Answers to the questions we hear most often. If you cannot find yours below, email [email protected] and we will get back to you within one business day.
Getting started
What is Atlas?
Atlas is a location-based adventure storytelling platform. You post stories — hikes, road trips, seasons abroad — as a sequence of chapters, each anchored to a place on the map, and optionally recorded as a GPS track. Other people can follow along in a map-first view that flies between the chapters as they read.
How do I sign up?
Atlas is currently in a private-preview period. Request access from the home page or the sign-in screen. A human reviews every request; approvals typically take a day or two. Once approved you will get an email with a link to sign in with Google, Apple, or a password.
Is Atlas free?
Yes. There is no paid tier today. If we ever introduce one, existing stories, chapters, and tracks will stay free to keep and export.
Which devices are supported?
Anything with a modern browser: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge on desktop and mobile. The iOS app is available on TestFlight during preview and will ship to the App Store at launch. An Android version is planned but not yet built.
Stories & chapters
What is the difference between a story and a chapter?
A story is the outer container — a trip, an event, a theme. A chapter is a single beat inside it, pinned to a specific location on the map, with its own photos, text, and optional GPS track segment. Think of it as book → chapter, not album → photo.
How many chapters can a story have?
There is no hard cap. The map viewer stays smooth up to a few hundred chapters; if you get much higher, we recommend splitting into multiple stories (a trip per week, a country per story, etc.) so readers can still find their way around.
Can I edit a story after I publish it?
Yes. Every field — title, cover, chapters, order, tags, privacy — can be edited at any time. Edits are visible immediately; there is no revision history exposed to readers.
Can I collaborate on a story with another user?
Yes. Open the story, go to Tags, add the collaborator, and toggle Can edit. Tagged editors can add, reorder, and delete chapters. Only the story owner can change privacy or delete the story itself.
Can I save a draft without publishing?
Yes. Every new story starts as a DRAFT and stays invisible to everyone but you (and any collaborators you tag) until you flip it to Published. Drafts are unlimited.
GPS tracks
How do I record a GPS track?
Open the iOS app, tap the record button on the map, and start walking. Atlas uses a background-location provider that keeps recording when the phone is locked or the app is in the background — including through crashes and mid-hike battery saves — so a lost signal or a locked screen will not drop your track.
Will recording drain my battery?
Background GPS is measurable but manageable: expect roughly 5–10% per hour of active recording on a modern iPhone. If you plan a long day out, top up the phone before you leave and consider a small power bank. Recording pauses automatically when the phone detects you are stationary.
Does GPS work offline?
Yes. The phone's GPS chip does not need a network — it talks directly to satellites. Atlas queues fixes locally in an on-device database and syncs them to your account when the phone regains connectivity. You can hike for a week without service and still land a complete track.
Can I import a GPX or Strava track?
Strava import is live — connect your Strava account under Settings → Integrations and pick which activities to bring over. Generic GPX import is on the roadmap.
Why does the playback camera drift smoothly instead of following every twist?
Because raw GPS is noisy. Every playback surface in Atlas runs the track through a shared preprocessor that removes outliers, resamples with a Catmull-Rom spline, and caps the camera's angular velocity. The result is a cinematic fly-through instead of a jittery drone feed. The underlying track data is preserved unchanged.
Photos & media
What file formats can I upload?
JPEG, PNG, HEIC, and WebP for images; MP4 and MOV for video. HEIC photos taken on iPhone are converted to a web-friendly format on upload so they display everywhere without a plugin.
Do you strip EXIF metadata?
We keep the fields that make Atlas work — capture date, orientation, camera model, and GPS coordinates — because chapters use them to auto-place pins and sort your Media Library. We do not surface any of it to viewers of a public story; only you see the metadata inside the app.
Are my photos public?
Only if they appear in a published, publicly-shared story. Photos used only in draft or private stories, or held in your Media Library without being attached to a chapter, are served through an authenticated proxy that fails-closed to unauthorized visitors.
What is the file size limit?
500 MB per file. Most phone videos and all photos fit comfortably; if you have a long 4K video, trim it or upload a compressed export.
