What a note contains
A note can contain a title, body, coordinates, content language, visibility, timestamps, and the category it belongs to. Some notes are placed on the map and some stay unmapped. Both kinds are valid notes. A mapped note powers nearby results, public map displays, and trackable journey points. An unmapped note still participates in hierarchy, search, exports, and sync.
Mapped notes work well for site visits, inspections, research walks, campus resources, and other place-based records. Unmapped notes still work well for meeting prep, assignment planning, follow-up tasks, or references that belong in the hierarchy before a final location is known.
Read surfaces also expose a separate last-activity timestamp so note lists and note pages can show the most recent meaningful activity instead of only the raw update timestamp.
Common professional and student note patterns
- Field documentation, inspections, and site visits where the map location matters immediately.
- Class, lab, and campus projects where a note needs to stay tied to a building, room, route, or study area.
- Internship, operations, or client handoff notes where teammates need one place to find the latest context.
- Unmapped planning notes, reading notes, or action items that still belong in the same category structure.
Personal notes and team notes
Notes always have a user owner, but some notes also belong to a team. That extra team relationship changes who can see the note, who can moderate it, what comment policy options are available, and what happens during export or deletion.
- Personal notes belong only to the user scope.
- Team notes still keep a user author, but they also belong to the team scope.
- When a team note is removed from the team under certain fallback rules, it can convert back into a personal note.
Visibility and public pages
Visibility controls where the note may appear. Public notes can appear on public profile pages, public team pages, public note pages, public search results, and public map experiences. Private notes stay restricted to the owner or authorized team members. Notes using VisibleOnceAssociatedTrackableAccessed behave like public notes until one or more trackables are associated with them. After that, the note page and public discovery surfaces stay available only to viewers who already unlocked one of the associated trackables.
The published map and scrolling note list on public profile pages and public team pages default to the current page language. That keeps those browse surfaces aligned with the viewer's route language while leaving each note's saved language untouched.
Search and explicit all-language flows are the places to mix languages on purpose.
- No associated trackables yet: the note behaves like a public note.
- After the first association: the note drops out of anonymous public discovery and normal public note-page access.
- Unlocked viewer: someone who already unlocked one associated trackable can open the note page and use the connected public note-page API routes.
- Owner or authorized team member: keeps normal note access and management rights.
Public note pages are separate from the underlying author or team page. A note can remain visible on its own public route while still linking back to a private profile page or private team page only when that route is allowed for the viewer.
Categories and hierarchy
Notes are organized by hierarchical categories. Personal notes use personal categories. Team notes use team categories. The map view and the hierarchy view are two different ways of looking at the same note records rather than two different storage systems.
Comments
Notes can optionally allow comments, but the rules depend on the note scope and visibility.
- Private personal notes do not need comment settings because they do not accept comments.
- Personal notes using Public or VisibleOnceAssociatedTrackableAccessed can allow or disallow comments from logged-in users once the note itself is accessible.
- Team notes can allow anyone logged in, only current team members, or no comments.
- Note comments belong to the note page itself and are separate from trackable comments.
Notes and trackables
Notes are also one way trackables gain journey history in the real world. Saving a note with attached trackables creates journey stops at that note's coordinate, while direct location-only stops can still be recorded without note content.
Later trackable reads can surface the currently visible notes at that coordinate without turning the stop into a permanent owner of one note.
Associated-trackable note visibility is the deliberate bridge between normal public note discovery and possession-based trackable discovery. That is why the first linked trackable changes how the note is opened everywhere else.
Once attached, note access is enforced by the note's own visibility and required access scope instead of a permanent note pointer on the journey stop.
- Secret-code entry or an active trackable browser session can attach a trackable to a note.
- When a note saves with attached trackables, the note's coordinate becomes a snapped journey point on the trackable map.
- If the note is private or gated by associated-trackable access, unauthorized viewers may still see a journey location point without gaining access to the protected note content.
Offline-first and sync
Notes are central to the offline-first model. Android can draft and queue note changes while disconnected. When the client reconnects, the sync cycle pushes local changes first and then pulls back authoritative server state. GUID identifiers and update timestamps keep conflict handling stable across devices.
Exports and deletion
Notes show up in personal exports or team exports depending on their scope. Deletion behavior also depends on that same scope. Personal deletion removes strictly personal data. Team-associated note behavior follows the team-retention rules instead of the simpler personal-only rule.