Zwift released their teleport feature in a June 2023 update, but you may have missed it if you were busy riding outside and haven’t dug into the updated action bar. This is a really handy feature, though – one that perhaps you didn’t know you needed until you tried it – so let’s dig into how it works.
What Teleporting Does
Teleport lets you seamlessly move between RoboPacers or active friends currently riding or running in the same world as you. Crucially, Zwift doesn’t start a new activity when you teleport. This allows you to bounce around between RoboPacers or friends while keeping your workout in one single file.
How To Teleport
It’s easy! Access teleporting via the in-game action bar or via the Companion app. Here’s a quick video showing how it works using the action bar:
Why Teleport?
Teleporting lets you do fun things in a single activity that weren’t previously possible, like:
- Gentler Warmups: spin your legs up with a slower RoboPacer before popping over to a faster pace group for the main part of your workout
- Tour de Amigos: feeling social on a day with no set workout plan? Bounce around the map to ride or run with friends who are currently online. Pop into each of their activities to say hello and wish them well.
- TeleSweeper: if you drop off the back of a RoboPacer group for any reason, it’s easy to teleport back in whenever you’d like.
There are also more “advanced” use cases we’ve seen from some community members:
- RoboPacer Intervals: replace a structured workout by bouncing between RoboPacers holding particular w/kg. (for example, a B rider might bounce between Jaques and Constance for an Over-Under workout.)
- RoboPacer Ladder Challenge: start with an easy RoboPacer, then move to the next hardest after 5 minutes. Keep going until you can’t keep up! (Stronger riders may need to increase the interval to 10 minutes or more.)
- Post-Race Cooldown: racing in Watopia or Makuri Islands? Once your race ends, you don’t need to end your activity and start a new one to cooldown with a group. Just teleport to a RoboPacer to spin out your legs and cool down.
- Endless Everesting: turn any climb into endless elevation by parking a friend at the bottom so you can Teleport down to them once you reach the top. (Note: we don’t see anything in the official vEveresting rules prohibiting this, but it could lead to faster vEveresting times, so we may see those rules get updated.)
- Get Bigger Than Jensie: still haven’t earned your achievement badge for getting 100 Ride Ons in a single ride? Teleport to a busy RoboPacer, ride in the pack for 15 minutes… then teleport to a different busy pacer. Keep doing this until you’ve got all 100.
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Activity Maps
What do your activity maps look like after teleporting? Zwift has done a very nice job when viewing the activity on Zwift.com:
In the Companion app, teleportation just shows as a solid white line, like the rest of your activity.
Strava (shown here using the ZwiftMap for Strava Chrome extension) charts all the lines the same way (like Zwift Companion, but not as pretty as Zwift.com).
It’s important to note that the teleporting portions aren’t figured into your overall activity distance, speed, etc on Strava or in Zwift.
Rules of Teleportation
Zwift’s teleportation feature includes some necessary rules/limitations:
- You don’t get distance credit or XP for the distance covered while teleporting.
- You will get credit for any routes or segments completed during your activity, as long as you don’t teleport in or out during that route or segment.
- You cannot teleport into or out of events.
- You cannot teleport during a workout.
- You can only teleport to Zwifters you follow who also follow you back.
- The Drops multiplier game restarts whenever you teleport to a RoboPacer… even if it’s the RoboPacer you were already with.
Questions or Comments?
What do you think of Zwift’s teleport feature? Any uses you’ve found that we didn’t cover above? Any questions? Share below!
Recently I saw a post of someone who ride all worlds in one ride using teleporting. How was that done?
Teleport only works within a given world
Not sure you can teleport to a pacer after an event. I tried to teleport to a pacer for a few extra kms after the Festive Fondo in Watopia this weekend and none were available. I ended up roaming the roads until I found one at my desired pace but by then my objective was already accomplished. Maybe a glitch?
To clarify… I tried to join a pacer after completing the Festive Fondo in Watopia but the teleport selection window was empty. I wandered looking for one but by the time I found one, I’d finished cooling down.
try to just do one turn around, then Zwift notices that you are no longer in an event, that workaround worked for me
happens with companion sometimes, I just restarted the companion app and there was a populated teleport list =)
I agree the companion app frequently bugs out after finishing an event. Most of the time I only have the U-turn option available after an event but not the left, right, straight-on options at intersections. Never tried the teleport after the end of an event though.
