What's new

Maps gain a Measure tool for distances and areas, Print this map shows a layout preview before PDF download (with hover thumbnails), and the elevation Profile works again on Web Mercator DEMs — Profile and View From only appear when the map has terrain. Builder and sharing chrome keep expanding through Spanish, French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese. Public layer and catalogue endpoints tighten anonymous rate limits further.

The landing What's new card now links to a scrollable `/whats-new` page that lists every past update, grouped by release when a version banner is present.

Analyze can now create private PostGIS layers for Group by, Contour, Random sample, Top N, Fishnet, Nearest neighbor, and more from the layer tab. Field and map editor chrome keep growing into Spanish, French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese. Public list and search endpoints that used to share a loose global budget now rate-limit anonymous scans more tightly.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Group by for this layer** opens one optional group key (or whole layer), one aggregate (count / sum / avg), and an output name, then creates a private PostGIS derived layer. Geometry is always the union of each group (`ST_Union`). Multi-key and multi-agg stay in Create → Derived layer. Expect a server job, not an instant browser result.

On a point data layer's Analyze tab, **Contour for this layer** opens numeric field, auto interval, and optional min/max controls and creates a private PostGIS derived layer of TIN iso-lines (each line carries a `level` property). Not iso-polygons; dense point sets can be slow. Same path as Create → Derived layer → Contour. Expect a server job, not an instant browser result.

Help now has a **Print template** item page, and the Print widget / print-templates section describe the shipped paper layouts (page size, map/legend/scale/north-arrow, parameters, browser print) instead of promising DOCX report merges that are not built.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Random sample for this layer** opens percentage-or-count, value, and seed controls (with reshuffle) and creates a private PostGIS derived layer. The sample is deterministic for a given seed — not Postgres `random()`. Same path as Create → Derived layer → Random sample. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

When a recipe tool’s OSM overlay (or nearest-N / relational) result hits a feature cap, the response now sets truncated honestly instead of always claiming the list is complete. Zoom in or tighten the query if you need a full census of the area.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Top N for this layer** opens numeric field, N, and highest/lowest controls and creates a private PostGIS derived layer with those rows (NULLs last). Same path as Create → Derived layer → Top N. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a polygon data layer's Analyze tab, **Fishnet for this layer** opens cell size, unit, and polygons vs lines controls and creates a private PostGIS derived layer (`ST_SquareGrid`, clipped to the source). Point/line layers do not show the chip. Very fine grids on large extents may hit a ~1 million cell save-time cap. Same path as Create → Derived layer → Fishnet. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Nearest neighbor for this layer** creates a private PostGIS derived layer that adds `nearest_distance_m` (meters to the closest other feature in the same layer). Same-layer only; large layers can be slow (O(N²)); a single-row layer yields NULL. Same path as Create → Derived layer → Nearest neighbor. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

Help now has a **Data collection** page: what a field deployment includes (map, editable layers, forms), how QR / link share works, Download for offline and Refresh, sync queue and where to review conflicts, and an honest note that this is not Field Maps or Survey123.

On a field deployment, Download for offline / Refresh offline cache, Show my location and GPS status, Save feature / Save changes, Layer visibility, related-record sync hints, and the edits-waiting-to-sync badge follow the portal language (English, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese).

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Calculate geometry for this layer** opens length / perimeter / area, unit, and field-name controls and creates a private PostGIS derived layer with that measure (geography, honest units). This is not Calculate field expressions. Same path as Create → Derived layer → Calculate geometry. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Vertices for this layer** creates a private PostGIS derived layer that explodes each geometry into one point per vertex (`ST_DumpPoints`, with `vertex_index`). Dense shapes can produce many rows; multi-part geometries dump all parts together. Same path as Create → Derived layer → Vertices. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Bounding boxes for this layer** creates a private PostGIS derived layer that replaces each feature with its axis-aligned envelope (attributes kept; not one box for the whole layer). Same path as Create → Derived layer → Bbox. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a field deployment, Add at GPS / Add at center (and Vertex at … for lines and polygons), Remove from device, and the map tool labels follow the portal language (English, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese).

