Custom categories

wanderer uses categories to classify what kind of activity a trail belongs to. Out of the box you get: Biking, Canoeing, Climbing, Hiking, Running, Skiing and Walking. Some broad categories also have subcategories, for example Biking can be refined into MTB, Gravel, Road or E-Bike. You can adapt this taxonomy to your needs in the PocketBase admin panel.

Modifying categories

In the PocketBase admin panel, click on the categories table in the list on the left side. All existing categories will be listed here. To edit one simply click on the row, edit the data you want to change, and click “Save”. To delete a category check the box at the beginning of the row and click “Delete selected”. To create a new category click the “New record” button in the top right corner, give your new category a name, optionally fill in display metadata such as short_name, icon, or localized translations, and click “Save”.

The category name is the canonical, language-independent identity. Use stable names such as Hiking or Biking; display labels in different languages should be stored in translations. Incoming federated trails and integration imports match categories by a normalized version of name, so changing a category name can affect future matching.

Category fields

Field	Description
name	Canonical category name. This is used for matching across imports and federation.
short_name	Optional compact label for space-constrained UI.
icon	Optional Font Awesome Free icon name without the fa- prefix, for example person-hiking.
translations	Optional localized display labels.
settings	Optional JSON settings for category-specific backend behavior. See Category settings and valhalla_profile.

translations uses supported base locale codes such as de, en, fr, or pt as keys. Do not use region-specific keys such as de-CH or pt-BR; the frontend resolves user locales to their base locale before looking up category translations.

Example:

{
  "de": {
    "name": "Radfahren",
    "short_name": "RAD"
  },
  "en": {
    "name": "Biking",
    "short_name": "BIKE"
  }
}

Modifying subcategories

Subcategories live in the subcategories table and act as optional refinements below a single parent category. Their names only need to be unique within that parent, so Road can exist under both Biking and Running at the same time.

To add one, create a new record in subcategories, choose its parent category, set a canonical name, and optionally add display metadata.

Subcategory fields

Field	Description
category	Required parent category.
name	Canonical subcategory name, unique within the parent category after normalization.
short_name	Compact label shown in icon-based filters, for example MTB, GRVL, or ROAD.
icon	Optional Font Awesome Free icon name. If empty, the parent category icon is used.
badge_icon	Optional Font Awesome Free overlay icon, for example snowflake, mountain, bolt, or cross.
translations	Optional localized display labels, using the same structure as category translations.
settings	Optional JSON settings for subcategory-specific backend behavior. Currently used for valhalla_profile.

Most subcategories should reuse the parent category’s icon and rely on short_name — plus a badge_icon where it helps — to set themselves apart, rather than each carrying a distinct full icon. You can browse available icon names at fontawesome.com.

Note

Unknown remote categories and subcategories are not automatically created during federation. Raw remote values are stored on the trail and can be matched later when an admin creates a compatible local category or subcategory.

Migrating old custom categories

If your instance already had custom categories such as MTB or Gravel that now overlap with a default subcategory, you can reassign the affected trails in bulk from the web UI. See Categories for the step-by-step migration path.

Category settings

Categories can optionally define additional settings in the settings JSON field. This field may be left empty. When no settings are configured, wanderer uses the built-in defaults.

Currently, the following waypoint-merge settings are supported:

{
  "wp_merge_enabled": true,
  "wp_merge_radius": 50
}

wp_merge_enabled controls whether geotagged photos are grouped into waypoint clusters. Set it to false to create one waypoint per photo.

wp_merge_radius controls how close geotagged photos have to be to each other, in meters, before they are grouped into the same waypoint when adding waypoint photos to a trail. Set it to 0 to only merge photos with the exact same coordinates, or increase the value to merge photos across a wider area.

valhalla_profile

valhalla_profile is an optional string key available on both categories.settings and subcategories.settings. It tells wanderer which Valhalla costing model to use when routing, navigating, or downloading a trail in that category.

Accepted values

The vocabulary is open — it is not a fixed list, and it is never validated against an allowlist. Any Valhalla costing model name is accepted:

valhalla_profile := <costing>                  e.g. "pedestrian", "auto", "truck", "motor_scooter"
                  | "bicycle_" <bicycle_type>  e.g. "bicycle_mountain"

• A bare costing name is passed through to Valhalla verbatim as its costing value.
• The only special form is bicycle_<type>, where <type> is one of Valhalla’s four bicycle_type values (road, hybrid, cross, mountain). It maps to the bicycle costing with that bike type — for example bicycle_mountain becomes costing: "bicycle" with bicycle_type: "Mountain".

Because the vocabulary is open, you can adopt a new Valhalla costing model as soon as upstream ships it, without waiting for a wanderer release. See Valhalla’s own costing models documentation for the full list of names.

Example: adding a Car category

Create a new category named Car and set its settings to:

{
  "valhalla_profile": "auto"
}

Trails in that category are now routed, navigated, and downloaded using Valhalla’s auto costing — no code change and no allowlist edit required.

Shipped defaults

(Sub)category	valhalla_profile
Category Hiking	pedestrian
Subcategory Biking / Touring	bicycle_hybrid
Subcategory Biking / MTB	bicycle_mountain
Subcategory Biking / Gravel	bicycle_cross
Subcategory Biking / Road	bicycle_road
Subcategory Biking / E-Bike	bicycle_hybrid

Biking / E-Bike maps to bicycle_hybrid because Valhalla has no dedicated e-bike costing model — Hybrid is its closest general-purpose bike profile. Every other default category and subcategory ships with no value, meaning it has no Valhalla costing mapping of its own. Existing instances receive these defaults retroactively on the next server start, and an operator-set value is never overwritten.

Resolution order

For a given trail, the profile is resolved in this order:

1. The selected subcategory’s valhalla_profile, if that subcategory still exists and is not hidden by the user’s visibility preferences.
2. The parent category’s valhalla_profile.
3. bicycle_hybrid, when the category is biking-shaped (at least one of its subcategories maps to a bicycle costing) but nothing above resolved. This step is bicycle-specific: Valhalla’s four bike variants share one bicycle costing and need a sensible bicycle_type default.
4. pedestrian, when nothing is configured.

An unset or unrecognized value simply falls through this chain rather than erroring, so a typo degrades to walking rather than breaking routing.

Route Planner picker

The Route Planner’s travel-profile picker still offers only its five built-in options (Hiking and the four bike variants). A category mapped to a costing outside those five — such as auto — is fully honored for routing, navigation, and offline download, but it does not appear as a planner preset, and the picker highlights nothing for it.