Traffic mode is now a live local map — gas prices and all
SkyWatch's Traffic mode started life as a way to peek at nearby roadside cameras. It's grown into something more useful: a live map of your area that layers real local data right on top of the streets around you. Roadside cameras, fuel prices coloured cheapest-to-priciest, automated license-plate-reader locations, and live road congestion — each one a layer you can switch on or off. Here's everything it shows and how to set it up.
The foundation: a live local map
At its core, Traffic mode is a north-up map centred on your home, showing nearby roadside traffic cameras as small markers at their real positions. Tap any camera to open its snapshot, with the camera's name fitted below — and a LIVE badge when a video feed is offered. While the card's open, the image quietly auto-refreshes every few seconds for a near-live look at the road.
Because your SkyWatch sits in one place, everything lands on the actual streets around you. You can zoom with the on-screen − and + buttons, drag to pan around, and tap the middle button to snap back home. Unlike the radar modes, Traffic has no search-radius ring — you roam freely, and the visible cameras follow wherever you look.
The headline upgrade: gas prices on the map
This is the layer most people will switch on first. Turn on gas prices and SkyWatch plots nearby fuel stations as markers coloured by price — cheapest in green, priciest in red — so the best deal in your area is obvious at a glance. Tap any marker for the full pump board for that station.
Two things make it genuinely practical:
- Price labels — switch these on to print the actual price next to each marker. Handy in most places; if you live somewhere with a dense cluster of stations, turning labels off keeps the map clean while you still get the colour coding.
- Pump grade — choose which fuel grade drives the colours: regular, midgrade, premium, or diesel. So if you run a diesel vehicle, the map reflects diesel prices, not regular.
It turns "where's gas cheapest near me right now" into something you can answer with a glance across the room.
Flock / ALPR camera locations
Traffic mode can also plot the locations of automated license-plate-reader (ALPR) cameras — the Flock-style cameras that have spread across a lot of neighbourhoods — alongside the live traffic cameras. These come from the public DeFlock dataset, which is crowdsourced, so there's no live feed here: just the pin and whatever the contributor noted about it, like the manufacturer, the direction it faces, how it's mounted, and when it was installed. For anyone curious about the surveillance infrastructure around them, it's an eye-opening layer to switch on.
Live traffic flow
The third overlay is a road-congestion layer that tints the roads from free-flowing to jammed, so you can see how the local routes are moving. It's faded back deliberately, so it sits underneath the cameras and gas markers without drowning them out. Glance over before you head out and you'll know whether the usual route is crawling.
Mix and match the layers
Each overlay is independent — toggled on its own from the Traffic settings page on your phone — so you build the map you actually want. Just want the cheapest gas? Run gas prices alone. Planning a drive? Add the congestion layer. Curious about what's watching the streets? Switch on the Flock cameras. They all sit on the same map and stay out of each other's way.
Who it's for
Traffic mode earns its keep for the daily commuter checking conditions before leaving, the deal-hunter who refuses to overpay for fuel, anyone curious about local surveillance and where the ALPR cameras actually are, and the desk tinkerer who just likes having a live, real-world map of their patch of the world ticking away nearby.
👉 See SkyWatch and everything it can track — explore it here.
