Arc v3.16 has gone live on the App Store now. With the big new feature being GPX Import - one of the top voted feature requests for a long while!
Now let’s see where everyone’s enthusiasm lies for what should be added to v3.17 
Oh, random thing: The app has been renamed to Arc Timeline, due to that similarly named web browser being all that talk lately. Another member of the Uninspired App Namers Club 
I would like to add again these two:
Yeah both of those should already be high in the todos. I’ve been leaving them off the polls because they’re smaller, quicker tasks that wouldn’t headline a major release but could easily be built into any update.
I’ll double check to make sure their tasks are definitely high priority… Wtf, they’re not in there at all. Unless I’m searching for the wrong words. But ugh, no wonder I’ve been missing getting them done.
Ok, they’re there now. Can’t miss them this time!
That’s great, thanks!
So I just got started on writing my own Exist integration (basically only want to track how much time I spend at the office and correlate that with my mood lol), but then I see it’s on the list here? That’s fantastic to know 
@kilian Looks like there’s not as much interest in the Exist integration compared to the other poll options yet 
Though I just started using Exist again myself recently, so it is on my mind again!
Maybe it won’t be overly time consuming to implement, so there’s a chance I’ll get it done anyway. Although having said that, I only ever get done a tiny fraction of the work on my todos lists, so… no promises!
Maybe some focus on new features that might appeal to new users and get you more subscriptions?
Dark mode for example.
Mentioned before. Just like Calendar and Fantastical has an infinite scroll list view, perhaps Overview or Timeline itself could be as such. Maybe there could be less use of white space such as for example travel by car or other being one line perhaps right aligned with instead an icon in place of text.
If that is ideal not sure. But the way people use calendar apps to just scroll and search events, something similar seems like it could be more useful.
In such a case, unconfirmed items could be in a different color.
I think city names under place names in smaller text in gray would be nice.
Maybe there could be a preference for such. If for example place names included city, maybe there could be an option for no map displayed until for example if someone tapped on a day header.
A minor thing: tap and hold on a timeline item could include directions as it does in the details view menu.
It’s subtle, but Dark Mode is already there! Arc uses a darker (albeit still cream/white style) background colour across the app, when in Dark Mode.
The reason why it’s not a “full” dark mode design, with background closer to black, is that it’s a lot of work to retrofit a design like that to an existing app. Many of the icons would need to be adjusted or recreated, to work well on a dark background. Text and button colours all across the app would need to be changed and tested. It’s basically a very big job.
And it turns out that Dark Mode isn’t as popular as it seems. When it comes to feature requests and votes, it tends to rank fairly low. People who like Dark Mode really like it, but the majority of people tend not to care much either way. So that means it ends up getting lower priority in the todos, for what to work on next.
Unconfirmed items have a subtle grey dot on the right, in timeline view. Also, visits that couldn’t have a place automatically assigned will have light grey text.
Agree! This is something that I’d like to potentially work in once there’s more confidence in the consistency and formatting of street address data.
Oh yeah, that sounds an easy one. I’ll note it down now. Thanks!
Perhaps you’ve thought of such. For any location maybe checking some of the closest other locations as factor in confidence of city. Maybe there are other ways. City info in the timeline and search results seems like perhaps a significant addition as you seem to also think so.
Of a list view, I might try Weekly for a while. In that view, I think start time and duration like in Daily would be great. How start and end time is right aligned and styled in Calendar list view seems not bad and I think makes nice use of space.
Of another thing I haven’t thought about. The font size seems a bit large to me. I generally use the 2nd lowest for Dynamic Type and having it adaptive might be a nice elegant change. Also not sure how I feel about bold. Calendar uses it yet other apps may not.
There is also consideration of the tab bar. Haven’t thought about it much yet I tend to not use the other tabs. Safari seems to use a smaller size. Other options there is the Books app with a bottom right floating button for a menu, which could provide more space. Having search more accessible could be nice.
Not sure what I think of Overview. Of Timeline Monthly and Yearly also not sure how useful. Maybe someday instead there could just be an easy way to toggle day and list like Calendar, with something like a press and hold or subtle indicator to tap a day or week header and have options like summary export stats or other.
In general I find Arc an indispensible app. Just wondering how to make it more useful, easier to navigate, while possibly increasing appeal to others.
Could be Arc might be nice as sort of a memories browser or travelogue. Such as being able to select some period like day or week and show relevant calendar events, photos, or other. Not sure what else is accessible by API. Such could have icon indicators such as for photos, which in list view could help it take up less space.
How about custom backup targets?
As far as I can see, the app currently supports only iCloud.
That’s fine, but for those of us who don’t use iCloud or have a NAS / Homeserver or any other similar solution, it would be helpful to designate a custom location / target for backups.
Personally I‘d like to see either a WebDAV or Synology Drive solution.
Yep! I’d really like to see summaries for cities, countries, etc too. So for example “All my places, activities, etc in Bangkok in January 2024”, or some such. Hopefully this kind of next level summary will become possible soon.
In Arc Timeline Editor (the rebuild of Arc Timeline app) I’m using system fonts - no custom fonts, which means that Dynamic Type is properly supported.
I love Overview, ever since I got around to adding in the photos! Make sure Arc has permission to access your photos (it doesn’t store them in any way, so it’s not a privacy concern). Once the photos are in Overview it really comes alive.
The timeline monthly and yearly map views can be super interesting. A great way to get a quick sense of your movements for the month or year.
I would really, really like to have this. But iOS’s APIs have made it impossible for now. Or at least, the way things are now I’d have to add custom support for each third party cloud service. Which is an absurd amount of development time, to support only one extra cloud service at a time.
There is functionality in iOS’s APIs that could enable support for all third party cloud services for backups, without Arc having to do anything different. But it was I think partially rolled back (Apple decided not to implement it / ship it, after having announced it), but also I think they shifted the implementation task over to the third party cloud providers. So each provider has to implement some new things in their “file provider” (I forget what the exact name of it is), and so far none of the third parties have done that.
So on that one we’re basically stuck, for now.
Thank you for your open and exhaustive reply.
Would it be possible to designate a local target instead of directly moving it to iCloud?
A local backup would at least allow for a backup of those files without occupying iCloud space.
For me that would be interesting, because I don’t use iCloud an do have only the free option, aka very limited space.
Concerning iCloud backups, I had disabled them since from what I recall it seemed like numerous files were created with recent modification dates. As such, using the Files app recent list became difficult as many Arc files showed up. If such is the case, could backup files be created with modification and creation date preserved if they are overwritten? Something so only backups of a recent time period would have recent mod dates would help.