Update August 31, 2026 - update notes will now appear in app (I think?) - Hall of fame / best of in Versus mode. A bunch of new leaderboards - Groups: additional support for teachers (teacher mode, reach out to me if you are a teacher and want to try this) - Groups: you can see group members achievements - Rolling in field notes to the end game screen for FFA, practice, frontier, etc. - Streak achievements should work cross platform now - Achievements show rarity - Fixing an issue where a drag and a pinch could get confused with each other

New - beginning the implementation of an upcoming 'teacher mode'. Some teachers have asked me for a way to use maptap for their classrooms. A teacher will have more groups, larger groups, but no chat (apparently, don't give competitive teenagers unrestricted chat with each other ... who knew??) - the orange snarky text is loved by some, and hated by others. There's now three options: snarky, facts, nothing - groups will now show how many 100 rounds each player has had so far this month - create practice drills for yourself and your group - date format now adjusts to what is standard based on your language settings - end game review in practice modes will now show provinces / states Fixes - player maps have grown! you can now page through them all, and search by name - accepting an open challenge could send you to the Home Screen instead of into the match. Whups - the 'play next challenge' button sometimes didn't. - FFA "view results" was showing a block of json code. oof. - Stopped drawing Western Sahara as part of Morocco, and added (very small) outlines for Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Lichetenstein, Vatican City, Guam, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, and Martinique) - Versus rounds weren't counting towards your atlas location coverage. It does now - Trivia mixing English with Chinese or Japanese broke mid-word

Features - beginning the roll out of drills, a new way to do practice maps - ocean color is now customizable. Find it frustrating to see the small islands? Set your ocean to a brighter blue. - additional versus challenge options - ability to transfer group ownership - search added to explore - the snarky text will now sometimes be replaced by facts for a location. - beginning the integration of per-location notes, which will start becoming available on the end game screen of practice games Bug fixes: - Finished games that failed to reach the server now have a recovery path - missed days showed days you had already played. fixed - The leaderboard challenge button would lie to you, which is quite rude. Fixed - Friend open challenges were blocked by rated daily cap. Fixed - Story heart

Features - new "borders" practice mode. There won't ever be borders in the daily game. But if you truly can't live without them, well, here you go. - new practice game "gauntlet". Plays like the new versus game, Free-For-All, but without the pressure of playing against everyone. - story collections! at the end of the daily game, you can heart a story and add it to your collection. you can also share just the story now. - in today's details there's now a page per story, with more details (including references for each story) Bug fixes: -Frontier's entry card now goes green + shows your score -Statesman achievement was unearnable. Whups. -Group invite code is selectable + tap-to-copy, on both surfaces -FFA lobby roster sorts by Elo -A versus match whose clock expired during a scoring reveal never finished

- Long daily practice is being retired. I'm replacing it with something new, coming soon. - overhaul on how experience and levels work. They are no longer a combination of your continent levels, which was confusing. you have an overall level which goes up with every experience point gained, and, continent skill levels which go up with every experience point earned per continent - made it so you can tap on some charts for more info Fixes: - some practice maps were dropping locations, fixed - fixing famous islands practice maps to better score against the geometry of an island chain - fixing a bug in the point-to-polygon distance formula. - improve versus matches data to include things like how much time left the players had - improving the versus cards to show more details - and versus stops giving you applause for a high score when you lose. - fixing where creating challenges wasn't keeping your preferences from one to the next - improving free-for-all to the latest version to support friendly matches and competitive ones

- fixed a versus loading bug, where the locations should be loading during the countdown but weren't - fixed versus page where it wasn't showing your recent matches - fixed free-for-all layout issues

