Notable user-facing changes to Pelorus Nav. Downloads are on the GitHub releases page.
The format follows Keep a Changelog.
- Chart Scale Boundaries layer (Settings → Charts & Layers, off by default): a labelled line where the chart shown changes to one of a different scale. Depth shading can change along it, since each chart has its own depth contours.
- Chart: large regulated areas (restricted, caution and anchorage areas, cable areas, fairways) no longer show straight dashed lines across open water. Those lines were where the chart data is divided into pieces, not real boundaries. The change applies to each chart region as it is updated.
- The chart's scale bar follows your speed unit: kilometers and meters with km/h, miles and feet with mph. With knots it switches from nautical miles to feet (or meters, if depths are in meters) when zoomed in below 0.1 NM.
- On Android, a route, track or waypoint file sent with Quick Share now opens in Pelorus Nav on the receiving device. Before, the receiving device didn't recognize the file and could offer it to Google Wallet instead.
- On BOOX e-readers, GPX files now open in Pelorus Nav from the BOOX file manager. Before, it offered only BOOX's Notes app, which couldn't open them.
- The course line's automatic length now always ends on screen. In Course Up heading roughly east or west, it could run hours ahead with only its first time tick visible, and after zooming it could overshoot the edge of the screen.
- On phones, the zoom box in the bottom-right corner no longer covers the last line of a chart object's details; the details panel now covers it while open.
- Pelorus Nav is out of beta. The About screen no longer calls it beta software, and its credits now include Open-Meteo, the source of the wind forecast.
- While editing a route, tap the selected waypoint's name in the editing toolbar to rename it. On a phone, where the waypoint list is hidden during editing, this is the way to rename.
- Search results show where each place is, such as "near Coronado, CA", and a common name can be narrowed with a comma and a state, country or nearby town: "long island, maine". A feature drawn on several charts now appears once instead of several times.
- The zoom and GPS status box in the bottom-right corner closes to a single small line, level with the chart readout at the bottom, so it no longer covers info popups on small phones. Tap ▲ to open it as before.
- The course line keeps its time ticks when zoomed in close. With the line length on Auto, it used to stretch past the screen edge without ticks.
- On a flaky connection, the "Can't load charts" banner no longer pops up again every time the connection drops. After three times in ten minutes, the warning stays on the chart readout at the bottom; tap it to see the banner.
- Depths in feet or fathoms are rounded down, as NOAA requires and as NOAA's own charts show them. Many soundings used to read one foot deeper than NOAA charts. Depth contour labels follow the same rule, so the 6 ft contour reads 5 ft as it does on NOAA charts.
- Heights and clearances (bridges, overhead cables, lights, elevations) show in feet whenever depths are in feet or fathoms, rounded down; clearances to a tenth of a foot. Bridge and cable clearance labels used to show meters only. Soundings under a foot read ½, as on NOAA charts.
- Bridge and overhead-cable clearance labels show up reliably. They used to lose out to nearby soundings and place names, so busy bridges like the Coronado Bridge showed no clearance at all. They're now black, as the S-52 chart standard specifies.
- Depth settings select contours the way NOAA's charts do: the safety contour is the shallowest contour whose label is at least your setting. The defaults are now NOAA's 5 / 11 / 17 ft. If you changed your depth settings, they were adjusted so the same contour stays highlighted (a 6 ft setting now reads 5 ft, matching that contour's new label).
- Android: chart and basemap downloads keep running when you switch to another app or the screen turns off, with their progress shown in a "Downloading charts" notification.
- A Features page in the user guide: a quick tour of what Pelorus Nav does, linking to the details.
- The iOS and Play Store apps no longer show their own "new version available" notice; the stores deliver updates when they are ready.
- Charts no longer include NOAA chart cells that have been withdrawn, which could show outdated data (one placed a buoy in Liberty Bay, WA, 490 m from its current position). Their current replacements are now included.
- Chart region updates are offered only when NOAA has actually updated a chart, instead of almost every day.
- The "new version available" notice and undo toasts are no longer squeezed into a narrow column on phones.
- Chart and basemap downloads interrupted by a lost connection (for example, when the app was in the background) no longer fail permanently or start over from the beginning.
- An island's name no longer lands on a neighboring island: names of small islets beside a larger one (Gooseberry Island next to Hope Island, Narragansett Bay) now stay on their own island or move into open water.
- Depth shading matches the depth thresholds set in feet or fathoms. US charts store their foot contours rounded down to a tenth of a meter (the 6 ft contour as 1.8 m), so water just past a 6 ft contour was shaded as shallower than 6 ft. Depth contour labels also now match paper charts.