On a point cloud item, clouds over about 20 million points show a short note under the 3D viewer: lower in-view density and delayed rebuilds while you pan (stricter again over 100 million). This is a responsiveness tradeoff, not Potree-style LOD or 3D Tiles yet — see Point cloud help.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Densify this layer** opens a max segment length and unit form and creates a private PostGIS derived layer that adds vertices so no segment exceeds that length (`ST_Segmentize` on geography; min 1 m, soft max 100 km). Same path as Create → Derived layer → Densify. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Convex hulls for this layer** creates a private PostGIS derived layer that replaces each feature with its convex hull (attributes kept; not one hull for the whole layer). Same path as Create → Derived layer → Convex hull. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Simplify this layer** opens a tolerance and unit form and creates a private PostGIS derived layer that drops vertices within that tolerance (`ST_Simplify`; not topology-preserving). Same path as Create → Derived layer → Simplify. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Dissolve this layer** creates a private PostGIS derived layer that unions every feature into one shape (attributes dropped; same path as Create → Derived layer → Dissolve). For one polygon per attribute value with counts or sums, use Group by with dissolve geometry instead. Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Centroids for this layer** creates a private PostGIS derived layer that replaces each feature with its geometric center point (same path as Create → Derived layer → Centroid). Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Erase this layer** creates a private PostGIS derived layer that keeps features outside a mask data layer you pick (same path as Create → Derived layer → Erase). Expect a short server job, not an instant browser result.

On a layer's data panel, each sync conflict now offers **Dismiss** next to Re-apply. Clear a card you have already recovered (or decided to drop) without changing the live features; after a successful re-apply you can clear it in one step.

On an ArcGIS service item, **Copy selected layers to data layer** pulls the checked FeatureServer layers into a new portal data layer (WGS84). The live pointer stays; copies stop at 50,000 features. MapServer-only URLs are refused unless a FeatureServer twin exists.

On a data layer's Import features control, drop a `.gdb.zip` (or `.gdb`) and the portal stages it with server GDAL the same way the create wizard does. If the archive has more than one layer, pick which source layer to load; a background import job fills the sublayer.

When an offline edit on Android loses to someone else's change, the rejected queue row now offers **Re-apply** next to Discard. Confirm compares your queued edit to what the server has now; updates overwrite, deletes remove, and a missing feature can be recreated.

When you edit a connected service, ArcGIS service, or OGC (WMS/WFS) service, the Probe, layer selection, and Save chrome now follow the language you pick in the user menu (Spanish, French, German, or Brazilian Portuguese).

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Clip this layer** lets you pick another data layer as the cookie-cutter and creates a derived layer that runs the clip on PostGIS. Same honest server path as Buffer; not an instant in-browser result.

In QGIS 3.42 or newer, open Data Source Manager, pick STAC, and connect to your portal's `/api/public/stac` URL to browse published rasters without installing the GratisGIS plugin. Private rasters stay off that public catalog.

The notice above the form designer that explains how form sharing differs from who can see submitted responses now follows the language you pick in the user menu (Spanish, French, German, or Brazilian Portuguese).

Taking a collection offline again on Android now downloads only what changed on each layer when a previous download left a sync cursor, instead of pulling the whole layer every time. The first download is unchanged.

On a data layer's Analyze tab, **Buffer this layer** opens a short distance and unit form and creates a derived layer that runs the buffer on PostGIS. The in-browser SQL builder still refuses meter buffers (no PROJ in that engine), so this is the honest path instead of a degree-unit trap.

When you connect a live PostgreSQL + PostGIS database, Test connection now lists the geometry tables it found (with SRID and a rough row count) so you can confirm the schema before Save.

When the field app syncs edits you made offline, it asks the portal whether an update or delete would still be accepted before it applies the change. If someone else already changed that feature, or the values break the layer's rules, the edit stays on the device with the reason instead of partially uploading.

Open the Markup panel and click **GeoJSON** on a set to download its sketches as a FeatureCollection. Works for any set you can see — handy for dropping redlines into QGIS or emailing a file without promoting to a data layer.

When a sync conflict shows on a layer's data panel, editors can re-apply the losing edit after a confirm that compares losing vs current. Updates overwrite the live feature, deletes remove it, and a missing feature is recreated from the losing side.

