What a note contains
A note can contain a title, body, coordinates, content language, visibility, timestamps, and the category it belongs to. Some notes are placed on the map and some stay unmapped. Both kinds are valid notes. A mapped note powers nearby results, public map displays, and trackable journey points. An unmapped note still participates in hierarchy, search, exports, and sync.
Personal notes and team notes
Notes always have a user owner, but some notes also belong to a team. That extra team relationship changes who can see the note, who can moderate it, what comment policy options are available, and what happens during export or deletion.
- Personal notes belong only to the user scope.
- Team notes still keep a user author, but they also belong to the team scope.
- When a team note is removed from the team under certain fallback rules, it can convert back into a personal note.
Visibility and public pages
Visibility controls where the note may appear. Public notes can appear on public profile pages, public team pages, public note pages, public search results, and public map experiences. Private notes stay restricted to the owner or authorized team members.
Public note pages are separate from the underlying author or team page. A note can remain visible on its own public route while still linking back to a private profile page or private team page only when that route is allowed for the viewer.
Categories and hierarchy
Notes are organized by hierarchical categories. Personal notes use personal categories. Team notes use team categories. The map view and the hierarchy view are two different ways of looking at the same note records rather than two different storage systems.
Comments
Notes can optionally allow comments, but the rules depend on the note scope and visibility.
- Private personal notes do not need comment settings because they do not accept comments.
- Public personal notes can allow or disallow comments from logged-in users.
- Team notes can allow anyone logged in, only current team members, or no comments.
- Note comments belong to the note page itself and are separate from trackable comments.
Notes and trackables
Notes are also the places where trackables are logged in the real world. A note can be associated with many trackables, and a trackable can be associated with many notes. That many-to-many relationship is what turns individual notes into a chronological trackable journey on the trackable page.
- Secret-code entry or an active trackable browser session can attach a trackable to a note.
- When a note references a trackable, the note’s coordinates can become a journey point on the trackable map.
- If the note is private, unauthorized viewers may still see a journey location point without gaining access to the protected note content.
Offline-first and sync
Notes are central to the offline-first model. Android can draft and queue note changes while disconnected. When the client reconnects, the sync cycle pushes local changes first and then pulls back authoritative server state. GUID identifiers and update timestamps keep conflict handling stable across devices.
Exports and deletion
Notes show up in personal exports or team exports depending on their scope. Deletion behavior also depends on that same scope. Personal deletion removes strictly personal data. Team-associated note behavior follows the team-retention rules instead of the simpler personal-only rule.