- When Android stops the app in the background and track recording pauses, the app now says so when you reopen it, instead of silently starting a new track. On Android its Settings button opens the setting that keeps the app running; on Samsung phones it also explains how to add Pelorus Nav to "Never auto sleeping apps". If Android won't let the app resume recording in the background, a silent "Track recording stopped" notification appears, to let you know.
- Signal K (experimental): the Android and iOS apps can take
position, course, speed and heading from a boat's Signal K server.
In Settings → Navigation, choose Signal K and enter the server's
address —
192.168.1.50oropenplotter.local, with an optional port. A status line shows whether it's connected and receiving a position, or why the server can't be reached, and Server details shows everything the server sends. Signal K support hasn't been tried on many boats yet; if you use it, please let us know how it goes, working or not (Info → Report a Bug). - Search: named creeks and rivers, ponds, wharves, dredged channels and rocks are now findable by name.
- Report a Bug: in the web app, "App diagnostics" showed characters such as "·" and "—" garbled.
- Routes: tapping a waypoint that several routes pass through offers a card per route, but led with whichever route happened to draw on top, so the Navigate and Steer actions acted on an arbitrary one. The selected route now comes first.
- Chart: a few buoys and beacons without a short designation were labelled with their whole name. They're now left unlabelled, as on a paper chart.
- Chart Regions: downloads now queue. Tap download on several regions, basemaps or charts and they fetch one after another while the list stays usable; each row shows its progress or queued size, a row at the top shows how much is left with Cancel All, and a queued item can be removed before it starts. A download that fails shows the reason and the queue moves on.
- Chart Regions: Update All queues every downloaded region and street basemap that is out of date.
- Chart Regions: a batch that would not fit in the device's free storage is refused up front, with the shortfall shown, instead of failing part-way.
- Chart: tapping a floating dock identifies it, like other charted structures.
- Report a Bug: "App diagnostics" is now a link that opens the exact text the report would send, so it can be read before sending.
- Chart: marina finger piers and other floating docks were missing, and their centrelines were painted as grey slivers and triangles across the water. They now draw as docks, and appear at harbour zoom even at Standard detail.
- Chart: narrow watercourses were painted as filled blotches over the land instead of drawn as rivers.
- Chart: berth numbers could be misread as depth soundings — same font, size and colour, and offset far enough from the berth to sit out over the water. They are now italic and sit on the berth.
- Chart: where the graphics driver reports a small maximum texture size, as some hardened or software Linux/Firefox setups do, the whole chart dimmed to about 40% brightness once the charts loaded, in every theme, whenever the street underlay was on.
- Report a Bug: the attached chart screenshot came out as noise on some browsers instead of the chart that was on screen.
- Position entry: a latitude/longitude pasted with a typographic minus or dash, as text copied from a document or web page often carries, is now accepted.
- Android: when the system killed the app mid-recording (for example to free memory for the camera) and later relaunched it in the background, the device GPS stayed off with a "tracking stopped (foreground-start-failed)" banner until Retry was tapped. The app now restarts the GPS on its own as soon as it is back on screen.
- Stopping a track recording while its last fixes were still being written no longer briefly flags a track-save error.
- Choose the first waypoint to steer for yourself: tap a route's waypoint on the chart and choose Steer for this waypoint, or tap the ► marker on any leg in the route's detail panel (previously only while already navigating). Either overrides the automatic choice of starting leg and also retargets navigation already under way.
- The Android and iOS apps check for a newer release at startup and show a notice: Android opens the Play Store listing, iOS the release notes. Check for updates at startup in the About dialog turns this off (on the web it also stops the background polling for new builds).
- White deep water (Settings → Appearance → Depth shading) draws deep water white instead of pale blue in the Day theme, as the E-ink theme already does.
- Time to the next waypoint and arrival time at the destination while
navigating a route, on the instruments' caption line:
Next: Castle Island · 25mandDest: 12.4 NM / 2:32 PM. They use your average speed over the last few minutes;~marks a time still settling after a speed change,--no average yet or not closing on the waypoint.
- With the street underlay on, land no longer shows darker rectangular patches where chart cells overlap.
- A buoy's fog signal and topmark no longer appear at zooms where the buoy itself is still hidden.
- Starting a route while sailing it the other way (leaving the harbour a route ends at, say) no longer steers for a waypoint the boat is already past, which rang the arrival chime twice and buried the "Reverse route" offer under arrival toasts.
- The What's New dialog renders the release notes' bold, italic, code and links instead of showing the Markdown marks.
- Tapping a route on the chart offers Navigate route (or Stop navigation) on its card, beside Open in Routes panel.
