Review / From Geocaching to Pokémon Go: The 7 best walking apps for people who hate fitness apps – and walking

If it were up to me, I would lie on the couch and play games all day – I have perfected what my husband calls the fine art of “smushing”.

Alas, an office job and a penchant for pizza force me to move around for the sake of a pay cheque and what one might loosely term “health”, and this summer I figured I might as well download apps that would help me reach a daily target of 10,000 steps – the widely accepted standard if fitness trackers are anything to go by.

The problem with most pedometer or step-tracking fitness apps – Fitbit, Garmin, Google Fit, Samsung Health, Huawei Health, MyFitnessPal, etc – is that they can sometimes require linking to accessories that you don’t possess. And, more importantly, they’re too fitness-driven, too healthy, too perky. Too boring.

I have therefore spent hours on the couch researching and installing free fitness apps that are masquerading as games, and will get you moving – however reluctantly – for the sake of treasure, a new planet, actual money, or a unicorn.

Geocaching – for adventurers

This is not my favourite, primarily because it requires me to actually go places. Geocaching has been around for a while, but to those new to the scene, it’s essentially a treasure hunt for grown-ups.

The app takes your phone’s GPS location and pulls up a map with dozens of real-life “caches” marked. These tend to be sealable boxes filled with “treasure” in the form of assorted knick-knacks, a logbook, and potentially a “travel bug” – an item with a trackable tag, which someone leaves behind with the hope that it will be carried around the city, or even the world, by “geocachers” or hitchhikers.