Arc Editor public beta 12

[matt]

1.0 (build 35), 2026-02-03 13:31 (Bangkok)

New Features

Photo Viewer Rebuild (BIG-152): Rebuilt photo viewer using UIKit for reliable gesture handling. Swipe-down-to-dismiss now works consistently. Paging between photos and pinch-to-zoom (1x-4x) work correctly. Double-tap toggles between 1x and 2x zoom.

Places Reverse Geocode Backfill (BIG-248): Places tab now automatically detects and backfills missing country and city data for places imported from Arc Timeline. A spinner appears while processing.

Improvements

• Reorganized Settings view with dedicated Backup & Restore section (previously scattered across Debug Info) and Permissions status with guidance text (BIG-208)
• Added Feedback flow in Settings for sending feature requests or reporting problems (BIG-208)
• Replaced Mapbox location indicator with custom implementation that updates only when location changes (~1Hz vs 60fps), reducing foreground energy usage (BIG-272)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed movingState getting stuck on .uncertain indefinitely, blocking sleep mode entry and wasting battery. App now restarts location manager when no fresh locations received for 60+ seconds (BIG-266)
• Fixed swiping to previous day occasionally jumping two days instead of one, most common on fresh launch (BIG-267)
• Fixed Places month view showing impossible day counts (e.g., 34 days in December) when visits spanned month boundaries (BIG-269)
• Fixed timeline merges being blocked between old imported items and new LocoKit2 items, preventing expected merge behavior when editing imported data (BIG-252)
• Fixed data gaps of 1+ hours being merged away during bridge merges. Also fixed data gaps incorrectly appearing as “uncertain” items requiring cleanup (BIG-241)
• Fixed Timeline Cleanup view showing untranslated English text for section headers in non-English locales (BIG-268)

Join the Arc Timeline Editor beta

[agastya]

Thank you very much for the update.

Haven’t looked too much. Yet one thing, within app is there anywhere where one can see build or version number? That might help, whether to verify if update was updated or not sure maybe just because.

[o1x]

@matt

Places Reverse Geocode Backfill (BIG-248): Places tab now automatically detects and backfills missing country and city data for places imported from Arc Timeline. A spinner appears while processing.

I have installed and there are some logs and screenshots and seems they cannot find the reverse code idk why. Sent you by message

[trackerminerfs]

Settings (the gear icon) and then “debug info” and the build number appears in parentheses in the title.

[k4869]

Patiently waiting for GPX export… but still, another great update!

[matt]

@agastya

Yet one thing, within app is there anywhere where one can see build or version number?

Yep! Go to Settings view then Debug Info, and it’s the title on that view. Should be “Arc Editor 1.0 (35)” for the latest build.

[matt]

GPX Export is still high on the todos! It’s marked as high priority.

Not sure exactly where I’ll slot it in in the order of things. But yeah, it’ll be coming sooner rather than later.

Oh, any specific kinds of GPX exports you’re doing / wanting to do? Exporting a single Trip, like a hike or run or some such? Or exporting a full day’s timeline? Or exporting a specific date range, like a weekend or week or something?

Or more like the auto GPX exports settings from the old app? Wanting auto updated GPX files covering the full database over time?

[Hutima]

Loading old loco kit data in the places tab doesn’t work without first loading the corresponding day

This view is location → place detail → more → total visits → scroll to old data imported from locokit one and never loaded

Also bumping request for some sort of gpx export, preferably auto monthly, but I have a python script set up to merge exports if you’re only going to do weekly or daily, it’s the main reason I still use Arc recorder instead of editor

Keeping the same format with type and everything would also be ideal since I use that field for filtering with visualizations on desktop for like a yearly wrapped of my explorations

(I typically use it to geoCode DSLR photos so the longer gpx exports are much more useful to me)

A UX thing, having the yearly view default to this view isn’t great it took me a few second to realize I had to swipe down the panel

I know it’s a tight balance but I feel like there should’ve a minimum zoom for uncertain / stationary locations. The current minimum zoom level doesn’t show very much

Also when trying to confirm a point with nolo the map is blank, and there’s no clear story of before or after segment location, not sure if that’s fixable but it’s kind of annoying since for me it’s usually a point that’s in a building

[matt]

@Hutima

Loading old loco kit data in the places tab doesn’t work without first loading the corresponding day

For this do you mean that you have to browse to the data in Timeline tab before it’ll show up in Places tab?