- Navigate to here in the chart's long-press / right-click menu: starts navigating straight to the tapped point. The target is a temporary waypoint, removed on arrival or when the navigation is cancelled.
- A short beep (and a vibration on phones) with a notice each time route navigation passes a waypoint; three notes on arriving at the last one. "Beep when passing a waypoint" in Settings → Navigation turns it off.
- Starting navigation on a route that runs the other way from your course offers to reverse it.
- TIDE in the top bar shows the nearest tide station's times (from your vessel, or the chart centre without a fix), with a "Show on chart" button and one for each nearby station whose next high or low differs by more than ten minutes.
- A setting to hide the zoom and compass buttons on the chart (Settings → Appearance).
- The Lock screen menu item is always present on Android; choosing it with volume-key controls off offers to turn them on (a volume press is the unlock). Holding a finger still on the screen for three seconds also unlocks, for devices whose volume keys never reach the app.
- Wind barbs: panning or zooming repaints the cached barbs at once but fetches new areas only after the chart has been still for ten seconds (a view with no barbs at all fetches immediately), and fetched wind is kept for two hours instead of thirty minutes — far fewer requests against the forecast service's limit under way.
- The Plot button moved later in the top bar (after Time), so on a phone it lives in the ☰ menu instead of taking one of the visible slots.
- The bottom-centre chart readout ("ft · °M · ENC"), the feature-info card's prev/next footer, the track viewer, the settings panel, the Sun popup, the menu dropdown and the top bar's last button now all clear the Android navigation bar, in portrait and in landscape.
- The bearing line to the waypoint you're navigating to is orange (the S-52 user-information colour, per theme) instead of yellow, which the chart also uses for special-purpose buoys and caution areas.
- Starting navigation on a route from somewhere along it now steers for the leg ahead of you — the nearest leg whose next waypoint lies within 75° of your course — instead of always the route's second waypoint.
- Track recording on Android now survives the system stopping the app under way. The background GPS service restarts on its own and keeps recording, the fixes it buffered while the app was closed are added to the track at the next launch, and a notice reports how long recording was interrupted, with a shortcut to exempt the app from battery optimization.
- A hole in a track (recording stopped for more than five minutes) is now drawn as a dashed bridge instead of a solid line across wherever the vessel actually went.
- Chart controls, panels and bottom cards keep clear of the system navigation bar and the iOS home indicator, including the side edge in landscape.
- The zoom buttons and the compass no longer drop the chart out of follow, course-up or north-up mode. Pinching and dragging still do.
- The long-press menu no longer closes by itself while the chart is following a moving vessel.
- The context menu's Plot submenu stays on screen near the edges of the display, and tapping the "Plot ▸" row opens it (it used to open only on mouse hover, so touch screens could miss it).
- The auto-length course line stays on screen: it is sized along the course to the edge of the display, so a course toward a near edge no longer runs the line and its label off the chart; in free mode the length follows wherever you have panned the vessel, and settles after a pan.
- The About dialog has a close button.
- On touch screens the Settings rows are taller and a checkbox row toggles from a tap anywhere along it, with a larger checkbox.
- Android: the short labels under the top-bar buttons no longer vanish when the menu opens or the screen rotates.
- Fog signals: the magenta arc beside a buoy or light is drawn over the buoy's label instead of under it, slightly larger, and from zoom 12 a small label says what it is — Bell, Whis, Gong, Horn.
- The Android status bar (clock, signal, battery) is readable again: its icons were drawn dark on the app's dark top bar on Android 15 and 16.
-
Anchor watch (experimental, Android only). A new Anchor Watch mode (see the hamburger menu) sets an anchor position and watch radius and alarms if the boat drags outside it. The radius is suggested from your rode, boat length, depth, and live GPS accuracy; the anchor can be placed at the vessel, by distance and bearing, or by tapping the chart. See the User Guide for more info.
-
A new Anchor Watch chapter in the user guide.
-
The instrument bar now shows distance to the route's destination while navigating, on the right of the "Next:" caption line. The caption text is slightly larger, too.
- Buoy and light sound-signal marks (bell, gong, whistle) are now drawn in a stronger magenta and placed clear of the buoy symbol.
- Preferred-channel (junction) buoys now show their contrasting band on the chart — a green can with a red band is no longer drawn identical to a plain green can (thanks to Jesús Esgueva for the report, our first outside issue!). The official simplified symbol set collapses these to one color, so Pelorus uses its own banded variants of the simplified symbols, in every theme including e-ink.
- "New folder…" now asks for the name with the app's own dialog — the browser's native prompt is silently blocked in fullscreen, so creating a folder while navigating did nothing.
