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 Terrain 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 bottom left recalls its name with its rating symbol. See difficulties.

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.

That's the only notion of "folder" you'll meet in the mobile list, and it's worth clearing up:

• the project is what you see at the top of the list, with the folder icon;
• the task folder — the one you create on the web to file tasks — does exist on mobile, but only as a field on a task's form. It doesn't group the list and can't be filtered from the phone.

Put differently: on the web a folder files things; on the phone it can be picked but sorts nothing.

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.