The new backfilling in Places tab should be taking care of that in the latest build. Though you might not see the results until you browse around Places tab after it’s done backfilling, perhaps changing date range, from daily to yearly to back again, or some such. The report might not rebuild immediately.

@Hutima

Also bumping request for some sort of gpx export, preferably auto monthly, but I have a python script set up to merge exports if you’re only going to do weekly or daily, it’s the main reason I still use Arc recorder instead of editor

Good to know! Not sure if I’ll support monthly auto exports in Arc Editor or not. Will have to see how efficiently it can run. It was a problem in old Arc Timeline, running too slow and making iOS angry. I’ll possibly do daily and weekly only. But we’ll see.

@Hutima

Keeping the same format with type and everything would also be ideal since I use that field for filtering with visualizations on desktop for like a yearly wrapped of my explorations

I think the GPX export format should be all identical. Though if I made any mistakes in the old one, I’ll fix them in the new. But yeah, it should be all the same in sense of any scripts that are built to consume the old exports.

@Hutima

A UX thing, having the yearly view default to this view isn’t great it took me a few second to realize I had to swipe down the panel

Yeah monthly and yearly timeline views are pretty ugly right now. I’ll have to polish that up a fair bit before it goes final!

@Hutima

I know it’s a tight balance but I feel like there should’ve a minimum zoom for uncertain / stationary locations. The current minimum zoom level doesn’t show very much

Could you give an example screenshot?

The problem with the zoom levels there is that … different city densities. Like, a more dense city area will want a different zoom level than a more sparse one. But the app doesn’t know the city density, it has to use a fixed zoom level regardless.

@Hutima

Also when trying to confirm a point with nolo the map is blank, and there’s no clear story of before or after segment location, not sure if that’s fixable but it’s kind of annoying since for me it’s usually a point that’s in a building

Yeah I want to improve the UX around that stuff too. It’ll probably be some polish I get to later on, after v1.0 has hit the App Store. But it still needs to be done - it’s not always as intuitive as it should be.

[k4869]

@matt

Oh, any specific kinds of GPX exports you’re doing / wanting to do? Exporting a single Trip, like a hike or run or some such? Or exporting a full day’s timeline? Or exporting a specific date range, like a weekend or week or something?

Or more like the auto GPX exports settings from the old app? Wanting auto updated GPX files covering the full database over time?

Just the old GPX export settings are more than sufficient for me!

But then, maybe having an export option where I can customize the duration by number of days would also be a nice feature addition.

[Hutima]

Attached videos of the loading issue

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0b0BemulwRzel1LbB80Prdm8w

The issue is the data from the locokit import doesn’t load until it’s loaded in the map, and then it shows up you can see that the point for 30 Mar 24 shows up after I visit the day

I’ve been loading each day one by one since the oldest data but it doesn’t really work very well

On that note, you cannot view the first partial month/year (video before) in summary view if you try tabbing there

https://share.icloud.com/photos/084AT-n2-y-KGUIBfWyTfmczQ

And attached a video of zoom levels, like for these really short segments or points (same as message above, Haynes convention center) the base zoom is too low for me to tell where it is in relation to anything

https://share.icloud.com/photos/024yj98xc5WJa6rZ9faqttGHg

I’ll delete all three at some point since my home is visible let me know when you see them

This is a pretty dense area, visible area is less than a block

[matt]

@Hutima

The issue is the data from the locokit import doesn’t load until it’s loaded in the map, and then it shows up you can see that the point for 30 Mar 24 shows up after I visit the day

Oh that’s super weird. I haven’t seen that happen. Confusing. I’ll have a think on it!

My first thought is that maybe the Visit centre or radius values aren’t filled in. And then loading it in timeline view causes an update on the Visit’s values, filling them in. But that would mean those values were empty in the old LocoKit database too. Which would … be super weird in the old app too.

Hmm. I’ll keep thinking… Gotta be some reason… And then I’ll know what to fix.