- Revealing a track, route, waypoint, or search result on the chart now releases follow mode — the camera no longer snaps straight back to the vessel on the next GPS fix. Recenter restores following, as after any manual pan.
- The course projection line now disappears reliably when the vessel stops or the GPS signal is lost, instead of sometimes staying frozen at its last heading and length.
- Track recording now shows a warning if points can't be saved (e.g. device storage full) instead of silently losing them, and renaming or recoloring a track while it's recording no longer gets undone by the recorder.
- A crew-overboard activation now survives an app crash or reload in the first moments after pressing COB.
- The Icon Size setting (and the e-ink theme's larger symbols) now applies to all chart symbols — anchorages, traffic-lane arrows, current arrows, restricted areas, and others were stuck at a fixed size.
- Signal K sources reporting "unknown" course or speed no longer display as 0° / 0.0 kn, and switching Signal K servers can't briefly show the old server's position. Note that Signal K is not yet a tested feature; if you have a Signal K device I would love to work with you to test it.
- Automatic chart-region switching while under way no longer moves or re-zooms the chart.
- Reloading the app mid-passage resumes navigation on the correct route leg (previously a route that doubled back could re-target an already-passed waypoint).
- Dragging waypoints and route points is smoother, especially on slower devices.
- Long-press holds on e-ink devices (arming/disarming, COB) no longer get cancelled by the panel refreshing under your finger.
- Charts, routes, and tracks are now protected from browser storage eviction on web installs, and re-importing your own exported GPX no longer degrades a recorded track.
- Assorted smaller fixes: Escape now closes only the topmost panel/menu; selection mode taps can't accidentally open items; coordinate display rounds properly; whole-US chart view rebuilds styles much faster.
- Bluetooth GPS battery: a low-battery marker next to the GPS status dot below 10% charge, and voltage/percentage in GPS Diagnostics. Only Dual XGPS receivers report battery level; other devices are unaffected.
- Bug reports written offline are saved on the device and sent automatically when the network returns.
- Stopping navigation (map button or Escape) now asks for confirmation.
- Holding (or right-clicking) a point on the chart acts on what's under your finger: a lone waypoint is grabbed to move, as before; where a route point or several objects share the spot, a menu names each choice — Move waypoint "X" (drag to move, with undo), Edit route "Y" (opens the editor with that point selected) — above the usual chart actions.
- Route editing on phones: starting an edit closes open panels (on larger screens the detail panel stays open as a live leg table), the camera stays put when part of the route is already visible, and finishing or cancelling restores the previous follow mode. Navigation of the edited route re-targets the saved geometry.
- While editing a route, other routes fade to thin background lines (no labels or markers at full strength), so the edit handles are unmistakably the only editable points. Their waypoints remain snap targets, and everything returns to normal when the edit ends.
- Spurious route points: the chart long-press menu no longer opens during editing, and neither a long motionless press nor the menu-dismissing tap adds a waypoint. Idle auto-return no longer interrupts an edit.
- Cancelling a route edit started from the chart menu now restores the route, and routes no longer blink out briefly after an edit.
- Offline with a downloaded street basemap, no more recurring "Can't load street maps" warnings.
- Enabling the Lock button on screens slightly wider than a phone could push top-bar buttons off-screen with no menu to reach them; the bar now collapses into the hamburger whenever its buttons don't fit.
- The auto course-projection line now extends up to 8 hours when zoomed far out (was capped at 1 hour), with tick marks every 15, 30, or 60 minutes for the 2, 4, and 8 hour lines.
- Dredged-area outlines are now a new "Dredged Area Outlines" layer toggle, off by default — harbors tiled with dredge basins (like Boston inner harbor) were a lattice of dashed lines. When enabled they render as a pale dashed grey per S-52, not the previous bright green (which also turned near-black on e-ink).
- Tide and current station popups list three days of events (was about one day); the list scrolls when needed.
- On phones, the menu button (☰) becomes ✕ while Settings is open — it acts as the close button there.
- The Bluetooth GPS device chooser explains that a missing device must be paired in Android's Bluetooth settings first.
- Waypoints can be marked with a shape — triangle, circle, square, diamond, flag, pin or house — in any of six colors, alongside the existing Anchorage, Hazard, Fuel and POI symbols. These are the shapes and colors Garmin and ActiveCaptain use, so an imported GPX now keeps the coding it arrived with instead of turning every mark into an identical dot, and exports go back out under names those chartplotters recognize.
- Tapping a waypoint's name in the Waypoints panel centers the chart on it and rings it, so you can find a waypoint you have scrolled to in the list. A hidden waypoint is shown first.