Privacy & sharing
Who can see my story?
Every story has a privacy setting:
- Public — anyone with the link, including logged-out visitors.
- Followers — accounts that follow you.
- Friends — mutual follows only.
- Private — only you (and collaborators you tagged with edit access).
The default for new stories is Private. Changing the privacy re-evaluates who can see the story and its media the moment you save.
Can I hide the exact GPS coordinates of a chapter?
The map always shows the chapter pin, but you control where you place it. If a chapter is somewhere sensitive — your home, a wildlife den, an archaeological site — drop the pin at the nearest town or park rather than the exact spot. The Community Guidelines cover this in more detail.
What happens if I change a public story to private?
The story disappears from feeds, search, and shared links within a few seconds. Photos and videos attached to it flip to the authenticated-only proxy on the next serve. Anyone who bookmarked a story image while it was public may still see it from browser cache briefly; the URL itself stops working once the flip completes.
Can I share a story with someone who does not have an Atlas account?
Yes, as long as the story is Public. Copy the story URL and send it. Logged-out visitors get the read-only map viewer without needing to sign in.
Account
How do I change my email or password?
Open Settings → Account. Email changes require you to verify the new address before they take effect. Password changes take effect immediately and sign out every other device on your account.
How do I export my data?
Open Settings → Privacy & Security → Data export and request an archive. We build the export offline and email you a secure download link within an hour or two; the link is valid for seven days. The archive is a JSON file containing your profile, stories, chapters, media metadata, tracks, and social graph.
How do I delete my account?
Follow the steps on the Delete your account page. Deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed once processed.
Why do I need to be approved before I can sign in?
During preview, every account is manually approved so we can size the community carefully and keep quality high. Once we open sign-ups publicly, approval will only be needed if your account is flagged by our anti-abuse checks.
Safety & moderation
How do I block or report someone?
Every profile, story, and piece of content has a three-dot menu with Block and Report. Blocking is silent (the other user is not notified) and mutual (you both stop seeing each other). Reporting sends the content to our moderation queue; you can see the status of your reports under Settings → Privacy & Security → My reports.
What happens after I report something?
A human on our team reviews it, usually within 24 hours. Severe categories (violence, self-harm, illegal activity, sexual content involving minors) are escalated immediately and may bypass the normal queue. You will get an email when the report is resolved.
Someone is impersonating me. What do I do?
Report the offending profile with the Impersonation reason and email [email protected] with any supporting information (a link to your real profile elsewhere, a photo of ID if you are comfortable sharing it). We remove impersonation accounts on sight.
Troubleshooting
The map is blank / stuck loading.
This is almost always a browser extension blocking Google Maps or a misconfigured ad blocker. Try a different browser or an incognito window with extensions disabled. If it still fails, email us with your browser and OS version.
My upload got stuck at 99%.
The upload finished but the server is still finalizing it (extracting EXIF, generating thumbnails). Give it another 30 seconds. If the progress bar stays stuck for more than a minute, refresh the page — the file is almost certainly there; check your Media Library.
My GPS track has a big straight line across it.
That is a signal gap being drawn as a straight segment between the last known fix and the next one — for example, when you went through a tunnel or into a canyon. If it is small, you can trim it with the Trim tool on the track detail page. If it is huge and you know the actual route, you can split the recording into two tracks and edit each.
The iOS app is asking for location permission again.
iOS occasionally revokes background-location authorization if the app has not been used for a while. Go to iOS Settings → Atlas → Location and set it back to Always. That is required for GPS recording to keep going with the phone locked.
Something else is broken.
Email [email protected] with a screenshot, the URL where it happened, and what device you were on. If you are inside the app, Settings → Test Sentry sends us a diagnostic ping we can trace back to your account.
Still stuck?
This page will grow as we learn what confuses people. If your question is not covered — or one of these answers turned out to be wrong — please tell us at [email protected]. Every response goes to a real person.
For rule-related questions, see the Community Guidelines. For data and privacy questions, see the Privacy Policy. For cookies, see the Cookie Policy. For how we protect the platform, see the Security page.