At the bottom right of the screen, a box displays up to 3 nearby Pokémon. During initial release these Pokémon would be at a distance of 0, 1, 2, or 3 footsteps. On July 14, 2016 all Pokémon were stuck at 3 steps. When Android 0.31.0 version was released [1], Pokémon no longer listed the steps.
Pressing on this small box will open a new “Nearby” screen, showing a list of all of the nearby Pokémon.
If you have captured or encountered (seen but failed to capture) a Pokémon already, the Pokémon shown will be in full image. Otherwise, you will simply see a grey outline of the Pokémon and will not actually see which one it is. You may be able to deduce what you are tracking from this outline.
Text below here is left just in case the step functionality is returned.
If you wish, you may select one of these Pokémon to track. Doing so will replace the bottom box with the single Pokémon and the footsteps to get to it. You can use this to quickly track the Pokémon of interest, watching as you either lose or gain footsteps to help determine where you should go to find. Click back on the chosen Pokémon in order to return to viewing 3 Pokémon instead of tracking.
A displayed Pokémon with no tracks will indicate that Pokémon is visible on the map. Take a look around and see if you can find it and capture it!
Relation of footsteps to distance:
# of Footsteps | Distance (approximate) |
0 | <70m (visible) |
1 | ?? (70m -> 140m) |
2 | ?? (140m -> 210m) |
3 | ?? (210m -> 280m) |