@Hutima

On that note, you cannot view the first partial month/year (video before) in summary view if you try tabbing there

Aah, this one at least looks obvious, and easy to fix! Looks like the back button isn’t allowing you to tap back unless the start of the previous period exists in the data. It’s blocking the back button one step too early. K, I’ll file that now and should have that fixed in the next build

@Hutima

And attached a video of zoom levels, like for these really short segments or points (same as message above, Haynes convention center) the base zoom is too low for me to tell where it is in relation to anything

Aah, yeah ok, this is a classic case of the “one fixed zoom level” problem I described. That zoom level would be about right for something like a shop on a street, but for that Visit you’re looking at it it’s not useful at all.

The fix for that is… I’m really not sure. Intuitively speaking, it feels like the right answer is for the app to know the … well it’s almost not quite the density of the neighbourhood, but the density of the specific part within the visible map region.

Like, in the case in your video yes it’s within a dense city area, but it’s also around what looks like highways, where you want to be zoomed out more. While usually in a dense city area you want to be zoomed in more. Hmm. This is super tricky.

I mean, I can just change the hardcoded single zoom level, and try it out on a bunch of different places, to see if it feels any better. But ultimately I think it’s always going to be wrong for some places, if it’s one single hardcoded zoom level. It needs to be smarter

[agastya]

Thank you very much for the update.

Perhaps someday. Glad for the new photo viewer. Some visible controls perhaps you’ve been resisting but I think such is a good idea.

[Hutima]

it does look like the old locokit data on my phone isn’t fully processed, when I try to load approximately 25 weeks it crashes (probably from ram) so maybe it never finished in the initial import. I’ve manually selected dates from 2016-2019 but it’s pretty tedious to go through and view every day

it looks like it’s doing a lot of fetching and joining on initial load of the dates

Mmm I think the 50 foot zoom scale level is probably too close, even 200 ft would’ve better I think, idk what other people think but like I feel like it should show around ~1 block on the screen which here is about 1-200m

Right now the default zoom level is a single building when it’s a stationary point visit

Default

Zoomed out to 200 ft scale (though I think for short walks this might be too far, so maybe like a 100 ft scale zoom level?)

I generally feel like the uncertainty circle should be visible if you’re looking for a way to determine minimum zoom, like at the top it’s not which is problematic when confirming points

[BDein]

Hi @matt,

Just installed the latest beta for the first time today and as first thing imported Arc Timeline, which took quite some time.

And was really excited to see how this would look, but got quite disappointed, as this is what I see:

Only today shows a place (after selecting it from a list), and the list tells me something has been imported, but obviously not all correct, or do I just need to wait?

PS I suppose years of data has been imported (look at the database view above).

[matt]

Hm. The import will pull across all data from old Arc Timeline. Are you genuinely seeing nothing, browsing back through calendar? I haven’t seen any bugs or issues with the importer yet…

[BDein]

Unfortunately it looks the same on every day I go backwards in time, so kind of weird as I have a strong feeling it actually did import it all, as there were no issues showing during that

[matt]

Hmm. Super weird!

Would you be able to zip up your iCloud Drive → Arc App → Backups folder and send that to me? (Privately of course!)

I’ve got no guesses or what could be going on. So I think to figure it out I’ll have to try it myself on a test device here and see what happens.

[BDein]

Sure, but it can’t be before tonight, when I’m back home.

Where should I send it?

[Matthias]

Oh, any specific kinds of GPX exports you’re doing / wanting to do? Exporting a single Trip, like a hike or run or some such? Or exporting a full day’s timeline? Or exporting a specific date range, like a weekend or week or something?

Or more like the auto GPX exports settings from the old app? Wanting auto updated GPX files covering the full database over time?

Auto-export for days (and maybe months) would be really, really important. It’s useful when tagging pictures in an external editor (in my case location syncing with my DSLR pictures in Adobe Lighroom), but more importantly, it’s the only guarantee that you can give us that we will never suffer from vendor lock-in. I’ve spent over a decade tagging my location and a lot of my time (and battery life) went into this documentation. I cannot switch to an app that could render this effort void in the future. Some of us have been there with Moves, and it was fantastic when you stepped in to save the day. But I’m not willing to risk that again.