If I’m riding with a robopacer to complete 25 volcano rounds and take a (let’s say) 15-minute break when I’m halfway through, can teleport to rejoin the robopacer to complete my goal and get the badge? Will Zwift let me “throwaway” the round when I took my break?
Yes, I know, some purists may think less of me for asking this.
Yeah, you should be fine as long as all 25 are done within the same session.
Shouldn’t be a problem, but one of the best things about the Volcano Circuit is that it’s only about 7 minutes before your pacer group comes back. You can also just plan breaks around that if you don’t want to teleport.
almost certain you will loose the badge unless you start from scratch, teleporting sets you back to zero in any segment you are in, and having done the 25 lap volcano thing twice it only worked when you did them all in a row.
That’s not my experience, Mike. I’ve seen the badge earned when riding laps in both directions in a single ride.
Far as I can tell, as long as you ride 25 laps total in one activity (in one direction, or a mix of both) you’ll get it. So I think teleporting would work just fine.
Teleporting during a lap will make you lose that lap for the count. I stopped for a dinner break (bad planning – i know) and just missed the robo pacer group being back. So i teleported (only a few 100m) and that lap didn‘t count.
One thing I wish the UI would show is if a friend you want to teleport to is currently riding with a robo pacer (and which one).
Yeah, more info on what the friend is up to would be nice!
The nice thing is, at least, it’s easy to teleport somewhere else if you join them on the “bonus climb.” 😃
It made the 100 ride on achievement super easy to get. Teleport to a busy robo pacer. Stay for 15 minutes spamming ride on bombs. Teleport to the next one, rinse, repeat. Managed to get it in just over an hour. Not what the teleporting was meant for but it can certainly be used that way 😉
Ah, that’s a good one! I’ll add it to the list above.
Cool concept. Makes it a much cleaner experience. Now when will they allow me to clear out my garage? Let me ‘Sell’ them back for some drop points or archive them.
About vEveresting Its not ok to teleport down. You have to do the road down. Its cool to let the bike and avatar descend on its own but not having that descent done its not ok.
Can confirm. If you can teleport ingame it would be like getting a var ride irl… Which doesnt make any sense ^^
I agree with both of you but this needs to be reflected in the rules. Fully understand that the rules were written when teleporting didn’t exist but at present a ride using this would be rule conformant. There is the obvious difference of something conforming to the rules but not to the spirit of the rules. Either way the rules need to catch up with this development.
The rule says:
– Rides cannot be loops. The descent must be via the same road.
So doing a teleport is not via the same road.
But its ok. I checked in the FB group and they have allowed only climbs, no descent needed in virtual everestings anymore because there are some apps that are now allowed that have no way of turning back down.
Then all is good. 😀
Check my reply to Kent. Now its OK.
But its ok. I checked in the FB group and they have allowed only climbs, no descent needed in virtual everestings anymore because there are some apps that are now allowed that have no way of turning back down.
Don’t forget, in February this year Hells 500 did a vEveresting on Fulgaz where they strung together continous climbs, NO downhills. I don’t see how this is different. Virtual is not the same as IRL and they have already addressed this. I did a basecamp that day. Still took forever.
You are right. Now they alloe that way because some new apps are now valid to veveresting and they have no way of coming down.
I use this routinely to warm up with a lower-power robopacer then jump to a higher one for the bulk of my ride. The problem is that my activity is named based on the warm-up group. It should be named based on the group I spent the vast majority of the ride with.
Hi this is what I do.
Start in the main group, then teleport to the warm up group right away and then back to main group. Then it’s named like you want it.
Another workaround… Zwift (etc) does allow you to modify the name of your activity. It takes a slight bit of extra time but (IMHO) it’s definitely not overly inconvenient.
Only spotted this function whilst doing the Festive 500 last week. Occasionally my systems bugs out and I lose my power readings so the avatar slows and stops.
If I’m with a big pacing group and near the front it’s not too much of an issue as I’ll probably get connected before I’m off the back.
Now if I have issues and lose contact with the group I can join up with a pacer with no issues or delay.
Best improvement I’ve seen for ages.
So is there still no way (easy) to complete a route during a workout and then switch to another route? This doesn’t help with that does it?
i think that there is something coming soon which may help with that
If you do this week’s Flat is Fast zRace on Tempus Fugit (has 250 xp per banner as the only power up) and then use the teleport to jump around behind various robopacers after you finish (without ending the ride), it might be possible to use the teleport to pound out some big xp gains in a hurry. I wanted to cooldown after finishing, so I teleported over to Miguel fortunately just as he started the first of the sprint sections on the new roads of the Big Ring. Didn’t take too long before I had gotten a total of 1000 xp just for going through the 4 banners on that stretch of road on my cooldown. Of course that timing was pretty much down to luck, but I’m sure someone could figure out how to optimize points farming using it if they wanted to take the time.
