Pokemon Go Finally Stops Destroying Your Battery With Adventure Sync Launch

Pokemon Go has been a notorious battery hog since it released in 2016, largely because of one specific element: hatching Pokemon eggs, which has always been done by walking around in the real world with Pokemon Go running on your phone. Thanks to the release of the new Adventure Sync feature, the game now is capable of tracking steps without it running--which means the game should finally become a little more battery friendly.

Developer Niantic Labs made the feature available to at least some members of the Pokemon Go community this week, allowing them to opt-in to Adventure Sync. According to Niantic's support page detailing the feature, Adventure Sync seems to work by tapping into your phone's on-board fitness-tracking software, either Apple's Health or Google Fit, then using the step data your phone tracks and translating it into the game. That change should make hatching Pokemon eggs and gaining Buddy candies, which also are earned by walking, a lot easier. From its launch, Pokemon Go has used location data to track distance walked, rather than actual steps taken--a metric that could sometimes be finicky in its tracking, and which sucked up a lot of battery and cellular data.

Using Adventure Sync also means Pokemon Go gives you a weekly fitness report that shows you how far you walked, how many steps you took, how many eggs you hatched, and how many candies you earned.

Adventure Sync isn't available to everyone playing Pokemon Go just yet. Niantic's support page for the feature says it's slowly rolling it out to the player community in waves, but "We look forward to granting access to everyone above level 5 soon." Once Adventure Sync is fully implemented, it'll be available to all players once they reach level 5 in the game. You'll also have to switch the feature on in the Settings menu, or you'll be stuck with the old step-tracking method.

Niantic has been busy with Pokemon Go lately--it just started a new in-game event and released new Pokemon. It also rolled out the first wave of Gen 4 Pokemon from the Sinnoh region in October, and there's another Community Day coming on November 10. That one will feature increased spawns of the Pokemon Gold and Silver starter Cyndaquil.