Finding and tidying your maps with Route's regions folder
Map > Open the regions folder in Route by Zaweba shows where prepared maps are kept, how much space each takes and how to delete one you no longer need.
Offline maps have to live somewhere, and in Route by Zaweba that place is the regions folder. Map > Open the regions folder opens it in File Explorer, so you can see exactly what is stored, how much room it takes and which regions you could do without.
By default the folder is in your user account's local app data. You can choose a different one in Settings, as long as it is not inside the app's own folder, and the menu command always opens whichever location is current. That makes it a quick way to check that a move to another drive really took effect.
What you will find inside
Each prepared region keeps its data in a folder of its own. Inside are the pieces Route built when it prepared the map: the address index used for searching, the routing graph used by the engine, and the map tiles that draw what you see. A region that is still part-way through preparation has a folder too, holding whatever steps have finished so far.
One folder per region keeps things simple. To see what a region costs in disk space, look at the size of its folder. To compare a county with a country, compare two folders.
Seeing how much space maps take
Regions vary hugely. A small county is a few megabytes to download and stays modest after preparation. Great Britain is about 2 GB to download before anything is built from it, and coastal regions also fetch OpenStreetMap water outlines once, about 0.9 GB. If your drive is filling up, the regions folder is one of the first places to look.
It is easy to collect regions without noticing. You might prepare a neighbouring county for one job, then a whole country to plan a holiday, and forget both. A look at the folder every so often keeps that in check.
Deleting a region
There are two ways to remove a region. The tidier one is the region chooser, under Map > Choose a region, which lists the regions already on this PC, ready or part-way, and lets you use, resume or delete each one. That route is best for everyday housekeeping, because Route knows exactly what it is removing.
The regions folder lets you delete one by hand. That is useful when a region's folder has been left behind, or when you simply prefer to manage files yourself. Close Route first, so nothing is reading the region while you remove it, and delete the whole folder for that region rather than picking files out of it. Half a region is no use to anyone.
Deleting a region does not touch your saved routes. An .ozroute file keeps the stops, windows, options, set-off time and via points, not the map. If you open a route later for an area you have removed, prepare that region again and the route works as before.
Before you delete anything
Check which region your regular rounds use. If your weekly round is in one county and you also have the whole country prepared, you may be using the larger one without realising. Keep whichever you actually plan with.
Remember too what preparing again costs. A county prepares in seconds to minutes, so removing one you rarely need is no great loss. A big country takes much longer and needs plenty of free memory, so think twice before clearing it if you use it even occasionally.
Moving, not deleting
If the problem is space on one drive rather than too many maps, the better fix is to choose a new folder in Settings on a drive with more room. Open the regions folder afterwards to confirm the location, and use it to check the old folder can be cleared.
A minute with the regions folder now and then keeps Route's offline maps lean, and it tells you exactly what you have, without guessing.