> It’s important to note that the teleporting portions aren’t figured into your overall activity distance, speed, etc on Strava
I teleported once and had a max speed of 142 mph on Strava so that was neat.
Questions: How would you Park a friend at the bottom of a hill for endless everesting? XP multiplier restarts anytime you go from pace bot to pace bot
Your friend (or a second account you create) would ride to the bottom of the Alpe then stop. Now you can ride to the top, then click to join that friend – which will teleport you to the bottom of the Alpe, to their side.
Other way would be much easier ride 🙂
One thing I’ve found is if you teleport to a pacer just before an intersection then turn off from it before the pedal assist ends you get kept at ~40-50mph until it runs out, I think as zwift tries to accelerate you to find tge pacer again.. Not very practical for distance as Zwift doesn’t log the ‘gps’ data from it, but the segment times in Zwift still count allowing you to get crazy times on some jerseys.
I also did this once with a coffee buy haven’t been able to replicate it since.
It could be an XP hack to park a friend on the summit, ride down and teleport back up again.
Can you teleport in erg mode, or after a workout ends?
Just checked – you can’t teleport during a workout (button is hidden). I’m sure once the workout ends you can, since you’re then in free ride mode.
I’ve found an issue with Teleport as it relates to Strava. I performed a workout with intervals in various zones. Because the pace partners aligned with the Zones I needed in the workout, I teleported to Pacers ranging from D to B as necessary for each interval. I thought this worked very well and the paces were close enough that in erg mode I was in the group for most of the interval or slightly off the front. Because these were 5 or 10 minute intervals, I just used the drops multiplier bar as my timer.
When saved to Strava, the total mileage counted in my monthly challenges, but not in my clubs. I have used the Teleport feature on many rides without issue, but this was the first time I tried to use it 10-12 times in a single session. I routinely teleport 3 to 4 times on some rides without issue. I suspect there is a limit in GPS tolerance with teleporting in Strava as it relates to Clubs.
I reported the issue to Strava, but they seem reluctant to consider it an issue. They said my GPS data was bad. I see that there have been recent changes to clubs in regard to privacy (summer 2023) so maybe there is a difference in Challenges and Clubs in those code changes. At a minimum, I think they should list it as a known issue. I would prefer they consider it a low priority defect and schedule the resolution accordingly.
Just wondering if you have seen this issue and if you think it is worth pursuing. I really liked how this worked for my intervals and want to use it again. I am in a club with a weekly mileage accountability challenge, so that is the only reason it matters to me and the only reason I found the issue.
That’s odd. Are you sure your Zwift miles in “normal” sessions count for club miles in Strava? Wondering if it’s just a virtual ride thing…
I’ve been on the trainer a lot so far this year, but good weather is coming. Most of my rides on Zwift (not all) will include a teleport or three. I’ve just gone and done the math again and can confirm that this one particular ride does not register in clubs. Because I liked the way that workout went, I will try that method again and maybe I will find Strava’s upper limit of teleport jumps eventually.
Tried to complete a route by
selecting the route after logging inteleporting to robopacer on the routecompleting the whole route including the lead in (and a bit extra as followed the robopacer back to the lead in and start point)did not get route badge
what am I doing wrong? i did the whole route uninterrupted.
You can probably guess: teleport. Don’t teleport. If you want a route badge there are only two ways to get it: select the route as a free ride and ride until you get the badge or join an event on the route (not late join!) and ride until you get the badge (even after the event ends if it ends before the route ends).
Any idea what logic (or lack there of) Zwift uses to filter the list of available riders to teleport to? I mean besides the current world filter. I think I’m limitted to seven riders as options? I’m a friend whore, especially because if all the awesome Team Type 1 members, on Zwift and often have quite a few more friends than that riding in Watopia, but I can’t see a way to expand the list or filter the list. I seem to be stuck with whomever Zwift decides I get to see in the limitted list.
For friends to show up on the list they have to be visible riding in the same world as you (no events), you have to be following them, and (crucially) THEY have to be following you.
(Zwift set it up this way to creepy stalkers…)