Yay Finally another Arc Editor build. This one was delayed by a few weeks because I was up in the Himalayan hills, in very much not-laptop territory. But back in civilisation now, and back to churning out code.
Release Notes
## 1.0 (build 24), 2025-09-27 11:32 (Bangkok)
**Important**: This build requires iOS 26 or later.
### Bug Fixes
- Fixed map updates sometimes getting stuck in weird states (BIG-182)
Navigation controls (previous/next day, calendar) now remain accessible when timeline sheet is minimized
### UI Updates
- Updated to iOS 26 Liquid Glass design language throughout the app
Redesigned tab bar with dedicated Search tab, Settings relocated to floating button on map
Duration display added to Visit and Trip navigation subtitles
Misc notes and comments
Ok so the iOS 26 / Liquid Glass migration is a big one. It changes up the navigation dramatically, and itās quite jarring. Apple have explicitly gone with a design language of āno text labels, just iconsā in iOS 26. Which is ā¦ quite a decision. So thereās a lot of āmystery meatā buttons now. Itāll take some muscle memory updating, to find the buttons you want, remember their icons, and remember their potentially new locations.
Give it a week for the muscle memory to adjust before commenting on which changes you like/dislike/hate in terms of the navigation and buttons. The initial reaction will likely be to hate most or all of the changes, simply because theyāre changes (and because the lack of text labels makes discovery harder).
The other major change is the fix for the map updates, which regressed in the last build, due to another refactor of the map updating system in order to make it more flexible for edge case views. It should be all updating properly on the map now. If not, definitely let me know!
Iāve also increased the tester group size again, so people who couldnāt get in on the beta before should be able to get in now.
Please donāt beat yourself up about the new look. I am used to iOS 26 and find the new Arc Editor look pleasing. Took a couple of āfinger proddingā to see what icon does what; then itās all good.
Iām new to the beta, should i be running this in parallel for testing? I see old data isnāt imported yet
If so I might just wait for a full release
Oh I see in the first beta you said to run in parallel, i see also thereās no way to export gpx files yet
I hope thatās on the to-dos I end up exporting the data for external visualization a lot, so even an export all to gpx feature would be great (doesnāt have to be an auto backup feature like the current version)
Tapping a visit to show details sometimes also shows the same time. 3.x for that particular visit list is ok, as it was one I know has mis-assigned locations so wanted to fix. I did restore to a new device yesterday, yet since it was via Mac I donāt think that affected anything.
The duration Iām not sure if itās right. It might be 26 times but itās over some years.
I think mentioned. As I might want to fix a visit while browsing the thin. Sometimes it might just be an error when Iām in the car yet at a stop light. Being able to go from visit details from there, to the specific day to see it in context, that I think would help a lot.
Yeah once you settle into it itās fluid enough. But I found that it took at least a few days for my muscle memory to adjust. Partly itās just because some buttons have moved out of menus into toolbars so are in different places, and some toolbar buttons have moved to different locations. But also the lack of text is ā¦ not ideal.
Iām thinking once weāve settled into it enough itāll become more clear which buttons should be text instead of icon. Like, iOS 26 either wants icon or text, never both, so you have to pick. In Appleās own apps in some cases theyāve gone with buttons like āEditā, to make that stand out as definitively unambiguous. Arc Editor might end up needing similar for Edit buttons, or some other buttons. Space allowing.
Haha me too! Not sure whatās the next big feature to get ported over. Or whether Iāll get back to fleshing out Places or Activity tabs. Maybe Iāll do the search feature next, because thatās now there as a button at least.
Can import your Arc Timeline data from the Settings view (cog button at top right of screen). Itās in the Database section at the bottom of that view, named āOld LocoKit database importā.
For GPX export, yeahā¦ Iāll make sure thatās on the todos nowā¦ K, added now, so it wonāt get lost!
Actually something Iāve just started toying with in my mind is somehow allowing AI agents to have access to the database directly. On my recent trek in the Himalayas I gave Claude screenshots of my timeline views each day, so it could collate Notion pages as logs of each day of the trek. But once I got back to civilisation I grabbed a copy of the database itself, then Claude could read the SQLite file directly and do it much faster and more accurately. Iād like to make that much easier for anyone to do.
