The iOS app lets you capture, upload, and explore images on Mapillary—all with your iPhone! This guide will get you set up with everything you need to know to be a pro 🚀

 

📖Table of Contents

1. Downloading the iOS app
2. Logging in / Creating an account
3. Capturing
   1. Getting ready to capture
   2. Capture via walking
   3. Capture via a car or bike
   4. Best practices
4. Uploading
   1. Quick upload
   2. Upload individually
   3. Deleting images or captures before upload
5. Exploring the map
   1. Searching for a place
   2. Map style toggles
   3. Viewing captures
   4. Sharing an image
   5. Reporting an image
6. Leaderboard
7. Settings
8. Troubleshooting

 

📲Downloading the iOS app

First things first, you'll need to download the Mapillary iOS app! If you don't have the app installed yet, download it in the App Store.

Note that the app requires iOS 15.0 or later.

 

💡Logging in / Creating an account

 

Once you have the app downloaded, open it up. When opening the app for the first time, you'll land at the account sign in page. Here, you can sign in to your existing Mapillary account or create a new one if you're a new user. If you need to create an account, the app will open up your default web browser to do so. You'll need to verify your email address to log in.  If you'd like to poke around the app before logging in, you're welcome to do so via the 'Continue as guest' option. However, if you want to use the camera, you'll need to sign in to an account.

 

 

 

📸Capturing

Getting ready to capture

Now that you've signed in and clicked through the new user experience, you're ready to start capturing imagery. Click on the green camera icon in the center of the navigation bar, or the 'Start capturing' button in the top pane, to open up the camera.

 

In order to get quality imagery, the Mapillary app requires you to capture with your phone oriented horizontally. If you hold your phone vertically, the app will prevent you from capturing images. The red line on the screen represents the angle at which you are holding your camera at—keep this overlapping with the white dashed centerline as much as possible!

 

 

By default, the camera view will be full screen. You'll notice a map window in the lower left corner of the app. This window shows your current location, marked by a blue icon. The direction you're facing is symbolized by a cone.
If you'd like to make the map full screen, simply tap on it to switch it's position with the camera view. You can switch these views while you're capturing; it won't pause your capture.

 

If you're part of a Mapillary organization, you'll notice a banner appears at the bottom of your screen once your phone is in landscape mode. Clicking on the 'Change' button will allow you to select your target organization to publish to. 

 

Capture via walking

Before you capture imagery, you'll need to plan your capture method. For new users, we recommend a walk around your neighborhood—it likely hasn't been mapped yet😉

 

 

If you'd like to block your address

to prevent uploading imagery near your home,

use the Blocked addresses setting!

 

When you're ready to start capturing, tap the record button on the right side of the screen and start walking. The app will automatically take a photo every few seconds—you don't need to touch anything. The only time you'll need to tap the screen again is to stop your capture. 

Don't worry if you stop moving for a few moments, like when waiting to cross the road. You do not need to stop your capture; these moments of immobility will not affect the quality of your imagery.

 

As you walk, you'll notice that green dots will begin to appear along your path—these are a good guide to help show you where you've already been in your current capture session.

 

We recommend holding your phone

close to your chest as you walk—

this position minimizes image shakiness!

 

Additionally, if you switch to the fullscreen map view, you can see your previously mapped areas. These are represented in blue. This functionality is especially useful if you're working on a large-scale capture project spanning multiple sessions/days—you can easily tell what areas you've already mapped!

 

 

When you're ready to stop capturing, simply press the record button again and 'X' out of the camera. Now, you're ready to upload.

 

Capture via a car or bike

In addition to walking, you can also use the Mapillary app to capture imagery on a bike or in a car. We recommend using a phone mount for a safe and seamless capture experience on the go—our article on phone mounts details our favorite options. 

Just like with walking, all you need to do is press the record button to start capturing. Again, there is no need to worry about manually stopping the recording while you're at a stoplight or stuck in a short burst of traffic—Mapillary will auto-ignore duplicate images.

Note that you cannot run the camera in the background for privacy reasons. So if you want to use a navigation app simultaneously with Mapillary, you can start the navigation app first and then start Mapillary. You will get notifications and audio from the navigation app while capturing.

 

Best practices

Below are three important things to remember when capturing imagery:

 

1. Keep moving and try to keep your phone still and level, pointing in one direction. Typically you'll want the camera facing your direction of motion. 

2. Keep a consistent angle of the camera. Most times you want to keep it pointing in your direction of motion, although sometimes you may want to capture e.g. at a 90- or 45-degree angle with respect to your movement. If you change the camera angle mid-capture, the captures will end up looking jumpy and "dizzy".

3. Avoid capturing in the rain and in low-light situations. The images will turn out much worse than what you see with the human eye. (This particularly applies when you're in a car).

 

To learn more about capturing best practices, see our article on how to capture great images.

 

📤Uploading

Once you've finished a capture session, the next step is to upload the imagery.  Navigate to the home page via the left side of the control bar. Here, you'll see the 'Ready to upload/Waiting for Wifi' banner on the top of your screen. Additionally, you'll see your imagery to upload under the 'To upload' section in the Captures view.

 

 

Quick upload

 

If you'd like to upload all of your captures at once, tap the black 'Upload now' button in the banner to trigger the upload process. 

