Geocaching.com - Show your drafted waypoints

[Lebbetter]

This feature will make it easier to keep track of multiple physical stages of unpublished hides. Use “Show your drafted waypoints” to keep track of multiple caches you want to place in close proximity.

When toggled on in Experimental features on Geocaching.com, you will see grey circles equal to a radius of 0.1 miles or 161 meters on the maps during cache submission around physical stages of your unpublished caches.

On click, you can see the GC code and the name of your unpublished hide. 

 

HQ will not actively participate in this thread but will review it for feedback to assess if a feature should be further developed.

Any posts in this thread should relate to features in this release. Comments unrelated to the release may be removed. Please direct unrelated comments to other appropriate threads. Thanks!

Edited April 15 by Lebbetter
Added link to Experimental features hub on Geocaching.com

[+2Abendsegler]

This only makes sense if you want to place as many caches as possible at once and as close together as possible, a kind of power trail. I definitely don't plan on creating a power trail. So, this feature doesn't seem helpful to me.

[+CanUSeeIT]

Nice idea, but I'd suggest a different color, the grey gets lost if it's on top of some features, like water (look how the red one in the example on the bottom left looks grey because it's sitting over that pond)

[+barefootjeff]

6 minutes ago, 2Abendsegler said:

This only makes sense if you want to place as many caches as possible at once and as close together as possible, a kind of power trail. I definitely don't plan on creating a power trail. So, this feature doesn't seem helpful to me.

 

Not necessarily. Last year I created a series of 5 caches (The Entrancing Isles) set on a bunch of islands at The Entrance, made up of a multi, a mystery and three traditionals. They're certainly not a power trail (it would take at least a couple of hours to get to all five on a kayak) but some, by necessity, are fairly close to each other as that's where the islands are. This feature would have been handy then, as I was not only having to dodge each other, there's also an older challenge cache on the shore close by that I had to avoid encroaching upon.

[+CoolTurtleGamer]

I'm not sure if this is intended or not, but it should be noted that the grey circles only appear on the hide/typelocation map not the hide/planning map.

I like the feature and will definitely come in handy a few times for geoart and such. A feature I would be much more interested in is the ability to see red circles for your hidden finals on puzzles and multis (only traditional caches of your own hides show on the hide map) - or even finals for puzzles/multis you've logged found.
 

[+2Abendsegler]

4 hours ago, CoolTurtleGamer said:

A feature I would be much more interested in is the ability to see red circles for your hidden finals on puzzles and multis ... or even finals for puzzles/multis you've logged found.

Yes, both would be really great!

[+2Abendsegler]

6 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

Last year I created a series of 5 caches (The Entrancing Isles) set on a bunch of islands at The Entrance, made up of a multi, a mystery and three traditionals.

In situations like these, it would probably be appropriate to simply not interpret the minimum distance rule quite so strictly. And I think some of the reviewers also take this approach. 

 

But you're right, the feature could be used even without something like power trails. I just immediately thought of the hated power trails that litter the landscape.

 

By the way, your series looks cool!

[+katrinundgerwin]

On 4/15/2025 at 3:31 AM, CoolTurtleGamer said:

or even finals for puzzles/multis you've logged found.

 

Please don't, we can see a big loophole to get final coordinates without solving them...

Just a thought experiment:

In case you can't solve a mystery, just log the cache as found, battleship the final coordinates down, and then walk to GZ and log that cache.

[+niraD]

11 hours ago, katrinundgerwin said:

On 4/14/2025 at 9:31 PM, CoolTurtleGamer said:

or even finals for puzzles/multis you've logged found.

Please don't, we can see a big loophole to get final coordinates without solving them...

Rather than showing a circle around the final coordinates of caches you've found, the system could show a circle around any corrected coordinates entered by the user. This would avoid the loophole, and also be useful because the map moves such caches back to their posted coordinates after you've logged a Find.

[+Stradivaripus]

This feature seems to be a bit laggy.

 

I have just created multiple new cache listings in quick order, and did not see the outlines for the second, third etc. For the second through to the sixth cache, I saw the first outline fine. I did not see the second outline until I created the sixth cache. After writing this post, the third outline has appeared.

 

(I won't share a screenshot here, as the caches haven't been sent off for review.)

 

Generally, a nice feature, but it would be even nicer to have something similar in the app. It's when I'm out placing the caches that I need to know how close I am to other, existing caches - or indeed recently placed ones.

 

As for the poll, I wouldn't say it needs additional features, but it does need some debugging/tweaking.

Edited Monday at 07:56 PM by Stradivaripus
Saw the poll