📢 Android is HERE!
There's a lot in this one! No longer do we require an account to hop in and explore the world! The app creates an anonymous session automatically, so you can browse markers, explore the map, and discover history right away. When you're ready, you can create an account to unlock your full profile and sync your data across devices. Profiles got a big upgrade, you can now upload an avatar, select your favorite destination and share your profile with friends, who can use your code to get a referral bonus.
In previous versions of the app, we were an offline-first app which was great for speed and offline mode, but it made it incredibly difficult to get users new fresh content. Today we're online first with a really strong offline cache, best of both worlds!
The most ambitious update yet — a completely redesigned app experience with a new onboarding flow, revamped marker views, and powerful new tools.
A focused release on polish, performance, and a better onboarding experience.
This release brings ExploreHere to life with travel mode, an immersive, hands-free way to discover markers as you drive, walk, or ride. Audio guides narrate the history around you, and audio player keeps you in control.
ExploreHere now lets you experience curated tours, guided sequences of markers that tell a connected story. Download tours for offline use, follow them on the map with smooth camera navigation, and explore nearby markers along the way.
City Search
By popular request, you can now search by city name and the map will snap right to it, making it way easier to find nearby markers. For now, it’s just cities, but we’re planning to add other destinations soon (think National Parks, etc.).
Today in History
See what happened on this day and jump right to a related marker. Access it right from the home page and learn something new every day!
This is a minor update to help clean up some of the rough edges from the 4.0 rewrite. It includes some nice quality of life features, like a dedicated driving mode button and icons to denote free vs pro features.
Our biggest update yet, rebuilt for speed, reliability, and accessibility across iOS and Android.
Jase and I are very excited to introduce ExploreHere for Android! With all the same data and features, ExploreHere Markers can now be used on both iOS and Android.
As part of building out Android, we got to make a bunch of performance improvements on both platforms. You should find the app to be more responsive from this point forward!
When in travel mode, you'll now see an arrow pointing to the direction of the marker - this should help you keep an eye out for the marker when you're driving!
Fixed a pesky bug in which only some of the passed markers got marked as 'passed'. Before the fix, the app was incorrectly limiting each check for nearby markers to 10, potentially leaving some unmarked. Thanks Patrick for the report!
We added high-quality audio to almost every marker, allowing you to listen to a summary of nearly every; historical marker and interpretive sign in ExploreHere.
Click on a marker on the map, and if that marker has audio, you'll be able to play it right from there, next to the "Read More" button. If you go into the full marker details page, you'll see a player come up from the bottom.
When we re-launched ExploreHere 3.0, we didn't include the map filters feature that we use to have in the previous version - But, thanks Heather for the awesome feedback, it turns out some of you used them a lot!
You can now filter the map by marker type, and category! With these filters, it's a lot easier to find "Air & Space Historical Markers", or "National Parkway NPS Sites"!
Thanks to some feedback, we added "Swipe to toggle view" on marker rows, making it easier to quickly mark markers as viewed or not-viewed.
This release went out as an over-the-air update.
We're introducing a way to share the app with a friend and they get a 2 week free trial without any purchase required. This also allows us to get creative with different ways to discount the app, and make the app more accessible to people.
We also partnered with Daphne over at What American History is About to setup a partner program so that we can work with creators to grow ExploreHere while financially helping to support these creators via referral commissions. If you know of a creator or organization that would like to join our partner program, have them reach out to me at support@explorehere.app
In releasing the referral program, I introduced a bug that causes issues for some users logging in. The resolution to this is to try logging in again, up to 3 times, or reinstalling the app. I'm sorry for the trouble, it was a silly mistake and I don't plan on making it again...
Wes
We believe that historical markers are just the beginning – our goal is to help you connect with the places you explore in a deeper and more meaningful way. With this release, we are excited to announce the integration of ExploreHere | Audio Guide into the ExploreHere | Markers app, taking your adventures to the next level.
ExploreHere Stories is currently in beta and will remain a free feature as we gather your feedback and make further improvements. We hope you enjoy this new way of exploring the world around you!
Continued speed and performance improvements from 3.1.0 - We did a lot of refactoring to make the app feel snappier, more responsive and efficient.
The app checks your location a LOT less often than it previously was - this improves the speed and battery life a lot.
Your location has always been saved locally to the app, your lat/long position is not sent to the server; you can see the points saved locally to the app by going to Settings > Location Points > View points. Each point used to check for nearby markers is represented on the map by a center arrow, and a blue 1 mile ring. The red ring represents the accuracy of the location point.
Fixed a crash with a race condition between the local database and the pressable component.
Thanks to some awesome launch feedback by Julie - I was able to find and improve the apps performance across the board!
Split the data providers out on the map page, so updating the selected marker doesn't cause a re-render of all map markers.
Added tab freezing for pages not in the foreground.
Clicking on the Explore tab resets the bottom sheets back to the initial configuration.
Improved app open performance
Reduced the chance of crashing due to realm race conditions.
We're excited to finally share a big update for ExploreHere Markers—Version 3.0. It’s been a while since our last major revamp a few years back and with a complete app rewrite, there’s a lot of new stuff to show!
This is a full app rewrite - we simplified the codebase, made it easier to work on, and enhanced several features; offline mode, adventure maps, driving mode, notifications and a simplified login. Jase and I are dedicated to enhancing your adventure experiences through ExploreHere. This revamped app serves as a foundation for future expansions.
You can read our full announcement post, here
Map Filters - Added filters to the map page, so you can find just the kind of marker you are looking for on the map.
To open the filter sheet, click on the bar, or the result count at the top of the map page. This works in both Online & Offline modes.
Opening Marker Speed - Whenever you open a marker page, any data we had on the marker from where you selected it now gets passed into the new page, making it faster to load and read the full marker details.
Maintenance on map page, prevented unnecessary re-rendering on child components.
Thanks for all who messaged in letting me know about the crashing and bugs in this latest version.
Fixed a bug which caused the app to crash, in an infinite loop, upon opening. 🙃
Fixed a bug where the app failed to open if you were offline / didn’t have signal.
Small style adjustments in the submission page.
App handles switching between online & offline better.