Map editors can allow signed-out visitors to add their own markup on a public map (off by default). Guests edit only the sets they created in that browser; promoting a set to a data layer still requires signing in.

Refreshing a cached field deployment now downloads only what changed on each layer, instead of pulling the whole layer again. The first download is unchanged; later refreshes are quicker on big layers and weaker connections.

The form designer now has up and down arrows on every question row, so you can reorder on a phone or tablet where drag-and-drop does not work. Desktop still has the grip handle for drag reorder.

Error screens, form submission receipts, and the "3D ground ready" chip on maps now follow the language you pick in the user menu (Spanish, French, German, or Brazilian Portuguese), alongside the chrome that already translated.

Open a public item's Metadata tab and download a citation for your bibliography. BibTeX, RIS, and Schema.org JSON-LD are available from the same Cite menu, and the same files are at the public API for scripts and harvesters.

Shared maps now take lines, polygons, text labels, arrows, and circles in addition to pins. Promote a markup set into a private data layer when the redline is ready to become real GIS data. Visible markup also lands on the printed PDF, so the sheet matches what reviewers saw on screen.

Open a comment thread on a selected feature or markup sketch. Open threads show as pins on the map; click one to jump straight into that conversation.

On an elevation layer, pick a polygon data layer and run zonal statistics. GratisGIS writes a new layer with mean, min, max, sum, and count for the raster cells inside each zone (when server-heavy analysis is enabled on the portal).

When two people change the same feature and one save loses the optimistic check, the losing edit is kept as a sync conflict on the layer. Open the layer's data panel to review those conflicts after a field or QGIS sync instead of wondering what disappeared.

Point MetaSearch at the public OGC Records catalog and searchable catalogue collections show up with a GeoJSON enclosure for Add Data. Public themes also use curated DCAT / Aardvark theme values so harvest tools get a clean theme facet alongside free-form keywords.

A release that tried to jump the demo host to Postgres 18 without migrating the existing data volume was rolled back. The portal keeps running on Postgres 17 until a planned dump-and-restore upgrade is ready.

Upload a spreadsheet and the portal looks for coordinate columns, US place names, and addresses it can geocode on your own Nominatim. Huge point clouds keep streaming while you pan, and only redraw when the camera settles, so a 200-million-point cloud no longer freezes the map mid-drag. Much of the portal chrome is also ready for Spanish, French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese when you switch locale.

Organization admins can open Sign-in and see work-account methods and the authenticator switch. A map that uses a built-in basemap such as Positron no longer stops the Housekeeping page from loading.

Dashboards, maps, and the item filter now fit a phone: indicators sit two across, maps and charts stack, and the filter opens as a sheet instead of running off the screen. You can also describe a layer, map, form, or app, by typing or by voice, and the portal builds it from layers you can already read. Ask a question about a layer you can open, download a PDF receipt of a form response, and import a spreadsheet that only has an address column.

The portal chrome is now a cool chart sheet, so the map stays the loudest thing on the page. Organization admins can also turn on a writing assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or a model you host) that drafts item text from the title, description, and field names. It stays off until an admin saves a key, and the key never comes back to the browser.

Take a photo with no connection, and take it while you are still filling in the record: it stays on the device with the record and uploads once the record itself has landed, and nothing is reported as sent while its photo is still on the phone. Edits the server refuses, because a value breaks the layer's rules or you have lost access to the layer, no longer retry forever or vanish. A red "edits need attention" chip lists them with the reason; fix the value and retry, or discard the edit. Correcting a record you added offline no longer loses the original. And if your data lives in a spreadsheet, the New Data Layer wizard now takes a CSV and finds the coordinate columns itself, whether they are called latitude and longitude, LAT and LNG, or x and y.

Open a map you can edit and an Edit toolbar appears next to the selection tools, on any layer you have permission to change. Click a feature to drag its vertices, draw a new one and fill in its attributes, or delete one, all without building an editing app first. The attribute table edits inline too, and a Calculate Field option fills a column from an expression. Every save is checked against the layer's rules, so a value the layer would not accept is refused with a plain-English reason. Field edits the server refuses now wait for you with that reason instead of retrying forever.

