretty long lead times. Also, their online builder thing was super finicky in how well it worked and I couldn’t use the right fonts. Still, you can see my attempt at the hat about 3/4ths the way through the video.]

  8. Patrick

    i’m not seeing the favourites function on either andoid app (latest version) nor website.

    interestingly it appears the default ordering is chronological on the website, ‘Personalized’ on the app – different developers disagree which is best?
    i wish facebook would provide a more sensible listing too!

  9. Jeff Napier

    Favorites is not working on Android or IOS.

  10. davie

    If anyone from Strava reads this: You guys lost me as a paying customer recently after 5 years due to almost zero end user feature improvements. But Rays meeting with the new CEO has me intrigued.

    Maybe look at your forums and actually read some feature requests still being asked for, that go back almost half a decade then address those.

    I’ll be happy to give you guys money again if you do.

    • Fred Stig

      This. So this!

    • To be honest, I think checking off some of those user requests is actually sorta their goal here. Some of them are easier than others. Some of them are more ambitious than others. And then sometimes they might just do things people hadn’t asked for.

      But, looking at the forums, chronological feed is definitely one of the most highly voted ones up there.

  11. ironmanihp

    Do you think Strava will ever allow non time stamp uplaods? i.e. mid day workouts that dont show the time so no one can blame you for skipping out on…um work?

  12. atwl77

    Interestingly, they’re now showing power when you tap View Analysis on the Android app, which used to be a Summit-only feature.

  13. Brian

    Adding in another Android user who doesn’t have Favorite options. They too excited to roll out a feature that they forget to test it?

    • Kev

      I upgraded to 140.10 on Android this morning and the option wasn’t showing. However this afternoon my feed has a “(Literally) About Time!” item at the top of it and the option has now appeared in settings – Looks like both a server side toggle and an app version thing.

  14. Tommy

    Hey folks. They also added power charts to the mobile app. YES!

  15. Marco

    Updated to 140 but no favs for following here – so sad 🙂

  16. Honestly I never misted it because as soon as Strava did this dumb thing I started using STRAVINI a chrome extension that did the same thing!

  17. stuart

    Too little too late. I used to be a paying customer but cancelled my subscription after they messed with the feed and treated their customers like crap. I stuck around with a free account for a while but got more and more annoyed with their aim to be a social network instead of a fitness app. Now I only use Strava to sync rides between Lezyne and Trailforks and I use this free service without guilt.

  18. Bernie

    Really new feature, the website not yet localized 🙂 E.g. German:

    strava.settings.display_preferences.feed_ordering.title
    Passe an, in welcher Reihenfolge Aktivitäten in deinem Feed angezeigt werden. Änderungen werden nur auf neue Aktivitäten in deinem Feed angewendet. Daher merkst du eventuell nicht sofort einen Unterschied

  19. Rich Lovelock

    Updated Android, no favourites for me. There is sooo much Strava could/should do to help users that have been requested for years. Route tools (sorting, filtering etc) is one example, low hanging fruit they’ve given no attention to (Veloviewer did it for them!)

    Is also like to see custom groups functionality so I can view a feed of pros, local riders, friends abroad etc

  20. D Pinto

    What about the ability to search a route on the Strava database and then download that route as a gpx/rcx file? That feature is gone.

  21. Paul Ave

    They’ve seen the light! ???

  22. Gary B

    Nice post. Thanks for the heads up Ray.
    Two simple but great features. I particularly like the Favourites feature. Although I’m not seeing it on Android yet, I guess the App updates could take days to trickle through.

    Any one from Strava reading. THANKS! Ray is spot on, please keep adding new features.

  23. Chris

    Next up Strava – bulk activity privacy changes (ie all from public to followers only or private)…

    Please!

  24. MattB

    They’ve also (finally!) introduces auto-flagging for obviously impossible feats of speed in an activity, to go hand in hand with the cropping tool. Why it’s taken so long to have software recognise that it’s unlikely someone ran sub-4 minute pace for 30 miles is anyone’s guess…. ?

  25. Dave

    “I had a good conversation with Strava, and their new CEO, about this a few weeks back”

    I think I may have missed this one, is there a link to this interview anywhere?