- The offline street basemap now shows much more detail when zoomed in: icons for restaurants, marinas, parks and other points of interest (day and dusk themes), clearly visible building outlines and docks, and house numbers from zoom 16. Existing downloaded basemaps get all of this without re-downloading.
- Long route legs are drawn as great-circle arcs, matching the underlying computations.
- Moving a waypoint on the chart is now press-and-hold: hold it until it rings (and the device buzzes, where it can), then drag. Waypoints used to be picked up the instant you touched one, so a pan that happened to start on a waypoint could silently drag it miles from where it belonged. Route editing is unchanged — waypoints there still drag on contact during edits.
- After a waypoint is moved, a message offers to undo the move.
- Re-importing a GPX whose waypoint symbols, colors or notes you have edited now updates those waypoints instead of adding a second copy of each. Files that carry no identifiers of their own are matched on name and position, so a waypoint that has moved still arrives as a new one — our own exports carry an identifier and are matched by it wherever they have moved to.
- Re-importing a GPX file you have imported before now updates what is already there instead of adding a second copy of everything, so the same file can be used to keep two devices in step. The import dialog says what the file holds and how much is already up to date before anything is written; your folders, colours and shown/hidden state survive an update.
- Routes, waypoints and tracks can be organized in bulk. The Select button in a panel header — or a long press on any row — turns the list into checkboxes, and a bar along the bottom moves everything ticked to a folder, shows or hides it, or deletes it in one go.
- Waypoints can be hidden without deleting them, and waypoints and tracks can go in folders like routes do. A folder's eye shows or hides everything in it at once, and folders travel with exported GPX files.
- A folder can be deleted with its whole contents, from the trash button on its header row.
- GPX files keep what other chartplotters put in them — OpenCPN's planned speed and arrival radii, the depth and water temperature a Garmin recorded at a mark — and write it back out on export, so a file that goes home to the app it came from arrives intact.
- On iPhone and iPad the export buttons now show the iOS share symbol (the box with an up arrow) instead of the Android one.
- Obstruction areas are drawn on the chart. From zoom 12 up each one gets a dotted boundary and, where the survey gives a depth, its sounding at the centre. Areas that were charted but drew nothing — most often submerged structures along a waterfront — are now visible rather than only clickable.
- Open a .gpx file from the Files app, a cloud drive, or a file manager and Pelorus offers to import its routes, tracks and waypoints.
- Importing a GPX file now brings in everything it holds. Any of the three Import buttons takes the routes, tracks and waypoints from the file; previously each panel kept only its own kind and quietly dropped the rest.
- A sort button in the Routes and Waypoints panel headers switches the lists between name order and most-recent-first (one shared preference; folders stay alphabetical either way).
- GPX import works again on iPhone and iPad: the file picker no longer greys out every .gpx file, in the app and in Safari.
- Tapping a route or waypoint on the chart now identifies it: an info card shows the route's length and waypoint count (or the waypoint's notes and position), selects the tapped route, and offers a button to open it in the Routes or Waypoints panel.
- A "Waypoint size" slider in Settings scales waypoint and route markers (50%–200%), including route-editing handles.
- Routes can now be reversed: a Reverse button in the route editor bar (undoable) and a reverse icon in the route detail panel swap the start and end.
- Route lines now show small direction chevrons — subtle ones on saved routes, bolder ones while editing — so a route's direction is visible at a glance.
- Route waypoint names now hide instead of overprinting each other when waypoints are densely placed or the chart is zoomed out.
- Long names in the routes, waypoints, and tracks panels now use the full panel width, moving the row's action buttons to a second line instead of truncating the name beside them.
- Tapping a route or track color swatch no longer re-triggers itself, which crashed the color picker with a script error on iOS and leaked hidden elements on other platforms.
- The "+" handles for extending a route at either end now keep a fixed on-screen distance from the end waypoints at any zoom level. They previously overlapped the start/end markers when zoomed out, so a tap on an end waypoint could silently add a new point there instead.
- The chart engine is upgraded to MapLibre GL JS v6: charts render and pan noticeably more smoothly, especially on lower-end tablets and e-readers (symbol placement work is roughly halved).
- When charts or the street basemap fail to load, the app now shows a message saying what failed and why, with a Retry button, instead of silently leaving the chart blank.
- The chart readout pill at the bottom of the screen now shows load and connectivity status: an amber LOADING CHARTS… note while chart detail is still arriving, a red TILE LOAD ERROR or OFFLINE: MISSING CHARTS warning while tiles are actually failing (tap it for details), or a muted OFFLINE note when there's simply no internet.
- Opening the app offline could show an empty chart until the first pan or zoom.