- Explore mode ... just the globe, no game. See every location and filter by difficulty, global find rates, or for personal score. You can get to it from Practice maps. - Versus is now three tabs, rather than one giant, endless, painful scroll. - New setting, hide John's snarky comments. Do my comments make you mad? My mom would agree with you. - Group pages now show player-made maps from players in the group. Right now, the only way to make a map is with the web interface, at maptap.gg. - New Argentina Top 15 cities practice - a new game mode, free for all, is in this version but hidden. It needs more testing. Bug fixes: - emoji now render in globe trivia (sigh) - groups: 'start fresh' setting for when you make a new group, if you don't want it to back-populate scores prior to group creation date - a finger resting on the globe could score your next round. Whups. Fixed this. - sharing a game from a previously played date showed today's date. Fixed. - streak counting was being too kind about missed days. it is less kind now. - Share flags: Victoria, BC no longer shows a US flag, and Kosovo no longer shares a Serbia flag. That didn't cause any controversy at all. Nope. - some quality of life versus fixes (trying to improve the reliability of being able to accept open challenges that you see)

Bug Fixes: - fixing an issue where if you opened the app before midnight, and tried to play the daily game after midnight, it thought you had already played and gave you the scores from the day before. - achievement banners will no longer linger into the next game you play - improved the readability of score text over deserts - fixed the flag picker (where the country text was black on black, making it quite challenging to read!) - fixed a bug where if you started a player map, then left the app, then came back, you didn't return to the player map

- New achievements system, earn badges as you progress in your geography skills! - Play player-made maps! To to the menu at the top of the screen and discover and play maps made by players - Taps now tell you the population of the location - Tapping a shared map link and it now opens right in the app. - Fix for the app pausing when you select picture mode practice. - Fixed country practice scoring: tapping inside the United States, The Bahamas, or French Guiana now scores correctly instead of missing.

- Fixed a bug where a practice game's score could show up as your completed daily game. - New: show country flags in your shared score ... in your settings. - Fixed challenge-mode sharing so the text includes your per-round breakdown, not just the total. - Fixed a scoring bug in flags mode where countries that share the same flag should now recognize either answer. - Group "Today" rankings now follow your local day instead of server time. - Fixed profile standing text showing placeholder codes instead of your numbers in non-English languages. - Updated translations across all 12 languages.

New: - new setting: tap and hold to place pin. Hopefully better than "confirm tap mode". Leaving in confirm tap mode for now, and also defaulting the new mode to off while it gets some testing. But I'm optimistic this is going to be a lot better. - new setting: share to discord. the text for sharing to discord doesn't include a naturally resolving link. Added a setting for it. - in versus, consolidated many challenges so they don't clutter Bug fixes: - camera state sometimes wasn't cleared between different games of different types - reduced memory usage - if your phone was running hot, hopefully this makes that better - map fixes for Somalia border and label - fixing missing translation strings

Bug fixes: - (hopefully) fixing an issue some players were having where the game thought you were finished for the day when you hadn't yet played - added diagnostics / reporting in case my fix for this was wrong - fixing an issue where the challenge-round leaderboard didn't have scores from app players Versus: - if a challenge was already taken, let you initiate with that same player instead

• Fixed a crash that could happen after many rounds in Survival mode. • Flag practice: some country flags are nearly identical (Monaco/Indonesia, Romania/Chad). Tapping either country now counts as correct. • Fixed a problem where returning to "Today's Globe" after quitting a practice game partway through could do nothing. • Improved reliability of saving your daily game, including some rare cases where yesterday's game could show up as today's.