Basically the idea would be to somehow allow AIs to query the database (read only) without any fuss, once given permission. So that you could chat with your preferred AI and ask things like āHow often per month am I going to Favourite Cafe?ā, āCould you grab the samples of my weekend hike and create graphs of the elevations over time, etc?ā
Basically make it possible for an AI to do far more than we could do manually just with GPX exports. The AIs know how to script up almost anything, so if theyāve got direct read access to the db they can do significantly more than just GPX. They could be building entire websites to document our holidays, or all sorts of things really.
For my Himalayas trek I also hooked up Claude Code with access to my Photos library on my Mac (it wrote up a Python script to use PhotoKit to read the Photos db and export photos to view them itself, get location metadata, etc).
The idea was I was going to get it to combine key photos with the data itād found in the Arc Editor database to build out a visually clever website for the full trek. But then I got back to work and figured Iād run out of time for those kinds of fun spare time endeavours. But the ideas has stuck as something incredibly powerful that we could be doing with AI + Arc!
Ah damn, I ran out of time before I got to fixing the Visits List View! I meant to fix the performance problems there. But got bogged down by the iOS 26 / Liquid Glass work, which took much longer than I expected.
Iāll make sure it gets prioritised for the next build, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.
Yeah that header with the day counts wasnāt my idea. I didnāt even notice Claude had done that Iām not sure itās the most useful header text, and potentially misleading. Iāll look into it.
For that, long press on the visit in the Visits List View, and select āView in Timelineā.
As far as fixes and betas in general, perhaps you have decided. You can release each week or every few weeks or since it is Testflight, quick single fixes or features are ok too.
Also it seems like timeline merging is bugged in some instances
Sometimes two things with the same type donāt merge (maybe a carryover bug from v1)
Also confirming location needs to maybe have a second step of the auto clean (I can understand why you might not want this by default), I feel like this is the way it worked in v1 but right now when confirming locations itās fine in grabbing the name but especially for long visits with poor gps it really doesnāt want to treat it as stationary
Thank you. Maybe the details screen could also include something to view in timeline? Long pressing is nice yet sometimes might one know that that specific one needs viewing in timeline only after tapping it to see details and specific map location? Seems like it.
Hmm. For this one, itāll help to catch it in the act with screenshots, of timeline view and also the segments view for each item. And probably the map too, so the join point can be seen.
Iām not aware of any failure in the processing like that at the moment! So Iāll need to have confirmed cases of it happening and the conditions around it. Thanks!
Could you give me more detail on this one? Iām not quite sure what youāre describing there.
Those should be showing up. Though Places all come from only Google Places now (except ones imported from old Arc Timeline, that might also come from Foursquare or Mapbox), and Google Places ā¦ I might not have hooked up as many place categories to icon files yet. Iāll have to double check what the state of that is.
Not yet. But I really want to do that at least for private places! That would be a really nice improvement to private places.
Thatās very high on my personal wishlist, but not in Arc Editor yet. Coming soon, hopefully!
Thatās one of the buttons on Item Edit view. Bottom right, pin in a circle.
iOS 26 / Liquid Glass design ethos is āicons only; no textā for buttons. Or ātext only; no iconā. So Iāve gone with all the buttons being icon only, to start with. Then the ones that end up persistently being confusing and hard to remember / find, Iāll change those ones to be text instead of icon.
I think itāll take us a month or so to full feel out which buttons keep falling into that trap of āI can never find the damn thingā / ācan never remember which icon it isā. Iām settling on a few candidates already, but ā¦ yeah, I want to give it a bunch of weeks before I really call it personally. Itās too easy to jump to quick conclusions with those kinds of muscle memory things.
Thanks. About the icons: new ones from Google show up, but old oneās imported from the āoldā Arc that came from Foursquare are not imported/showing up.
And I found the āextract brief visitsā, thanks!
The number of visits shown when selecting a place is a great useful addition, thanks!
I find that if I hold the iPhone with my left hand itās easy to hit the button accidentally. The old Arc Timeline app has a confirmation dialog for delete. Iād really like that back. I know how to reconstruct a visit from individual segments, but a confirmation dialog would help.
As you see in this timeline it shows that I visited Broadway Spirits three times while being stationary. Why doesnāt it merge into the visit? I donāt recall this happening in previous betas so I suspect this is a new bug in beta 4.
Finally another Arc Editor build. This one was delayed by a few weeks because I was up in the Himalayan hills, in very much not-laptop territory. But back in civilisation now, and back to churning out code.
Iām not sure itās the most useful header text, and potentially misleading. Iāll look into it.