You can now build a dashboard: big-number indicators, charts, tables, and maps, refreshing on their own once a minute. Start from the KPI Dashboard or Operations Board layout when you create a web app. The part worth knowing: these are the same widgets as everything else, so a dashboard can grow a map, an editing tool, or another page later, and an indicator can sit in the corner of a map app. There is no separate dashboard product to get stuck inside. Charts also got a proper settings panel and now do their counting on the server, so they stay quick on big layers and show totals for whatever each viewer is allowed to see.

Newer QGIS (3.42 and up) has a built-in catalog browser, and this portal now speaks its language. Point it at the portal and your imagery, elevation, and other raster layers appear with their footprints on the map, filterable by area and date, ready to load. Public layers work without signing in; an API key shows everything you can see, with the usual sharing rules applied.

Imagery, terrain, and lidar layers never recorded where on the map they are, so searching by area quietly skipped them, and zooming to one from desktop GIS software went to the whole world. Every raster and point cloud now records its map extent, including ones uploaded long ago, so area search matches them and zoom-to lands on the data.

The official GratisGIS plugin for QGIS is at 1.0, with every flow tested by hand on a real install, and it is now in the official QGIS plugin repository: open Plugins, search for GratisGIS, and install. From inside QGIS you can search the portal, inspect items, publish vector and raster layers, publish an open project as a portal map, clone a layer to take into the field, and sync your edits back. Private layers work throughout: create a read-only API key under Profile and QGIS sees exactly what you see.

A new signed-in data feed serves every layer you can see, not just public ones, in the standard format desktop GIS software reads. That means private and organization layers open as real feature layers with working attribute tables, using the same API key that already draws them. Sharing limits still apply to every read. Layers also report how many features they hold, so client software can pick real features for small layers and fast tiles for county-scale ones.

Layers stored as tile packages or single image files could only be viewed in the portal itself. The portal now serves plain map tiles for all of them, so QGIS and similar tools draw them like any other tile service, with no special support needed. Private layers still require sign-in. Elevation layers draw as a picture of the terrain; download the file itself if you need the elevation values.

For self-hosted portals: backups now stream straight into the archive instead of needing twice their own size in free disk, old archives are cleaned up before every run rather than only after a successful one, and a backup that cannot fit refuses to start and says how much space it needs. A running backup can be cancelled. And a new health check reports the age of the newest archive actually on disk, so a backup that has been failing quietly shows up immediately instead of looking fine for weeks.

The portal can now run your Python for you, on its own, hourly or daily or monthly. Paste a script or upload a Jupyter notebook, give it a schedule, and a layer that should be refreshed every month actually is. Notebooks keep their charts and their explanations alongside the results, so a job somebody else set up is readable rather than a wall of print statements. Your administrator has to turn this on.

The `gratisgis` Python package went from reading and writing features to most of what you can do in the browser: load a shapefile or GeoPackage into a layer, export to GeoParquet or CSV, attach and download photos, create and share layers, compute a field across a whole layer at once, and run buffers and other geoprocessing on the server so the data never has to come down to your machine. There is now proper documentation with worked examples under Help.

Pulling a large layer into a script used to fetch the whole thing at once, and past a certain size it quietly stopped short, so you could end up working with only part of your data without being told. Reads now come back a page at a time, and the Python package handles the paging for you. Editing the layer while a script reads it no longer risks skipping or repeating a feature.

You can now reach the portal from outside a browser. Create an API key under Profile, then read and write your layers from a notebook, a script, or a scheduled job on your own machine. A key acts as you, so it sees exactly what you see, and you can make it read-only in one click. There is a small Python package to go with it, so pulling a layer into your own analysis is a couple of lines.

Elevation, hillshade, and height maps used to cap out on large areas, forcing a coarser resolution. The portal now builds them in pieces behind the scenes and joins them seamlessly, so a whole county renders at full detail. And 3D is now a proper on/off switch: flip to a flat view to check something, flip back, and your elevation setup is exactly as you left it.

Aerial imagery usually arrives as a pile of tiles. Pick them all in one upload and GratisGIS stitches them into a single seamless layer, with a time estimate up front and the ability to add more images later without re-uploading what's already there. Where images overlap, the newest one wins.