- Chart regions no longer request tiles for areas outside their own coverage, reducing network traffic.
- Deleting a downloaded region could leave it still showing as downloaded.
- Stopping a short track recording could leave the new track missing from the Tracks panel until something else refreshed it.
Theme of this release: route editing improvements! People coming from OpenCPN should be more comfortable, with many bugs squashed and nice improvements (not just on iOS) like snapping to existing waypoints, undo, and clearer modes. See below. And remember, you can always edit routes on desktop and then export them to your cloud folder and import on the phone. Don't forget about route folders to organize your routes!
- An online user guide at pelorus-nav.com/doc/userguide, covering getting started, the chart display, routes, tracks, tides/wind/sun, and the traditional plotting tools. Linked from the About dialog and the website.
- Bug reports can now include a screenshot of the chart. The report dialog shows a preview with an "Include chart screenshot" checkbox (on by default) — uncheck it to send the report without revealing your position.
- Bug report diagnostics now include a short log of recent UI actions (panels opened, map modes entered), which helps diagnose reported problems.
- A "Charted Currents" layer group shows the static current arrows charted on ENCs (e.g. the Gulf Stream) with drift labels — distinct from the Tides & Currents overlay's live predictions, and useful offshore where there are no prediction stations.
- The route editor now snaps to existing waypoints: placing or dragging a waypoint near a standalone waypoint or a waypoint of another visible route snaps it to exactly that position (a ring marks the target). Routes sharing a common stretch — e.g. the same harbor exit — now render as one line instead of near-duplicates. Snapped waypoints are copies, not links: moving one never affects other routes.
- Route editing gained an extend handle off each end of the route, matching the insert handles on the legs — the one at the end is a quicker way to add to a route than turning on Add Points. Dragging any of these handles now creates the waypoint and moves it in a single gesture, instead of tap-then-find-it-again.
- The route editor now has Undo: the toolbar shows an Undo button whenever there is something to undo (adding, inserting, deleting, dragging, or renaming a waypoint — one undo per drag). Ctrl/Cmd+Z also works on desktop. History is per editing session; Cancel still discards everything.
- Editing a saved route no longer turns a tap on open water into a waypoint. Adding is now an explicit Add Points toggle in the editing toolbar, lit while it's on: a route you're drawing starts with it on, an existing route opens with it off. Stray taps — including ones aimed at a control and missed — can no longer hang an unwanted waypoint off the end of a finished route.
- While editing a route, waypoint names in the route detail list are now clickable and stay in sync with the map: clicking a name selects that waypoint (same as tapping it on the map, with Delete / Insert After in the bottom bar), and selecting a waypoint on the map highlights its row in the list. The list also appears as soon as a route has one waypoint, instead of only after two.
- Route editing shows more visible chart area on phones: the full route list collapses while you edit (reopen it from the Routes button when done) and its height is capped.
- Leg readouts now show course before distance everywhere (e.g.
119°M / 2.3 NM), matching the waypoint list.
- Editing a route while away from the vessel no longer snaps the chart back to the boat on the next GPS fix while in follow mode.
- A long waypoint name no longer collapses to a single letter in the editing toolbar: the name gets its own row (ellipsised only if very long) and the leg distance/bearing stays visible.
- While editing a route, the selection glow no longer lingers showing the route's shape from before the edit started.
- Reduced initial lag while dragging anything on the chart with a mouse — a route waypoint, a measurement pin, a plotting symbol.
- In Route edit mode, taps on route waypoints and on the ghost insert markers are now reliable, especially just after panning the chart. The ghost insert markers are also larger and easier to hit with a finger.
- Bluetooth GPS (NMEA) receivers such as the Dual XGPS150A and Garmin GLO 2 now work on recent Android (12+) devices, handy for devices without their own GPS.
- Chart symbol fixes: restricted areas now show the correct no-entry / no-anchoring / no-fishing symbol, footbridges no longer get the opening-bridge symbol, and unsurveyed areas and dumping grounds are now tap-queryable like other areas.
- Chart labels are no longer cut off where chart regions meet or along shorelines.
- Opening another panel (Sun, chart layers, …) while editing a route no longer dismisses the waypoint list; close it with its X if you want more room.
- Renaming a waypoint mid-edit no longer silently saves your in-progress route changes (Done saves, Cancel discards, as expected), and a chart style reload during editing no longer redraws the route's old shape underneath the one being edited.
- Bluetooth Classic NMEA GPS receivers (e.g. Garmin GLO 2) are now supported on Android via the new "Bluetooth GPS (NMEA)" source. Pair the receiver in Android's Bluetooth settings, then choose it from the in-app device list.
