Pokémon Go radar — Find Pokémon using new Nearby and Sighting trackers

While you can play the game casually by walking around and stumbling into Pokémon at random, there is a way to how to target a specific type out of a selection nearby, which is perfect if you want to fill out those Pokédex entries, find a Pokémon to counter a specific Type, or work on getting Candy for leveling and evolutions.

With recent patches, however, much of the mechanics around finding and catching Pokémon have changed. As of late July, the radar in the bottom right of the screen now no longer displays footsteps to indicate actual distances to Pokémon nearby, and was replaced by new Nearby and Sightings trackers. Meanwhile, third-party apps such as Pokévision have been shut down.

Despite the improvements, things still a little up-in-the-air right now for fans in search of the rarest Pokémon, so below we've complied all the known ways for hunting down Pokémon.

How to find Pokémon with new Nearby and Sightings radar trackers

After removing the buggy three-step method in late July, Pokémon Go was updated in August with two new Sightings and Nearby trackers. While Sightings is available to everyone, Nearby is only visible for select users, with most evidence pointing to users in North America so far only having access.

Sighting radar tracker

This is similar to the broken three-step radar, allowing you to see Pokémon in the local vicinity without knowing the distance or approximate location. While you can't narrow down a location using this, it gives you a broad indication of what is nearby somewhere, if you want to take a little stroll to hunt them down.

Nearby radar tracker

Only available to a small selection of users on its debut, this replaces the three-step radar by showing you where specific Pokémon are located relative to PokéStops. Select the Pokémon you want, and you will get a close up view of the Pokéstop. Tap again, and the map will zoom out and show you the route to that stop. Users are reporting that Pokémon won't be located on top of that location, but close enough by, helping you narrow down the location.

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By Chris Tapsell Published 08/08/2016

While you can play the game casually by walking around and stumbling into Pokémon at random, there is a way to how to target a specific type out of a selection nearby, which is perfect if you want to fill out those Pokédex entries, find a Pokémon to counter a specific Type, or work on getting Candy for leveling and evolutions.

With recent patches, however, much of the mechanics around finding and catching Pokémon have changed. As of late July, the radar in the bottom right of the screen now no longer displays footsteps to indicate actual distances to Pokémon nearby, and was replaced by new Nearby and Sightings trackers. Meanwhile, third-party apps such as Pokévision have been shut down.

Despite the improvements, things still a little up-in-the-air right now for fans in search of the rarest Pokémon, so below we've complied all the known ways for hunting down Pokémon.

How to find Pokémon with new Nearby and Sightings radar trackers

After removing the buggy three-step method in late July, Pokémon Go was updated in August with two new Sightings and Nearby trackers. While Sightings is available to everyone, Nearby is only visible for select users, with most evidence pointing to users in North America so far only having access.

Sighting radar tracker

This is similar to the broken three-step radar, allowing you to see Pokémon in the local vicinity without knowing the distance or approximate location. While you can't narrow down a location using this, it gives you a broad indication of what is nearby somewhere, if you want to take a little stroll to hunt them down.

Nearby radar tracker

Only available to a small selection of users on its debut, this replaces the three-step radar by showing you where specific Pokémon are located relative to PokéStops. Select the Pokémon you want, and you will get a close up view of the Pokéstop. Tap again, and the map will zoom out and show you the route to that stop. Users are reporting that Pokémon won't be located on top of that location, but close enough by, helping you narrow down the location.

While it certainly doesn't replace a third-party app such as Pokévision in terms of effectiveness, it could ultimately be useful tool to bring players together in one place in search of a specific Pokémon.

Pokémon Go — How to use Ingress to find Pokémon

Another, somewhat more obscure method for finding Pokémon with more than just blind luck is to use Ingress, developer Niantic's previous mobile game which uses almost identical technology to that of Pokémon Go.

To briefly explain: Ingress is a game which required players to head out and control Portals, amongst other things, in order for their team to gain dominance over a certain area. The locations of those Portals correspond, almost exactly, to the locations of PokéStops in Pokémon Go, whilst XM — the resource which players had to gather in order to perform any in-game actions in Ingress — tended to cluster around Portal locations.

Interestingly, there appears to be a correlation between Pokémon spawn locations and locations of large amounts of XM in Ingress. The theory is that the particularly XM-dense areas around Portals — or PokéStops — are nullified in Pokémon Go until a lure is dropped, and more Pokémon spawn.

So how do you use this to your advantage for catching Pokémon? Well, your best bet is to download Ingress and open it up when you see a rare Pokémon appear on the nearby list. Then you can at least head to an area dense with XM — which appears as a cluster of white dots on your map in Ingress — and, in theory, you should have a greater chance of finding Pokémon there.

It's worth noting that this is still an unconfirmed theory, which has only undergone some pretty minor testing by the likes of Reddit user HotrodCorvair. However, with in-game tracking and Pokevision both out of action for the moment, it's probably your best shot for now.