"My stats" got a big upgrade • Profile banners — pick the artwork at the top of your profile, including a globe • Your Standing: see where your score lands on the global curve, and your rank among all players this month • A new progress section that tracks your improvement over time • Versus players: your world rank now shows on your profile Bug fixes: • Fixed the bug where today's map could open "already played", with yesterday's rounds filled in. This was affecting ~1% of all users. Sorry :( • Closing the app mid-game no longer repeats a round you already answered, and a game finished right before closing now saves properly • Practice fix: taps inside the correct country now get full credit on country maps (coastal capitals like Freetown were being shortchanged) • Survival mode now shows a recap of every location after your run • Groups: browse past months' standings • The bug report form now works when you're not signed in • Challenge Round scores now post to the correct leaderboard

New mode: Frontier (Survival) — one endless run; the locations get harder and the clock gets shorter until your fuel runs out. This replaces the "long" practice map with something hopefully really fun. Includes Today / This Month / All-Time leaderboards. Assorted minor fixes: - Challenge Round scores now save to the leaderboard, and sharing your result now shows your time. - Fixed country practice scoring — tapping inside a country now gives you credit (some countries were scoring you as far away). - Your daily game resumes where you left off if the app is closed mid-round. - Fixed blurry/broken map tiles that could stick around between sessions. - Groups: browse past months' standings.

after each round, a little point lingers so you can see where your guess was, and where the target was. see your versus rank over time on your profile page, challenge people to versus games from their profile page, added the ability to search for other users, ties in versus mode go to the person with the least total distance for their guesses fixed a crash in accepting games in versus mode

huge map update to include higher detail, more levels of zoom. Everyone's zoom improves. Free users go from z5 to z8. MapTap+ goes from z7 to z10. Added thousands of rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water Added a toggle for a high contrast ocean for blue/green colorblind accessibility

fixing a bug where players in foreign languages couldn't load the correct map

minor features and fixes: best of prior days could impact daily game data, fix for playing prior days sometimes not working, app now recognizes if you are in an alternate language and will default to it, fixed an issue with the outline of Cyprus, fixed the location of Angikuni Lake, added the ability to 'hide friendlies' in versus

Adding in a free best-of map, added the ability to make friendly open matches in versus, added bonus points to the daily score when you get in the right country for your guess. Bug fixes: some flags / countries were missing in flag mode, fixing a potential performance issue in versus mode, fixed US states practice map, fixed an issue where southern Europe would count as Africa.

Major features: App is now localized in 11 additional languages Bug fixes: when switching between game types the app could get confused and stop working, fixing data issues when looking at the end game summary screen.

v3.04 - fixing a case where some text at the end of the game could pile up on top of each other - fixing an issue where if you play a versus game first, then the daily game, the daily game wouldn't work - fixing error messaging when playing a lot of versus games against a single opponent. - in timed games, auto-disable confirm-tap mode - added ability to watch a replay of versus games - added ability to create a versus match for just my group - created a "friendly" versus match option for group versus matches, friendly matches won't count towards elo / ranking. - added more details on versus score results on recent match history - fixed an issue where the dimming of the globe at the end of the daily game was inconsistent - fixed an issue where you had to hit "restore purchases" to recover a subscription - added more flags v3.03 - fixing sign-in with apple v3.02 - added new practice maps for Italy, Spain, and Turkey - after playing a versus game, added the ability to do another one without having to go back through the whole flow - extended play prior days to go back to 90 days + to the first of that month - additional locations in the master locations database - fixed an issue where family sharing wasn't working for yearly subscriptions. - daily challenge practice level is now 25 seconds to finish instead of 20. - hopefully fixing an issue where some users saw a blank globe when loading the game. v3.01 - fixing an issue where if you play the daily game, then play a versus game, then go back to the daily game, the end game screen of the daily game wouldn't load. - if you played a versus game, then looked at "today's details", it would show the locations from the versus game. Fixed to always be the daily game. - fixed an issue where you accept a versus challenge and at the end it was only showing the final score, not the per-round details. - fixed an issue where the game length wasn't reporting correctly - added code for a future revision of how locations for versus cities are selected (but disabled - web and iOS need synced launch) v3.0: New Versus Mode! Challenge your friends to a 20-second, 5-location game. Think your friend maybe cheats a little in the daily game? Make them prove their skills in versus mode. Bug fixes: - playing music (like with Spotify) should no longer be interrupted by maptap sounds (sorry about that!) - better error message when you try to use the app but are not connected to the internet - fix for when the globe was partially, incorrectly lit (especially in "play prior days") - fix for when you would play prior days, then couldn't play practice maps.

