Just picked up a smartphone, an android, to do all the typical stuff. I decided to try mapmyride on it. This morning I went into the app and the gps turned on. And I couldn't figure out how to try it off! I'm not planning on using it as a GPS at the moment, luckily a half hour later it was off.

How do I turn the gps off? It's nice that it turns on automatically, but I am guessing I will want to turn it off in case I go into the app to view prior rides. I see I can disable the master GPS in android settings but so far not how to turn off/on while inside this app.

Kinda depends on the particular smartphone and app. A little more detail would definitely be helpful.

on most android devices, you pull down on the clock on the upper right hand side of the screen. This gets you to a list of recent events, but the upper right hand side of the screen has a grid icon. Press that and you get to settings. The upper right hand icon (a gear) on the settings page is, strangely enough, "settings." Scroll down and turn off "location" I think that turns off the gps -- for the most part

Yeah, I think it comes down to how the app handles it. I have 3 GPS tracking/logging apps on my Nexus and I just launched them to see what happened.

-Endomondo opens up to the 'start activity' screen and the GPS kicks in automatically. Leaving that screen to view 'history' does not turn it off.
-Sports Tracker opens up to to a display of the aggregated data from all workouts. The GPS turns on when 'start new workout' is selected, but turns off if you hit the back arrow. So no GPS just to view stored data.
-My Tracks (Google product) doesn't turn the GPS on until the start button is hit, either.

It's an LG39C, came with Android 4.1 or 4.2, forgot already. My first "smart" phone, haven't even activated the service yet (it's a Tracfone). At the moment am trying out "mapmyride" as I had an account with them years ago (purely web based), and it turns out that the account is still there, so, what they heck.

[My "dumb" phone has a battery which is no longer going a week between charges. Batteries are cheap I know. But I've been wanting a GPS for a while now, and it'd be nice to have an "all in one" sort of package. So this is an experiment for me.]

I know how to get to settings on the Android but nothing says "GPS". I think there is a locations enable/disable, so perhaps that is the master switch on the GPS portion too.

I'll play with it some more. The app powers up with a map of where I am (or last was), perhaps there is a setting left on or something. I didn't see any sort of "exit this app" like in classic Windows programs.

I'm running the latest KitKat on my Nexus, so maybe it's a bit different for me than you, but I just went into Settings-Location-Mode and I'm presented with 3 options.

- High accuracy uses GPS, WiFi, and mobile network
-Battery saving uses WiFi and mobile networks
-Device only uses just GPS.

I went Settings->Location Access and I get three checkboxes:
-access to my location ("Let apps that have asked your permission use your location information")
-GPS satellites ("Let apps use GPS to pinpoint your location")
-Wi-Fi & mobile network location ("Let apps use Google's locaiton service to estimate your location faster. Anonymous location data will be collect and sent to Google")

At the moment I have all three on.

It's Andriod 4.1.2.

Install the PowerToggles app to your phone. One of the toggles is the GPS, and it sounds like you might like some of the other ones as well. It's just a button bar type of widget that puts functions like that on the home page, one click.

The same. When you install an app that uses GPS you have to give it permission to access your GPS on your phone. Some Navigation apps let you disable the GPS from the app and some don't. You can disable the GPS from all apps from your settings menu but I don't know why you would want to do that.

Keep in mind also that some GPS apps have a more comprehensive control settings that let you fine tune how you want the GPS to be used. On my Locus app when I'm navigating I have the option to leave the app and look at another app screen. If I do that the GPS is still on and tracking even when looking at another app screen. This allows me to just go back and check my location when I need to. ( now if I want to I can tell it not to track when I'm not looking at navigation, my choice. Usually though I want it to track me. )

Now if I wish to stop navigating and have the GPS stop I have to back out of the app using the back button on my screen. It will then ask me do I wish to exit navigation, at which point I press yes. Then the app tells me GPS is disabled and the app closes.

Google navigator is somewhat similar. You back out and it will ask you if you wish to exit navigation. When you say yes it then stops tracking with GPS. Like many folks I found out if you don't do this right the GPS will keep tracking and suck battery power. I have a real problem with the "Google Map" app. Sometimes when doing searches I have to press on a "google map" link to get a location of something I need to find. Once I'm done with the map if I don't back out the right way the map app will continue to run in the background...unaware. I found this out because when I use "Google Navigator" ( a separate app ) and close that out the google map app will sometimes come up which shows it was running in the background without my knowledge. Obviously the two apps are linked in some way which is quite annoying. When this happens I find the only way to get rid of the "google map app" running in the background is to reboot the phone. Now it doesn't do it every time I use "Google map" but sometimes if I don't close it out right it keeps running stealthily in the background, very annoying.

You probably want all three on for tracking rides. For finding the nearest pizza place after the ride just the wifi and mobile networks work fine. GPS drains the battery.

I haven't figured out how to "back out of" mapmyride, there seems to be no quit button / menu. Will play with some more. There are other apps to try out too.

Will look into this "power toggles" widget. Thanks.

there are apps that will kill other apps. I find the lack of a quit function to be really annoying