What started as a weekend project to measure land on a phone has grown into a cross-platform GIS ecosystem trusted by surveyors, foresters, geologists, and engineers across the world. This is the story of how Mapit GIS came to be - and where it's going next.

After years as an Android-only application, Mapit GIS is now available on the App Store. This is a native Swift application built from the ground up for iPhone and iPad.

Version 3 is a ground-up rebuild of the user interface. This isn't an incremental release - every major screen has been rebuilt using Jetpack Compose, Android's modern UI toolkit. The result is smoother animations, a more consistent look and feel, and a foundation that lets us ship new features faster.

Why Now?​

For the past several months we've been working on bringing Mapit GIS to iOS - a completely native Swift application built from the ground up. That process forced us to rethink how the app should work: the navigation, the editing workflows, how features are presented on the map.

Rather than let the Android app fall behind, we decided to rebuild it in parallel. The iOS work gave us a chance to step back and reconsider things we'd lived with for years. Version 3 brings those lessons back to Android.

The iOS app is coming soon. More on that shortly.

Redesigned Screens​

The following sections have been completely rebuilt:

• Projects and layers - cleaner project management with quick access to layers
• Add/Edit features - streamlined data entry with feature name prefixes and smart defaults that remember your last-added values
• Settings - every settings section (Survey, External GNSS etc.) rebuilt from scratch
• Style management - easier symbology editing with a refreshed style picker
• Online services - WMS, WMTS, WFS, XYZ and now GeoJSON layers can be brought as context information
• Offline maps - improved stability, including a fix for crashes with larger MBTiles files (500MB+)
• Attachment gallery - a new gallery view with metadata info panels
• Billing and licensing - cleaner subscription and license screens

Glass-Styled Navigation​

The app now features a glass-styled bottom navigation bar with quick access to GPS, search, and the main menu. The search experience introduces categorised tabs for Places and Documents. Selected features appear in a polished bottom sheet, and the entire navigation overlay has been rethought for one-handed field use.

Smarter Editing​

Editing geometry has been significantly improved:

• Long press to edit – tap and hold on any line or polygon to start an edit session instantly
• Inner ring editing – full support for editing polygon holes, including vertex dragging and midpoint insertion, all constraint-aware
• Improved symbology - edit session vertex styling has been redesigned

External GNSS Improvements​

Connection reliability for external GNSS receivers has been a focus:

• Bluetooth stability - fewer disconnections, no duplicate status toasts, better UI feedback during pairing
• TCP GNSS fixes - resolved timeout issues after extended use and disconnection problems on Android 14+
• Foreground service improvements - Android can no longer silently kill your GNSS connection in the background (enable notifications for Mapit GIS to enhance this)
• GPS info sheet - completely rebuilt with a cleaner layout and better organisation of GNSS stats
• Position averaging - a new averaging sheet for high-accuracy point collection

Note: If you are using external GNSS receivers via Bluetooth or TCP and experiencing disconnections, the foreground service changes should help significantly. For enhanced user experience ensure the notifications are switched on for Mapit GIS app in Android Settings.

Additional Changes​

• Save GeoJSON layers to GeoPackage - online GeoJSON sources can now be saved directly into your project
• Cluster tap expansion - tapping a map cluster now expands to show individual features in a bottom sheet
• Test connection buttons - verify PostgreSQL and FTP/SFTP connections directly from settings
• Dynamic documentation - in-app help now loads a live table of contents from the docs site
• Field editing improvements - edit layer fields with a better UI; columns can now be renamed and dynamically changed to required fields
• Translation updates - new strings for search, GPS, attachments, projects, and offline maps

Where Mapit GIS is Heading​

Version 3 is the foundation for something bigger. We're working on cloud infrastructure that will let you manage and create GeoPackages from the web - no device required. Team collaboration, project sharing, and sync across devices are all part of the plan.

We're also exploring tighter integration with desktop GIS tools. The ability to prepare projects in QGIS and push them directly to Mapit GIS in the field (and back again) is something we've wanted for a long time. Early days, but it's on the roadmap.

More details on the iOS release in the coming weeks. If you've been waiting for Mapit GIS on iPhone and iPad - it's nearly here.

Mapit GIS 3.0 will be available on Google Play soon.