Reading a task on mobile: the map and the list

Out in the field you read more than you type. The same task exists in two forms on the phone — a marker on the map, a card in the list — and the two don't tell you the same thing.

This page describes every visual element: what it encodes, and above all what it doesn't.

Where: mobile app, the Field view. The pill at the top right switches between the map and the list.

Two views, one filter

The floating pill at the top right has two halves: the globe for the map, the list for the list. The white cursor slides onto whichever is active.

Your choice sticks. Next time you open the app you land on the view you left — it's a per-place preference, not a global setting.

Both views share the same filters. One difference matters though: the map hides finished tasks until you explicitly filter by status. It shows the four unfinished statuses, because a map cluttered with work already done is useless in the field. The list shows whatever the filter asks for.

The marker on the map

A task marker is always made of three things:

• a white teardrop — the shape that points at the ground;
• a pale grey disc inside it;
• the task type's icon, in dark blue, at the centre.

Here's the thing to remember: the marker only encodes the type. Not the priority, not the status, not who it's assigned to. A critical task and a minor one of the same type look exactly alike. For severity, open the task or switch to the list.

A segment task — one covering a stretch of trail rather than a point — carries the Segment icon instead of a type icon.

Three behaviours worth knowing:

• Nothing is clustered. Many apps merge nearby markers into a counter; Sentinel doesn't. Twenty tasks in one spot are twenty stacked markers. Zoom in to separate them.
• Nothing is hidden either. Two overlapping markers are both still drawn — one covers the other, but neither disappears.
• The touch area is bigger than the drawing. You don't have to aim precisely; the phone buzzes when the task is caught.

A structure is not a task. On the same map, a structure is drawn as a filled circle ringed in white. The shape alone tells them apart: teardrop = something to do, circle = a structure to watch.

The trail's track is painted in its difficulty colour, and the pill at the top left recalls its name with its rating symbol. See difficulties.

Tap a trail to isolate it

That track is also a button. Tap a trail on the map and the map keeps only that trail's tasks — it's exactly the "Trail" filter, set without opening the panel. The phone buzzes briefly when the track is caught. Aim for the line: unlike markers, a trail's touch area is narrow.

Three things change at once:

• The chosen trail stands out: its track thickens and takes on a halo in its own colour.
• The others recede, without vanishing. They stay drawn in the background, very pale, their names faded. You keep the shape of the network in view without losing the one you picked.
• A "Filtered on" pill appears at the top left, below "You are in", naming the trail. That's what answers you when you're zoomed in and the chosen track no longer fits on screen.

Tap the same trail again to go back to the full view. You can also stack several: each tap adds a trail.

The corner of the screen never fills up with pills. As soon as more than one trail is filtered, the display changes character: instead of a second white pill, a quieter dark capsule slides in below the first. It names no one — it shows the symbols of the difficulties present in your filter, then the count: "10 trails filtered". You see at a glance which ratings are in play, and the capsule stays the same size whether you filter two trails or fifteen.

The difference in treatment is deliberate: the name of the trail you're walking is foreground information, the presence of a filter is not. The two shouldn't look alike.

And when the trail you filter is the very one you're walking, the "You are in" pill steps aside: all that's left is "Filtered on / <the trail>". It's the same name either way, and your position is already drawn on that track — writing it twice would teach you nothing.

It's the same filter as the panel's. What you set with your finger on the map shows up under "Trail" in the filters, and the reverse holds too: filtering by five trails from the panel brings those five tracks forward on the map. See filter tasks in depth.

The recenter button: three modes

Bottom left of the map, a round button. It doesn't just "go back to my position": it has three states, and you move between them by tapping. There's no menu — each tap advances one step, and the third brings you back to the first.

1. Overview — the starting state. The map is framed on your whole place: every trail fits on screen. The button is dark. It's the "how does the network look" view.

2. Centred — one tap. The map flies to your position and zooms to sector level. The button turns blue. It's a one-shot recentre: if you then walk, the map doesn't follow. You're free to move it around.

3. Follow — two taps. The map zooms closer and stays locked to you: it re-frames every time your position moves. The button pulses — two white rings spreading out in a loop. This is the mode that changes the most, and it's the next section.