- The maneuver markers in the track viewer are now small dots that grow as you zoom in, instead of large white circles. A new button in the viewer toolbar hides them entirely; the choice is remembered.
- A slow, wide tack no longer shows up as two maneuvers in the track viewer.
- Chart panning is much smoother on phones: the top bar's overflow layout no longer re-runs continuously in the background, and panning near a chart-region boundary (e.g. the Boston area) no longer rebuilds the chart style on every gesture.
- Placing and editing route waypoints is more responsive: waypoint auto-naming, tap handling, and drag handling all do far less work per tap and no longer add touch latency to scroll gestures.
- Panning while anchored or stationary no longer hangs for up to a second before responding: the battery-saving frame-rate cap now lifts the instant a touch begins instead of waiting for the map to move.
- A fresh install on a phone with an old Google backup of the app no longer starts up on an ancient cached version: backups now exclude the app's internal browser caches (routes and settings still back up).
- Popup panels now behave more sensibly and clearly.
- The top bar now shows as many buttons as fit the screen width instead of a fixed four on mobile — the rest stay in the ☰ menu, which is hidden entirely when everything fits.
- The depth/bearing units moved from the top bar to the chart readout at the bottom of the screen ("Ft · °M · ENC · NOAA").
- Editing a route now zooms to fit it first, and the route dialog's summary line zooms to the route when tapped.
- On narrow screens the route editor toolbar sits at the bottom of the screen, out of the way of the route dialog, so route editing works better.
- Much less chart clutter at the Standard detail level: dense rock/wreck/obstruction clusters thin themselves below zoom 13, buoys, beacons, and short-range lights start at zoom 10 (major lights and isolated-danger marks are unaffected), and soundings deeper than your "deep water" depth wait until zoom 13. Standard+ and Full detail are unchanged — raise the Detail slider to see everything as before.
- "Kelp, Overfalls & Fish Farms" layer toggle in Settings — before, these layers were always drawn with no way to turn them off.
- The About dialog's "Website" link now properly goes to pelorus-nav.com landing page, not back to the app.
- Route editing on touch screens: tapping a waypoint now selects it. Previously only dragging worked, and waypoints are easier to hit with a finger.
- Deleting the last waypoint no longer leaves a ghost dashed line on touch devices.
- The toolbar can no longer vanish off the top of the screen on iPad Safari after entering fullscreen or when Safari resized its own toolbars.
- Panels no longer sit too high, overlapping the instruments, after entering fullscreen on iPad.
- On the e-ink theme, tidal-current arrows fill red like the other themes instead of black.
- Several layer toggles (Seabed, Cables & Pipes, parts of Facilities) did nothing at the default detail level; those layers now appear from zoom 12–13 and the toggles control them.
- Removed the Magnetic Variation settings toggle: it never controlled anything.
- "Base" detail no longer shows a few layers that belong to higher detail levels (seabed letters, moorings, sea boundaries).
- Chart downloads could fail at the very end on some Android WebViews (e.g. Amazon Fire tablets): the final file rename is now retried as a copy when the platform rejects the rename.
- After a failed download, the dialog's Cancel button did nothing; it now becomes "Close" and dismisses the error.
- Report a Bug (About dialog): describe the problem, optionally leave your email, and the report — with app diagnostics attached — goes straight to the developer. No more hunting for an app to share a file with. Offline, it falls back to sharing the report as a file.
- The GPS badge now says why there's no position: "NO GPS" (no source connected), "NO DATA" (device connected but silent — check the device), or "NO FIX" (device healthy, still waiting for satellites).
- Bug reports include a live navigation snapshot (source, connection, data/fix ages) and, for the Pelorus GPS pod, the pod's own status counters — fetched over Bluetooth in a couple of seconds, skipped instantly if the pod doesn't answer.
- Streamed (not-downloaded) charts failed to load from the production server; downloaded charts were unaffected.
- Route folders: file a route into a folder from its detail panel, and the route manager groups them under collapsible headers — handy for a trip's worth of daily routes. A folder's eye icon shows or hides the whole set on the chart, and folders survive GPX export and import.
- The demo simulator grew up (Settings → Navigation, with Simulator as the GPS source): choose between replaying a real recorded sail and following a plotted Boston Harbor route, restart it from the beginning, or sail a course of your own design by naming a route SIMULATOR. Changing the speed multiplier no longer teleports the boat, so you can fast-forward at 50× and drop to 1× at the interesting part.
- The About dialog links to the pelorus-nav.com website and the app's Terms of Use.
- Wind barbs now end in a small downwind arrowhead instead of the conventional circle, so the direction the wind is blowing toward is unambiguous at a glance.