  26. Kevin

    Thats great but one thing I don’t like is how recently they have made it so all your ride achievements are listed 1st and not were they were achieved in the ride.

  27. Lynn

    Thanks! I wondered about that when I joined last year, but just rolled with it since every platform does their own thing. It doesn’t really explain why one of the cyclists I follow pops up first when running is first for me and cycling second, but it never bothered me. At least now I’ll be able to be sure not to miss the posts of people I’ve chatted with regularly (yay favorites!). Thanks again for the heads up!

  28. Andrew

    I just enabled this via Desktop, and then followed you on Strava Ray.

    Now it’s not that I don’t want to see your rides, but your activity from yesterday is at the top of my feed despite the fact that several other people I follow (and myself) have done activities since then.

    • Thanks for the follow!

      That’s likely because the toggle only takes effect for new workouts posted from that moment forward. So basically, it’s showing you the old feed into the new feed flushes it down the drain. Roughly. 🙂

    • Andrew

      Just another update, this still doesn’t seem to be working even thou, looks like maybe it’s based on when you upload the activity, not when the activity took place.

  29. Chris Clancy

    I set it to “Latest Activities” and I still have activities from yesterday showing up before activities from today. Maybe they’ll fix this – but so far it still looks the same as before.

  30. Jason Skillicorn

    Removing the Time Stamp seems like the #1 ask — why can’t they make this an option

    • Nicolas Christin

      I’m guessing it’s not as easy as it sounds. Even if they did hide time stamps for an activity, you could still guess it from things like flyby or the time stamps of the previous and next activities (activity ids are just incremented as they are created). The reality is that you can’t hide anything on Strava, unless the activity is marked private (but then you can’t really use it for anything).

    • I’d agree. And honestly, I think this kinda falls under the same general bucket of issues as hiding military-based (or any other super-private type situations): Just don’t put things on a social media network that you want private.

      I think Strava covers this base by having the ‘private’ category.

      As Nicolas noted, it gets even messier too when you consider the thousands of Strava API based apps. These apps too would have to either be blocked or otherwise fake data when they pull it from your profile. Ultimately, it ends up being a leaky boat.

  31. Roger D Sommers

    No ability to follow favorite athletes, Pixel 3 XL or on desktop, Chrome?? Dumb.

  32. grumpy old man

    Now if only I could clear my feed of monthly challenge signups.

    I do not care for badges and certainly don’t care to see what everyone else has signed up for either.

  33. Jude

    When will this be implemented? It’s not working for me – on Android or desktop.. ?

  34. Robert

    Favorites not present on iPhone.

  35. Luke Hardman

    Sweet, thanks Ray, I’ll change that back.

    Also, swim metrics have finally got a tiny bit better, I am not sure when this actually happened because I wasn’t swimming a lot until the last few weeks but they seem to be able to read Garmins files again giving all intervals and times correctly. The Workout Analysis actually shows something useful (you can’t click on it and get more details like you can with the run one though). The old pace graph in the Analysis section is still useless though

    Thats my 2 cents. But at least something seems to be happening there. At last.

    Do you know if changing FTP still updates TSS for all old activities? Or have they fixed that? (Sorry, using Trainingpeaks terms).

  36. Mark Thorburn

    I’ve updated to the latest Android version 141.7 and still not showing favourites. Did I read somewhere that all users have been upgraded to premium for a short period of time.

  37. Hmm, I don’t see the option to favorite on either the app or the web. Maybe some kind of staged rollout?

  38. ReHMn

    It is present on the website, but come on! Voting for a feature that should have been there as a default???

  39. Hayden

    The only issue is Strava’s chronological is not chronological??
    If you have friends who only sync every 3-4 days, all their activities show together, cuase it’s chronological by when they were uploaded.
    How come they can’t just do what the “Stravini” plugin for Chrome has managed for the last few years????

  40. Piotr.q

    Garmin Connect is years ahead with data analysis and presentation (UX/UI) of power and other metrics. Strava is basically useless in that field.

  41. John

    For my purpose of few friends and some basic centralization of data from Garmin, Tacx and Suunto, the strava is OK. What was nice and announced with big fashion was the partner integration. It was a nice feature that added some graphics to Tacx training, but it actually stopped working 🙂 I asked both strava and garmin and got no real reply why it happened which is kinda sad. It was just nice to have and suddenly it was just gone… On the contrary the annoying features like friends suggestion is still there doing nothing just taking space and bothering me.