A third tap returns to the overview.

Follow mode: a scan of what's around you

Follow mode doesn't just follow you. It changes what the map shows.

A translucent blue disc with a 55-metre radius appears around your position, and the map only shows what's inside it: the tasks and structures within that radius, nothing else. Everything further out disappears for the duration of the scan.

Three things to know, and the second one surprises people:

• The scan ignores your filters. It shows every unfinished task in range — all four active statuses — whatever type, trail or assignee you had filtered on. That's deliberate: when you're looking for what there is to do where you're standing, you don't want to miss a task because a filter was still on.
• Finished tasks stay hidden, as everywhere else on the map.
• It works with no coverage, from what the phone already has cached — see working offline.

What it's actually for. You arrive in a sector and can't remember what was reported there. Two taps, and you have the answer to within fifty-five metres, without filtering or searching. It's the move that replaces "hang on, let me check the list".

When to leave it. Follow re-frames the map constantly: you can't look elsewhere, it pulls you back. As soon as you want to explore around, one tap gives you control again.

The list screen

The header doesn't change between views. The place pill and the row of type filters sit above the map and the list alike — it's the same band, literally the same component. Filter a type on the map and it's filtered in the list too, and the other way round.

At the top: projects. If any projects match the filter they come before the tasks, under a Projects heading. Each is a plain row — not a card: a folder icon, the name, the task count and a small progress bar. A project on hold is marked On hold and its icon fades.

Then: folders. If your place has task folders, they appear under a Folders heading, between the projects and the tasks. One row per folder: its name, a gold folder icon, and an arrow. Tap it and you open the folder's contents — the same tasks, narrowed to that folder.

Those contents come in three forms, exactly like a project's: a tab bar at the bottom of the screen switches between the map, the list and the kanban. The map frames itself on the folder's tasks; the kanban is the one you know from my planning, one column per status and drag-and-drop to move work along. The app remembers the mode folder by folder: view "May 12 work party" on the map and "Before opening day" as a kanban, and each reopens in its own mode. The kanban goes further and also remembers the column you were on.

Three things to know about these folders:

• They show up even with no network: folders are part of the data installed on the phone, like the trails — see installed data.
• A folder does not remove its tasks from the list: the same task stays visible further down, in its status group. A folder is a shortcut to a subset, not a drawer that hides things.
• A folder's contents follow the same rules as the Field list — no to-do task without a position, no task already filed in a project — but they ignore the filters in the top bar: you see the whole folder. All three modes show exactly the same tasks, presented differently.

Don't mix up the two notions: projects and folders carry the same folder icon, but a folder's is gold where a project's is grey. And a project shows a task count and a progress bar, whereas a folder shows only its name.

Then: tasks, under a Tasks heading, cut into status groups. Each group is announced by a pill centred on a hairline — which also carries a folder icon, because the same component serves both. The pill's text is the status, not a folder name.

A task's card

A task isn't a text row: it gets a card with its own map thumbnail — the actual spot, drawn, rather than a trail name to decode.

Top to bottom:

Those four badges deliberately overhang the thumbnail's corners: they have to stay readable without eating the map.

What the list card adds over the marker: priority, assignee, sync state and description. That's why the list is the right view for deciding what to do first, and the map the right view for deciding which way to walk.

How the list is ordered

You don't choose the sort: it's fixed, and it follows field logic.

Projects first, then tasks. If projects match the filter they come first under a Projects heading, then tasks under a Tasks heading.

Tasks are grouped by status, in this order: New, Ready, In Progress, On Hold, Done. Each group is announced by a pill centred on a hairline.

Inside a group, priority rules: Critical, High, Medium, Low. At equal priority, the most recent first.

In other words, the first card in the list is always the most recently reported, most serious task among those nobody has picked up. That's deliberate — it's the morning question.

An empty group doesn't appear — you won't see an "On Hold" heading if nothing is on hold.

Three tips

Don't look for severity on the map. It isn't there. If you need to sort by priority, switch to the list — one tap, top right.

One marker can hide several. In a dense area, zoom in before concluding there's only one task.

A card with no avatar is a task with no owner. It's the fastest thing to read in the whole list, and often the most useful before a work day.