- In landscape, the top-bar instrument panel no longer spans the full screen width. It's now a compact readout box floating below the top bar, so the chart keeps its full width and height; while navigating, the waypoint readouts sit beside SOG/COG instead of on a second row. The digits also no longer shrink as the window gets shorter.
- New brand mark: the "sail-dart" emblem replaces the old logo on the app icon, splash screen, and About dialog.
- Course-over-ground smoothing now recognizes a committed turn: through a tack the course line sweeps around in one clean motion and settles within seconds, instead of slewing slowly in stages.
- pelorus-nav.com is now an introduction page with an email signup; the web app lives at pelorus-nav.com/app. Old bookmarks and installed PWAs carry over automatically.
- The vessel icon always draws above route lines and waypoint markers, never underneath them.
- Route waypoints placed near the same charted feature no longer get identical auto-names.
- Bring your own charts: import raster charts (.pmtiles) with Chart Regions → "Load from File…" — for example the satellite chart collections cruisers share for waters without official coverage, converted with a single command (see the README). Imported charts render alongside the built-in charts, work offline, and can be removed anytime.
- When zoomed out past an imported chart's detail, its actual coverage is outlined as a dashed magenta footprint, so small local charts stay easy to find on the map.
- A packing tool merges a whole folder of small chart files (a typical country collection is 100+ tiny single-anchorage charts) into one importable file, so the entire collection is a single import.
- Each raster chart in Chart Regions now has a show/hide toggle — if you have overlapping charts for the same waters (a scanned chart and satellite imagery, say), pick which one draws — and a "go to" button that flies the map to the chart.
- Desktop: panning with the mouse now shows the center crosshair and live coordinates, as touch dragging always has.
- With an offline street basemap downloaded, the world map still appears when you look beyond the basemap's coverage — imported charts abroad no longer float in empty ocean.
- Battery: when the vessel is stationary (at anchor, at the dock), the chart redraws only when a GPS fix arrives instead of animating continuously. Every real movement still draws — swinging at anchor stays visible.
- Imported charts assembled from many small patches no longer pop in and out while zooming — every chart stays visible at its best available detail.
- Choosing a region in Chart Regions no longer snaps back to your GPS region moments later. Sailing into a different region still switches automatically.
- Search, "go to", and region selection now actually take you there while the chart is following the vessel (follow mode used to pull the view straight back to the boat).
- The lock-onto-vessel button could center far from the boat after sitting stationary for a while (especially in a desktop browser); it now always centers on the live GPS position.
- Crew Overboard (COB) button: hold the red life-ring button for 1.5 seconds to instantly mark the spot, sound an alarm, and start navigating back. Shows big coordinates for a mayday call, elapsed time, and bearing/distance to the person in the water; keeps the screen awake, records your track, and survives an app restart. Ending the emergency always requires a deliberate press-and-hold, and the COB waypoint is kept as a record.
- Volume-key chart controls (Android, optional): turn on "Volume keys zoom chart" in Settings to zoom the chart with the device's volume buttons — handy on large e-ink devices. This also adds a "Lock screen" item to the menu that disables the touchscreen (with an on-screen indicator) so accidental taps are ignored under way; press a volume button to unlock.
- After an update, a one-time "What's New" dialog summarizes the release's changes, with a link to the full changelog.
- Waypoints auto-named from charted features now get shorter, tidier names (for example, long buoy names are abbreviated).
- Bigger, cleaner instrument readouts in landscape on small screens.
- The side instrument panel no longer covers the on-map buttons.
- Recorded tracks are now named "Pelorus Track" with the date and time, so exported and shared files are easier to identify.
- Exported track (GPX) files are smaller, with sensible coordinate and speed precision instead of long strings of meaningless digits.
- When you're offline, wind barbs now say "needs Internet connectivity" instead of showing a rate-limit error.
- The map no longer occasionally keeps zooming all the way out on its own after a pinch gesture (iOS).
- Fixed a rare crash when switching chart theme or region while navigating.
- The Waypoints list now updates immediately when a waypoint is added, removed, or renamed while the panel is open — previously it could show stale entries until you closed and reopened it.
- The About and What's New dialogs are now high-contrast (black-on-white) on e-ink displays.
- Anchorage-area and traffic-separation-scheme chart symbols.
- Deleting a route or waypoint now stops any active navigation to it.
- More reliable reconnection for Bluetooth, NMEA, and Signal K instruments.
- The app no longer reloads for an update while you're actively navigating.
- Wind barbs update more reliably and use less data.
- Charts keep refreshing smoothly while underway.
- Fixed track-recording glitches when switching between tracks.
- Routes stay correctly dimmed in night mode.