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

 

📖Table of Contents

1. Downloading the Android app
2. Logging in / Creating an account
3. Capturing
   1. Getting ready to capture
   2. Wide angle capture
   3. Capture via walking
   4. Capture via a car or bike
   5. 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. Deleting your uploaded images
6. Leaderboard
7. Settings
8. Troubleshooting

 

📲Downloading the Android app

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

 

💡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'd like to poke around the app before logging in, you're welcome to do so via the 'Continue as guest' option.

 

📸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. Once you turn your phone horizontally, you'll see a red line on the screen that represents the angle you're holding your phone 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. 

 

Wide angle capture

If your phone's camera supports wide angle capture, Mapillary will support it too! On the far right side of the camera window near the record button, you'll see a toggle for camera zoom. Wide angle is recommended as you can see more of your surroundings in each photo—but the choice is yours to make! Please note that you cannot change your camera zoom after starting to record. You'll need to end your current capture to change the camera setting.

 

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 the recording icon at the top of your screen measures how far you've moved during your current capture.

 

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 view current Mapillary coverage much easier as you capture. You'll also notice the clock button in the top right corner of the screen—toggling this on will allow you to see captures color-coded based on how old they are. The 'Map style toggles' section below details this color scheme in more detail.

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 have out of date imagery and need to be remapped!

 

 

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. 

 

The Android app supports picture-in-picture capture

for easy use with navigation apps!

 

 

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—enabling the Infinity focus setting can help improve quality in these scenarios. 

 

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 '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 (it can be in the background).

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.

 

You can enable the 'Automatic upload' setting

to automatically upload imagery when on Wi-Fi!

 

Upload individually

 

You can also upload captures one-by-one on the Mapillary Android 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 upload 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!

There are three different methods to delete images/captures on the Android app, detailed below:

 

One method to delete an image is to click into the image from the capture window.  A split screen view showing the image and the highlighted image position on the map will appear.  The bottom of the screen has three icons, here you can delete the image, rotate the image (this will persist in your upload), or share the raw image file.
If you'd like to delete multiple images at once, click on the 'Select' button to enable image selection or long press on an image. 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 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.

 

🗺️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 Android 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 (like our image to the right), or poor quality images.  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.

 

Deleting your uploaded images

Sometimes you may accidentally upload a capture with a few poor quality images. If you'd like to delete an image, you can do so in the Android app. Simply click on the three dots in the top corner of the screen when viewing an image in one of your captures. You'll see an option to delete an image. Once you confirm your deletion request via the pop-up, you cannot recover the image.  If you'd like to delete an entire capture, you can do so in our web app.

 

 

🏆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. Blocked addresses 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.  Infinity focus for capture speeds above 10mph is toggled on by default—this helps to minimize blurriness while capturing on the go. Automatic upload allows you to auto-upload imagery when connected to a Wi-Fi network—no button clicking necessary!

 

🛠️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 Android app
• Check that your phone is running the latest Android 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?
• Android version 
• Mapillary Android app version (this can be found in the app settings)
• Your Mapillary username
• Debug logs, if possible. Please go to Settings > Developer, and check the box with "Save debug logs to file". Then do the same actions as when you got the problem, in order to recreate it, and when done please send us the debug logs through the "Send debug logs" option in the left-hand menu. (Afterwards, uncheck the log saving option again so it won't keep writing up a large file on your phone.)

If you are having issues with GPS accuracy, consider enabling GMS (Google Mobile Services) on your device. By default the GMS are disabled in the Android app—this is to encourage people to start taking pictures outside. But enabling GMS might improve your overall GPS fix. To enable GMS, please go into settings, choose the Developer section and enable “Use Google Mobile Services”—this will enable location fix from several sources.