You'll see that the top banner will now show a progress bar. You'll need to keep the app open to upload successfully.

Once the upload is complete, the imagery will enter our processing pipeline—you'll notice the banner at the top has changed to reflect this, showing the 'Processing...' message. The first, and most important, step in the processing pipeline is image ingestion, which handles anonymization. While this step is occurring you won't be able to view your capture card.

After ingestion is complete, your capture will reappear in the Captures view and will have the tag of 'Finalizing.' From here, a capture should finish processing within 48 hours.

 

 

Upload individually

 

You can also upload captures one-by-one on the Mapillary iOS app. This may be the preferred method if interested in quality checking captures. 

To individually upload a capture, first click on the 'View' button and select your desired capture from the Uploads window. The capture window will then open; there is an upload icon in the top right corner. Click on the button to upload your capture individually.

 

Deleting images or captures before upload

If you notice some of the images you uploaded were poor quality, or you'd like to delete them or any other reason, you can do so before you upload. 

It is much easier to bulk select images to delete before uploading than after uploading—a quick look may be worth your time!

 

To choose images to delete, click on the 'Select' button to enable image selection. Select the images you'd like to delete and click on the delete icon on the bottom bar. A pop up will appear to confirm your deletion. If you'd like to save any of the images you took, you can also select them and use the save button on the bottom bar to save them to your device.
Lastly, if you decide you'd like to delete an entire capture, navigate back to the 'Uploads' window. Swipe on your desired capture—a pop up will appear to confirm your deletion.  You can also delete these directly from the homepage as well.

 

 

🗺️Exploring the map

Searching for a place

To explore Mapillary imagery, navigate to the map window via the icon on the right side of the control bar. Here, you can search for any location via the search bar at the top. The map will zoom in so you can check out the current imagery!

Map style toggles

You can color captures by their recency by clicking on the clock icon in the upper right corner of the map view. Captures are displayed in either red, yellow, or green—the color corresponding to how old a capture is. Green images are < 2 years old Yellow images are 2 - 4 years old Red images are > 4 years old
You can also change the basemap via the layers icon. We currently offer Mapillary light, Mapillary dark, OpenStreetMap, and Esri basemaps. If you're interested in mapping pedestrian areas, we recommend using the OSM basemap. Changing your default basemap here will also change the basemap you see in the map view while capturing.

 

Viewing captures

To view any capture, simply zoom in and click on the capture. A split screen view will pop up showing imagery on the top and the map view on the bottom. 

 

You'll notice there are large white arrows towards the bottom of the image you are viewing. These are called spatial arrows. You can click on the 'V' shaped arrows to move to the previous or next image in the current capture, or you can use the curved arrows to step into a different nearby capture.  You'll also see the control bar on the top of the imagery view. Here you can press the play button to start moving through a capture, the playback arrows to step to the next image or previous image, and the expander which opens up advanced capture viewing settings.

When the control bar is expanded there are two additional options available for viewing captures.  One option, marked by the hare icon, allows you to control the speed at which you move from image to image when pressing the play button.  The other option, marked by the slider icon, allows you to quickly jump to a point within the capture. If you move the slider all the way to the left you will view the first image in the capture; if you move it all the way to the right you will view the last image in the capture.

 

Sharing an image

If you'd like to share an image, click on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen and then click 'Share'. You'll have all of the standard iOS share options—you can copy a link, share to your favorite social media apps, create an email, et. cetera.

 

Reporting an image

Sometimes you may come across an image uploaded in poor taste while viewing captures. These could be taken in restricted areas, unrelated to street-level imagery, positionally inaccurate, poor camera quality, et. cetera.  To report an image for deletion, click on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen. Here you can find the 'Report image' option, which will open a pop-up allowing you to submit a report.

 

🏆Leaderboard

You can also check out our imagery leaderboards on the Mapillary app. To navigate to the leaderboard, click on the trophy icon in the top right corner of the home page.  You can view weekly, monthly, and all time leaderboards at a global, country, or city scale.  If you're curious to see a users uploads, click on their icon—you'll be able to see their captures on the map. Make it your goal to reach the top of the leaderboard in your city!

 

⚙️Settings

To access your account and app settings, click on your user icon in the top left corner of the home page. In the profile view, click the gear icon to pull up the settings page.  General settings, capture settings, and upload settings are all available to toggle. The Blocked addresses setting prevents your device from capturing or uploading any imagery within a 100 meter radius when an address is specified. Click into the setting to add an address. Allow manual capture lets you take images whenever you'd like, in addition to the fixed capture rate.

 

🛠️Troubleshooting

If you are experiencing an issue on the app, we recommend trying the below troubleshooting methods: 

• Close the app entirely and reopen it
• Check that you have the latest version of the iOS app
• Check that your phone is running the latest iOS version
• If possible, try using a different internet connection.
• Try performing your task a bit later (If you’re experiencing loading or uploading issues)

If none of above helps, please submit a support request and provide the following information:

• Description of the problem (what happened vs what did you expect)
• Screenshots or screen recording to illustrate the problem
• Did you encounter this issue once or does it happen repeatedly / all the time? Do you notice any patterns in when it is happening?
• iOS version (you can find it in iPhone Settings > General > About)
• Mapillary iOS app version (this can be found in the iOS app settings)
• Your Mapillary username