    In the future, I will probably try to shift to Garmin connect. Tacx will surely make some option to export data automatically to garmin connect and then I am just gonna replace suunto with garmin watch and thats it. No need for strava and their facebook like friends suggestion and so on. Also all analysis on garmin are free including power. If they include photos to be included in the activity, no need to have strava anymore for me.

    • Lee Weikert

      John, you can include photo uploads on Garmin Connect (desktop or phone). Garmin Connect has had this feature for at least a year. You can even upload a picture from Garmin Connect to your favorite social media feed with your stat’s from the ride. Garmin updated the upload options to include different layouts and “frames.”

  42. Eric

    Favorites feature is not available to me on latest version of IOS app, or the web. My only options are to either unfollow or follow. How is it possible that this seems to be available/working for some people and completely missing for most of us?

  43. frank1e

    Ray – looks like Strava streamlining their subscription to paid or free now (rather than different tiers).

    Makes sense to me. I was previously just on one pack and now has an email about the change.

  44. Good stuff. The chrono ordering option is available in the Android version that was updated on my phone 8hrs ago, but “favouriting” those I follow doesn’t seem to be there, despite it being referenced in the release notes for the update. Can anyone use the favourite feature?

  45. Mark

    Like everyone else here, I didn’t have the option to “favourite” the ones I’m following after the update, but suddenly today I noticed that I can. Really strange…

  46. Chris Wachter

    Speaking of Strava.. this week I made a segment for a road I regularly run near my house… once it processed the times, I look at it, and who has the CR, even though he ran it 10 years ago? Good job, Ray… I wish I was running and reading your blog then.

    • That’s awesome. Yeah, I used that road for intervals – it’s a great spot for running intervals because the terrain is a bit rolling so pacing is more challenging.

      In fact, right next to that is where I did hill-repeats too – and sure enough, if I open up this entire run that day, it’s actually part of a hill repeat workout. Here’s the hill: link to strava.com

      That workout that day was beastly – 12.4mi long of intervals on those hills- nearly 90 mins.

  47. kami

    Kinda offtopic, but can anyone tell me if user mentions still work on strava website? When I type @ in chrome, nothing happens. I remember it used to work for me when they added this feature last year.

    • Jeffrey F.

      I don’t believe it has ever worked on the website. At least I’ve never been able to get it to work. It’s always been an app-only feature as far as I can tell.

    • Brett C

      Just tested in Chrome on desktop browser. Works fine for me.

  48. Mayk

    They have also changed the progress on year goals. This used to include (for rides) all rides, virtual, outdoor and commutes. Now it only shows the outdoor rides that are not marked private. That is quite a difference is you like to Zwift when the weather is bad. As is those km’s don’t count anymore.

    • Mayk

      Clicking Refresh Stats under My Profile solved the issue. Perhaps a coincidence that these changes appeared simultaneously.

  49. Jacob Wilbrink

    It is definitely not chronological by starting time of the workout. Maybe by something else but that is hard to see – it maybe by upload time. As far as I can see on my recent feeds it is not back to the way it was many years ago and the way people wanted it.

  50. WillieS

    The day after this update came out the Chronological order was for when the activity finished.
    Now it orders it by the time it was uploaded. That is how it has been for the last few months. Every time someone from a group that only uploads once a week does so all the old activities are at the top again.

    Is this a temporary reversal or do I have the wrong idea about what the chronological order should be?

  51. David Chao

    Here’s a big thing that is finally working again – on the desktop and mobile sites, filtering and searching “my activities.” I can’t believe these are working again after more than a year. I’m thankful!

  52. Balta

    I hope Strava will put a “Mute” option next to the “Favorites” option in the “Following” menu.

    Please see the topic

    https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/208838587–Mute-an-athlete-you-re-Following-to-hide-them-from-your-Feed

  53. Steve Hyle

    Is there a way on your Strava feed to make it so you don’t see all the people you follow joining challenges?
    It’s quite ridiculous seeing the insane amount of challenges people join.

  54. Steven

    Why is Strava adding fake power to segment analysis?