Skip to content

GPS JoyStick v5.3.0: Folders, Multi-Select, and a New Setup Experience

· The App Ninjas · 8 min read
release android

GPS JoyStick v5.3.0 ships folder organization for Favorites and Routes, a multi-select mode with bulk actions, and GPX/KML export that preserves your folder structure. This is the biggest organizational update since launch - if you have more than a handful of saved locations, this release changes how you work with them.

Folder Organization (Pro)

GPS JoyStick Pro now lets you organize your Favorites and Routes into folders. Create folders, nest them inside other folders, rename them, reorder them with drag-and-drop, and navigate your hierarchy with breadcrumb paths at the top of the screen.

What you can do with folders:

  • Create and nest - build as many levels of hierarchy as you need. Folders can contain other folders, giving you a full tree structure for organizing locations by project, region, client, or whatever makes sense for your workflow.
  • Breadcrumb navigation - a path bar at the top shows where you are in the hierarchy and lets you jump to any parent folder with a single tap.
  • Drag-to-reorder - rearrange folders in whatever order works for you.
  • Folder picker - when saving a new Favorite or Route, pick which folder it goes into. When moving existing items, a folder picker dialog lets you choose the destination.
  • Item counts - each folder row shows how many items it contains, including items in nested subfolders.
  • Recursive delete - deleting a folder removes everything inside it, including nested folders and their contents.

Folder organization is a Pro feature. Free users can see the folder UI and browse folder structures (useful when opening shared exports), but creating and managing folders requires Pro. No other GPS spoofing app offers folder organization for saved locations and routes.

Selection Mode with Bulk Actions

Long-press any Favorite, Route, or folder to enter selection mode. A bottom action bar appears with the operations available for your current selection:

  • Copy - duplicate selected items
  • Edit - modify a single selected item
  • Rename - rename a single selected item or folder
  • Move to Folder - move selected items into a folder (Pro)
  • Delete - remove selected items

Tap additional items to add them to the selection, or use Select All in the toolbar to grab everything. Search still works during selection mode, so you can filter down to the items you need and then select from the filtered results.

The actions shown in the bottom bar update based on what you have selected - items, folders, or a mix of both. This replaces the old popup menu pattern with a modern Android multi-select interaction model.

GPX and KML Folder Support

Your folder organization now survives export and import.

GPX export includes folder path metadata using <gpsjoystick:folder> extension tags. When you import that GPX file back into GPS JoyStick, Pro users get their full folder hierarchy reconstructed automatically. Free users import everything flat with no data loss - the items come in, they just land in the root level instead of folders.

KML export and import is new in v5.3.0. KML uses native <Folder> elements, so folder structure is part of the standard format. When you export to KML, your folders map directly to KML's folder structure. Import works the same way - the folder hierarchy comes in intact for Pro users.

An export format chooser dialog lets you pick GPX or KML before exporting. On import, GPS JoyStick auto-detects the file format.

Quick Actions Widget

GPS JoyStick now ships a Quick Actions home screen widget rebuilt with Jetpack Glance. Pin it to your home screen for one-tap access to your favorites and routes without opening the app.

What the widget gives you on the free tier:

  • One-tap teleport - tap any favorite to teleport instantly. Tap any route to start playback.
  • Up to 3 pinned items - pick any 3 favorites or routes to show on the widget.
  • Material You theme - the widget renders with Material You dynamic colors on Android 12+.
  • Flat list - all pinned items appear in a single list, ordered by your drag-to-reorder choices.
  • Drag to reorder - long-press and drag items in Widget Settings to set the display order.
  • Live spoof state - the widget header reflects whether mocking is active and updates as you start or stop.
  • Built with Jetpack Glance - Android 12+ for the full feature set, with graceful fallbacks on earlier versions.

Pro adds:

  • Up to 100 pinned items instead of 3.
  • Theme picker - choose between Material You, Dark, or Light.
  • Group by Type - switch from a flat list to collapsible Favorites and Routes groups.

If you used the legacy widget on 5.2 or earlier, your configuration is preserved across the upgrade. The underlying serialization moved from CSV to JSON for reliability, but the migration is automatic.

Cooldown Times Dialog

The Cooldown Times dialog combines the distance-to-cooldown reference and a live state indicator in one place. Open it from the main screen by expanding Quick Options and tapping Cooldown Times.

Inside the bottom sheet:

  • A Ready (green dot) or Cooling (orange dot) indicator with explicit text, so the state stays readable for users with color vision differences.
  • A countdown row that refreshes once per second while a cooldown is active.
  • The full distance-to-cooldown reference table, with the current tier highlighted based on your last teleport distance.

You can plan a teleport without leaving the app to look up the timing, and you can read the active state without leaving the dialog.

What's New on Upgrade

After upgrading to v5.3, the first cold launch shows a What's New bottom sheet that highlights three of the release's biggest user-facing changes:

  • Folders for Favorites and Routes.
  • Quick Actions Widget, with an Add to Home Screen button that jumps directly into the widget pin flow.
  • Languages, noting that GPS JoyStick now ships in 22 languages.

The sheet is dismissible from the X icon, the Done button, swipe-down, the scrim, and the system back gesture. It appears once after a version that introduces it and never repeats for the same version. You don't need to do anything in the sheet to use the new features. It's a heads-up, not a setup step.

Redesigned Setup Wizard

The setup wizard has been completely rebuilt using Jetpack Compose. The new wizard walks you through five setup steps in a card-based, step-by-step flow:

  1. Notification Permission - for Android 13+ devices
  2. Location Permission - required for GPS operations
  3. Overlay Permission - enables the on-screen joystick overlay
  4. Developer Options - guides you through enabling Developer Options on your device
  5. Mock Location - sets GPS JoyStick as your mock location app

Each step includes device-specific instructions and a skip option if you want to handle it later. Back navigation and an exit confirmation dialog prevent accidental exits mid-setup.

After completing setup, the wizard becomes a Setup Hub accessible from the navigation drawer under "Setup & Help." You can revisit any step at any time - useful when troubleshooting or setting up on a new device.

5 New Languages

GPS JoyStick now supports 22 languages with the addition of Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Dutch, and Czech. All translatable strings have been translated across every supported language.

Full language list: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese (Simplified), and Chinese (Traditional).

Stability and Bug Fixes

v5.3 also closes a batch of crashes and edge cases reported on 5.2:

  • Favorites and routes selection-result IndexOutOfBoundsException fixed.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when launching ads on certain devices.
  • Distance-info NullPointerException on the main screen fixed.
  • KML export now writes folder ordering deterministically and trims trailing whitespace.
  • Pro-gate dialog leaks on the export path closed.
  • GPX import edge cases handled: 0/0 coordinates, missing FileOutputStream paths.

Get Started