3D terrain used to mean picking exactly one elevation layer, so a map spanning two lidar surveys could only extrude one of them. Terrain is now a stack: add every elevation layer the map needs, move the best one to the top, and the ground composes itself, even for areas covered by different surveys. Layers made from a survey also remember their elevation layer and offer to bring it along when they join a map.

Uploading hundreds of lidar tiles no longer rides on every single round-trip succeeding: tiles go up a few at a time, transient failures retry themselves, and if a tile still fails you can retry just that one or start the merge with what made it. Merges also tell you up front roughly how long they'll take, and a batch too big to finish is refused immediately with advice, not hours later at a timeout.

The version now shows in the landing page footer and at the bottom of the user menu, linking to that release's notes. Handy when reporting a bug: quote the version and we know exactly what you were looking at.

Lidar usually arrives as a grid of tiles. Upload several .laz files together and GratisGIS merges them into a single seamless point cloud, with progress as it works. Got more tiles later? Add them to the existing point cloud from its page and it re-merges, so county scale coverage can grow as you collect it.

Point clouds can now produce a height-above-ground map: the height of trees, buildings, and anything else standing on the bare earth, colored from transparent (open ground) to deep green (tall). One click on the point cloud's page, and the result is a normal layer for any map.

Every map now has an elevation profile tool in the toolbar. Draw a line across the landscape and get an instant chart of the ground height along it, with the distance, the low and high points, and the total climb, in feet or meters. Hover the chart and a marker follows along the line on the map. It works in web apps too: app builders can drop an Elevation Profile button next to any map.

Pick a spot on a map, set a height and how far to look, and GratisGIS works out exactly which ground can be seen from there, using your lidar-derived terrain. The answer appears right on the open map as a green overlay, and it's saved as a normal layer you can style, share, and reuse. Handy for siting towers and cameras, checking view protection, or planning an event.

Elevation layers can now produce two classic map layers on their own page: contour lines drawn at whatever spacing you choose (with elevations in both feet and meters, ready for labeling and popups) and a steepness map that colors the ground from green (flat) to red (very steep). Both land as regular items you can add to maps, style, and share like anything else.

3D maps have a new "height boost" slider under the basemap button. True scale is honest but gentle terrain can be hard to read; a little boost makes the shape of the land pop for presentations and review meetings.

You no longer need to create a map item before you can look at something. "Open a map" on the content page starts a blank working map, and every layer, imagery, and lidar item now has an "Add to map" button that drops it onto a new working map or any map you already have. Like what you see? Save it with a name and it becomes a regular map. Close it without saving and nothing is left behind.

Maps can now show real terrain. Create an elevation layer from any lidar point cloud with one click, pick it under the map's basemap button, and the whole map lifts into 3D: the basemap, imagery, boundary lines, and labels all follow the actual hills and valleys. Hold right-click and drag to tilt and look across the landscape.

Point cloud pages now have an analysis section that runs on your server in the background. Build a shaded-relief picture of the bare ground (even under tree cover) or save the ground surface itself as an elevation layer, watch the progress as it works, and get a finished layer you can share and drop into any map. The results also download as standard GeoTIFF files for QGIS and other desktop GIS software.

Point clouds are no longer viewer-only. Add one to any map like any other layer, style it per layer (color by elevation or intensity, pick a color ramp, point size, and see-through level), and combine it with parcels, imagery, and everything else. Large clouds stream in as you pan, with a status message while they load.

Uploaded imagery and analysis results now go straight into maps as layers, not just as basemaps. Pick them from the Add layer list, stack them with your other layers, and fade them with the opacity slider to compare against what's underneath.

The Analyze workbench now opens with a guided builder: pick fields, add filters with plain-language operators, group and aggregate, sort, and apply spatial options like centroids, convex hulls, and real-meter area or length columns. The SQL it generates stays visible below and one click away from editing, so you can learn the language as you go or drop into raw SQL whenever you want.

The Analyze workbench now loads the DuckDB spatial extension, served from your own portal. Buffers, intersections, areas, distances, and spatial joins all run as SQL right in your browser, and saved results keep real geometry. A new Geometry summary starter shows each layer's geometry types and extent in one click. Nothing is sent to the server and nothing is fetched from third-party services.