v3.03 - fixing sign-in with apple v3.02 - added new practice maps for Italy, Spain, and Turkey - after playing a versus game, added the ability to do another one without having to go back through the whole flow - extended play prior days to go back to 90 days + to the first of that month - additional locations in the master locations database - fixed an issue where family sharing wasn't working for yearly subscriptions. - daily challenge practice level is now 25 seconds to finish instead of 20. - hopefully fixing an issue where some users saw a blank globe when loading the game. v3.01 - fixing an issue where if you play the daily game, then play a versus game, then go back to the daily game, the end game screen of the daily game wouldn't load. - if you played a versus game, then looked at "today's details", it would show the locations from the versus game. Fixed to always be the daily game. - fixed an issue where you accept a versus challenge and at the end it was only showing the final score, not the per-round details. - fixed an issue where the game length wasn't reporting correctly - added code for a future revision of how locations for versus cities are selected (but disabled - web and iOS need synced launch) v3.0: New Versus Mode! Challenge your friends to a 20-second, 5-location game. Think your friend maybe cheats a little in the daily game? Make them prove their skills in versus mode. Bug fixes: - playing music (like with Spotify) should no longer be interrupted by maptap sounds (sorry about that!) - better error message when you try to use the app but are not connected to the internet - fix for when the globe was partially, incorrectly lit (especially in "play prior days") - fix for when you would play prior days, then couldn't play practice maps.

v3.02 - added new practice maps for Italy, Spain, and Turkey - after playing a versus game, added the ability to do another one without having to go back through the whole flow - extended play prior days to go back to 90 days + to the first of that month - additional locations in the master locations database - fixed an issue where family sharing wasn't working for yearly subscriptions. - daily challenge practice level is now 25 seconds to finish instead of 20. - hopefully fixing an issue where some users saw a blank globe when loading the game. v3.01 - fixing an issue where if you play the daily game, then play a versus game, then go back to the daily game, the end game screen of the daily game wouldn't load. - if you played a versus game, then looked at "today's details", it would show the locations from the versus game. Fixed to always be the daily game. - fixed an issue where you accept a versus challenge and at the end it was only showing the final score, not the per-round details. - fixed an issue where the game length wasn't reporting correctly - added code for a future revision of how locations for versus cities are selected (but disabled - web and iOS need synced launch) v3.0: New Versus Mode! Challenge your friends to a 20-second, 5-location game. Think your friend maybe cheats a little in the daily game? Make them prove their skills in versus mode. Bug fixes: - playing music (like with Spotify) should no longer be interrupted by maptap sounds (sorry about that!) - better error message when you try to use the app but are not connected to the internet - fix for when the globe was partially, incorrectly lit (especially in "play prior days") - fix for when you would play prior days, then couldn't play practice maps.

v3.0: New Versus Mode! Challenge your friends to a 20-second, 5-location game. Think your friend maybe cheats a little in the daily game? Make them prove their skills in versus mode. Bug fixes: - playing music (like with Spotify) should no longer be interrupted by maptap sounds (sorry about that!) - better error message when you try to use the app but are not connected to the internet - fix for when the globe was partially, incorrectly lit (especially in "play prior days") - fix for when you would play prior days, then couldn't play practice maps. v3.01 - fixing an issue where if you play the daily game, then play a versus game, then go back to the daily game, the end game screen of the daily game wouldn't load. - if you played a versus game, then looked at "today's details", it would show the locations from the versus game. Fixed to always be the daily game. - fixed an issue where you accept a versus challenge and at the end it was only showing the final score, not the per-round details. - fixed an issue where the game length wasn't reporting correctly - added code for a future revision of how locations for versus cities are selected (but disabled - web and iOS need synced launch)