How to find rare Pokémon while Go’s buggy ‘Nearby’ feature is broken

Pokémon Go is a phenomenally popular mobile game about going outside and catching digital monsters in the real world, but some glitches and bugs have made it needlessly difficult. Thankfully, plenty of other people are stepping in to fix things themselves.

Developer Niantic’s Google Maps-powered monster-catching game includes a “Nearby” feature that should tell you how far away one of the virtual critters are from your physical location, but it isn’t working (which is different from the oft-offline servers). When it was functioning, this proximity meter would show you close Pokémon and between zero and three footprints to indicate how close or far away they are. For the last week, every Pokémon always has had the maximum of three footprints no matter the distance between you and their location. This has led to mobile apps like PokeDetector, websites like PokeHuntr, and Twitter accounts like UltimatePokeTrackers popping up to help out desperate trainers who are spending their time with the top-grossing app in the $36.9 billion mobile-gaming market.