Every data layer now has an Analyze button that opens a SQL workbench powered by an in-browser database engine. Preview rows, profile every column in one click, group and count, or write any query you like. Queries run entirely on your machine: nothing is sent to the server, results appear in milliseconds, and it works on layers of any size your browser can hold. Any result can be saved as a new private layer with one click, ready to share, map, and export like anything else in your portal. Spatial functions are coming next.

Layer exports (CSV and GeoParquet) now respect the download permission consistently: if a layer is shared with you as view only, the export options are hidden and the server declines bulk downloads. Viewing maps and browsing attributes work exactly as before. Owners, org members on org-shared items, and shares that include download are unaffected.

Data layers now speak GeoParquet in both directions. Drop a .parquet or .geoparquet file into the import wizard to load it as a layer, and export any portal-hosted layer back out as GeoParquet from the layer page's Export menu. Exports cover every feature in the layer (no table cap), keep typed columns and geometry, and open directly in QGIS, DuckDB, pandas, and other modern data tools. Exporting requires download permission on layers shared with you.

New portals no longer start empty. An admin or contributor with a fresh workspace gets a welcome panel with three starting points, including one-click sample data: a complete Randolph County, West Virginia workspace with styled map layers, a derived analysis layer, an issue-report form with mapped responses, a field survey, public viewer and explorer apps, and a search tool. The public demo at gratisgis.org now runs this same workspace, so what you explore there is exactly what you get at home.

The portal now follows your system's light or dark preference, and an appearance picker in the user menu (next to the language picker) lets you pin light, dark, or system. Every surface, from the items list to the map editor chrome to toasts and dialogs, renders in both themes.

GratisGIS has a real identity now: the Contour mark (a "G" drawn as nested elevation contours), a warm paper-and-sage palette across the whole portal, a matching sign-in page, and a refreshed type scale that makes small labels easier to read. Dialogs gained consistent keyboard and focus behavior, and quick actions now confirm with unobtrusive toast notices instead of blocking popups.

The items area and every sharing surface (share dialogs, access tiers, expiry, the trash) now translate into Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German, roughly 270 new strings per language on top of the app chrome that already translated. The seed is still machine translated and tagged "(MT)" in the language picker; native-speaker fixes are welcome.

The search bar on maps and apps now searches the features inside portal-hosted data layers, not just layer names. Type an owner, road name, or facility and matching features appear with a fly-to-and-highlight on pick. Works for signed-in users and on public maps for anonymous visitors, wherever a layer's fields are marked searchable.

The four non-English catalogs are now seeded across every already-wired UI key, so the menu items, dialogs, and other strings the portal currently translates render in your chosen language. The seed is a machine-translated pass and the locale picker tags it "(MT)" so you know to expect rough edges; native speakers, please open a pull request fixing anything that sounds wrong (the picker now links to the contributor guide).

A language picker now lives in the user menu in the top-right. Five languages are available: English, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), French, and German. Your pick is remembered across sessions. The translation coverage is still small (the picker shows each language's completeness), so most of the UI still renders in English for now; the navigation menu and Print this map dialog are translated as a start, and contributions extend the rest as the catalogs fill in.

Two upgrades to live PostgreSQL + PostGIS layers. First, tables in any spatial reference system PostGIS knows about now render without needing to be in WGS84: the portal reprojects on the server with the GiST index still in play. Second, the layer filter you already use on any other map layer (column / operator / value rows) is now translated to safe parameterized SQL on the PostgreSQL side, so the database only sends back the rows that match. The raw SQL escape hatch is still there for power users.

Two new analysis steps. Clip cookie-cutters your features by another layer so only the parts inside survive (handy for "this dataset, but only inside this district"). Erase is the inverse, so you get only the parts outside (handy for "everything except this exclusion zone"). Attributes pass through unchanged on both. Add either from the toolbox in the derived-layer builder under "Compare with another layer."

The printed PDF now paints layers with the same colors and labels as the on-screen map: unique-value renderers, class-breaks, time- bins, and text labels all carry through, not just the simple fill / outline colors. The bound map's own basemap renders in the PDF too (raster, PMTiles, and Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF), instead of vanilla OpenStreetMap. When the print Map element has a fixed scale set, the PDF honors that scale.

