Feature Suggestions

[_8BitPixels]

Hi all,

I recently moved from the Geocaching app to Cachly, and I am enjoying all the great features that the base geocaching app doesn't support. I think it is a better and more thoughtfully designed application. That being said, I think there are a couple of ways that it can be improved:

1. The proximity notification system is currently great for when you're navigating to a specific cache. However, I think it would be fantastic if there could be a way to enable the app to constantly monitor in the background (whether or not you have the app open) for any nearby caches. 
This would be great for discovering caches that you didn't even know were there whilst going about your daily business. 
To save battery life and mobile data the app could just load the coordinates of nearby caches (to allow the app to know how close you are) and only load full cache details when you click on the notification, and use downloaded offline caches where already available.

2. Adding friends is currently not possible using Cachly. It would be great to see a built-in system to add friends by usernames and qr codes, and a messaging system, instead of having links to the Geocaching website.

3. Hiding your own caches or uploading your own trackables is currently not possible in Cachly. It would be great to see this be implemented as a feature to prevent the need to use the Geocaching website as well.

4. iOS widgets! It would be great to have some useful widgets such as nearby caches on a map or viewing the status of caches the user has hidden; the official Geocaching has some of these already.

Hopefully this is useful: these features would help Cachly to become more of a standalone app and remove the need to use the official Geocaching app and website on top of Cachly to access all of Geocaching's features. Thanks again for creating such a useful app!

[Nic Hubbard]

1. Cachly does have this feature. If you turn on Proximity alert, you can leave Cachly and it will alert you for caches nearby. In the Live tab, it will not continue to load caches and that could exhaust your API limits during the day. Instead, I would save caches to an offline list, then turn on proximity alert for lists.

2. Adding friends IS possible in Cachly. Go to More > Friends and you will see your list of friends in Cachly. Also, going to a users profile and tapping the + on the top right will allow you to send a friend request. Third-part apps have limitations, please see: https://help.cachly.com/article/52-friends

3. Hiding your own caches it not possible on third-party apps. What do you mean by uploading your trackables?

4. This might come in a future version.

[_8BitPixels]

Thanks for the quick response!

1. I was thinking of a system where you don't have to have the app open at all (i.e. having been closed from the app selector screen when you partially swipe up from the bottom of the screen on an iphone), sort of how like the Shortcuts app can automatically run a script based on your location or the weather app can display widgets with the weather at your location without having those apps actually open. I don't know how possible this is but it would certainly make it easier to stumble upon nearby caches wherever you are.

2. I am aware that you can see your list of friends from cachly, and send a request from the user's profile, but if the user has never logged on a cache before or hidden any caches there is no way to access their profile to send a request; in this case, the only current option is to search for their username on the geocaching website, or, if you're in person, use the QR code feature on the Geocaching app. I think it would be great to have these systems built into Cachly. Again, not sure if this is possible with 3rd party apps, but it would make for a more seamless experience.

3. Ah ok I didn't realise this. by trackables I meant that if you buy, for example, a Geocaching Travel Bug that comes with an activation code, you can use the geochaching website to register it as a trackable. However, if uploading caches isn't possible on 3rd party apps, I doubt this is either.

Also a couple of small things: ⁠when viewing the details of a cache, it would be good to have an option to hide images that users have logged until the user has made a log. as often the images contain spoilers on where the cache is or what it looks like which detracts from the fun of the game. And on the logs page, it would be good to be able to see the time that other users' logs were made, as for popular caches its nice to see how many hours after the latest log you are.

Thanks again!

[Nic Hubbard]

1 hour ago, _8BitPixels said:

1. I was thinking of a system where you don't have to have the app open at all (i.e. having been closed from the app selector screen when you partially swipe up from the bottom of the screen on an iphone), sort of how like the Shortcuts app can automatically run a script based on your location or the weather app can display widgets with the weather at your location without having those apps actually open. I don't know how possible this is but it would certainly make it easier to stumble upon nearby caches wherever you are.

This is not possible. Those are system apps and have different permissions. Don't close Cachly from the app selector, this is not necessary. When you leave an app (background it) iOS only keeps alive things that the app has requested. In this case, it is location services.

 

1 hour ago, _8BitPixels said:

I am aware that you can see your list of friends from cachly, and send a request from the user's profile, but if the user has never logged on a cache before or hidden any caches there is no way to access their profile to send a request;

In the friends section of Cachly, there is a search bar to search for username.

1 hour ago, _8BitPixels said:

by trackables I meant that if you buy, for example, a Geocaching Travel Bug that comes with an activation code, you can use the geochaching website to register it as a trackable. However, if uploading caches isn't possible on 3rd party apps, I doubt this is either.

Yeah, they don't provide a way to do this for third-party apps.

[_8BitPixels]

Quote

 

This is not possible. Those are system apps and have different permissions. Don't close Cachly from the app selector, this is not necessary. When you leave an app (background it) iOS only keeps alive things that the app has requested. In this case, it is location services.

Ok no problem, i'll do that.

Quote

 

In the friends section of Cachly, there is a search bar to search for username.

My apologies, I totally missed that. Thank you.

Quote

Yeah, they don't provide a way to do this for third-party apps.

Yeah I thought that might be the case.

Thanks again for your help Nic, and thank you for putting in the time and effort for this great app!

[Nic Hubbard]

7 hours ago, _8BitPixels said:

Thanks again for your help Nic, and thank you for putting in the time and effort for this great app!

Happy to help!