The scalebar on a print layout now computes its bar length from the bound map's center latitude and zoom and labels itself with a real distance (m / km / ft / mi) rather than a placeholder. The north arrow rotates to keep north up regardless of how the map is oriented. ArcGIS REST and live PostGIS data layers now paint into the print PDF too, alongside data-layer sources.

The print pipeline now renders maps inline rather than via an embedded frame, so vector layer data paints as path primitives in the PDF instead of an embedded raster. Layer-bound legend elements show the bound map's actual visible layers, with a swatch per layer that matches the layer's style. Private maps and private templates render too (previously the preview only worked for publicly-shared items).

The server-side print path now reads the print template's actual layout: title text and parameter bindings, image elements, lines and rectangles, scalebars and north arrows all render at the right paper size, with the right fonts and colors, in the right positions. Map frames embed the calling map; the layer-bound legend lands next.

The print pipeline now has a server-side render path. Instead of relying on the browser's print dialog, the portal renders the layout in a headless browser running on the server and returns a vector-fidelity PDF. Text stays selectable, lines stay vector, multi-page layouts come out clean. Phase 2.1 finishes wiring the existing print designer's layout elements into the new pipeline.

The plumbing for translating the portal into other languages just landed. Five locales are on the supported list (English, Spanish, Portuguese for Brazil, French, German); for now the non-English catalogs are empty and fall back to English, but the runtime, the Accept-Language negotiator, and the contributor guide are ready. Help us translate at CONTRIBUTING-TRANSLATIONS.md.

A new connection type lets you register a live PostGIS database and render its tables on maps without copying the rows in. Every viewport move issues a bounding-box SELECT directly against your database; the GiST index does the spatial work. The password is stored encrypted and never reaches the browser. Bring your own warehouse, no data migration needed.

A Print button in the map editor opens a chooser: create a new print layout pre-bound to this map, or pick an existing layout to print with. The Map, Legend, Scalebar, and North arrow auto- bind to the calling map so you skip the manual wiring. Higher- fidelity PDF rendering lands next.

The analysis engine now understands a workflow as a graph of connected steps, not just a straight line. One result can flow into multiple downstream steps, and multiple results can converge. Existing tools keep running unchanged; new node kinds and the visual graph editor land in the next phase.

A small MCP server ships with the project so MCP-compatible desktop AI tools can read your items and layer features directly. List items, fetch metadata, read features as GeoJSON, all gated by your normal portal permissions.

Drop a CSV with latitude and longitude columns and get a mapped layer in one step. Sloppy column names like "LAT" or "x_coord" are auto-detected. Tab and semicolon delimiters, UTF-8 BOM, and European decimal commas all just work.

Avatar chips at the top of the map canvas show every viewer who currently has the map open. Each person's cursor renders as a colored arrow with their name so a teammate over a video call can point at something without giving you coordinates.

Threaded comments scoped to a map. Open a thread, reply, resolve when answered. Anyone who can view the map can join the conversation. Comment authors can edit their own posts for 15 minutes; map editors can clean up at any time.

Anyone who can view a shared map can drop colored pins on it to flag issues, without needing edit permission. Each reviewer's markup gets its own distinct color so multiple people's notes don't blur together. The classic "manager opens the map, flags three parcels, ships the URL back to the team" workflow.

Build tools that ask OpenStreetMap for things in the real world. Pick "Gas stations" or "Restaurants" (or any of ~1,600 other categories), draw an area on the map, optionally add a filter like "brand = Citgo", and matching features show up on top of your map with proper attribution. No coding required.

Build your own buttons inside a web app that run on-demand actions on the map. A "Select By Location" starter is ready to drop in: click it, draw an area, pick a relationship, and the matching features light up.

Choose from 150+ professional point symbols (or upload your own SVG). Line and outline styles now support dashes, dots, and rounded corners to match the look of paid GIS tools.

Pull layers, maps, and files over from AGO with live progress feedback and a cancel button. Large org migrations no longer time out silently.

Item thumbnails are built from a small visual designer you can re-open and tweak any time. Renaming or changing colors regenerates the thumbnail automatically.

Export a map's full setup (layers, styling, viewport) as a standard JSON file. Import the same file later or share it with someone else to reproduce the map exactly.