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Release Notes

Version & Updates

Explore what's new, recent fixes, and improvements in the Carte application.

v90.0

Latest Release

September 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Location-Bounded Map Search & Dropdown Autocomplete: Google Places autocomplete predictions and Carte suggestions are now strictly bounded within a 100 km / 100 mi radius (matching map distance rings), eliminating far-off predictions from other states.
  • Multi-Pin Recalled Searches (Google + Carte): Recalled searches from saved queries or search pills now fetch and display multi-pin results across the map—green pins for Carte producers and red pins for Google Places—each with rich bottom sheets for quick interaction.
  • Saved Searches Card Redesign: Streamlined the saved search UI by removing redundant touch listeners, eliminating the drag handle icon, and enabling intuitive long-press drag-to-reorder and swipe-left-to-delete.
  • Location-Centric "Discoveries Nearby": Connected real-time device location updates directly to profile discovery suggestions, filtering and ordering local recommendations by user proximity.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Proximity Sorting: Carte producer suggestions in dropdowns and discoveries are now pre-sorted by geographic proximity to the user's current coordinates.
  • Camera & Heatmap Auto-Fit: When recalling multi-pin searches, the camera dynamically bounds both Carte and Google pins with smooth padding while simultaneously activating the local search heatmap.
v89.0

Previous Update

September 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Expanded Smart Autotags for Food, Produce & Packaged Goods: Revamped the on-device ML Kit image autotagger with an extensive 150+ item dictionary tailored for farm gates, market stalls, and local artisans:
    • Packaged Artisan Pantry: Automatically detects and categorizes artisan jams, mustards, fruit concentrates, syrups, cordials, pestos, tapenades, gourmet pâtés, relishes, chutneys, vinegars, and extra virgin olive oil.
    • Craft Spirits & Distilled Drinks: Full recognition for craft gin, craft whisky, vodka, rum, liqueurs, distilled spirits, wine, and cider.
    • Farmhouse Cheeses & Dairy: Precision tagging for artisan cheeses (cheddar, brie, camembert, blue cheese, goat cheese & curd, haloumi, feta), fresh milk, and farm butter.
    • Cured & Dried Meats: Added recognition for beef jerky, biltong, dried meats, prosciutto, salami, and artisan charcuterie.
    • Spices & Seasonings: Added artisan spices, dry rubs, gourmet sea salts, and dukkah.
  • Intelligent Negative Stopwords Filter: Implemented a strict visual filter that strips out generic, irrelevant computer-vision labels (tableware, serveware, wood, plate, countertop, flooring, still life, recipe, dish, container) so produce cards remain cleanly focused.
  • "Trouble Signing In?" Support Flow: Added a dedicated help modal on the tester sign-up portal (tester-signup.html) enabling testers with Google sign-in popup issues, alternate Play Store accounts, or group invite errors to submit an instant alert directly to support.
  • Tester Re-Engagement & Stallholder Outreach: Redesigned the community re-engagement email (reengagement-email.html) highlighting the 1-at-a-time active pin switcher among up to 6 saved locations, daily specials photo workflow, and low-maintenance set-and-forget scheduling.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Gallery Photo Import Crash Fix: Resolved an Android NullPointerException ("Can't toast on a thread that has not called Looper.prepare()") when importing device photos into CarteGallery by ensuring toast creation is executed strictly on the UI thread.
  • Safe Context Handling: Hardened background asynchronous tasks to safely capture the application context, avoiding lifecycle detached-state exceptions during image processing and Firebase syncing.
v88.0

Previous Update

September 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Google Place Search Bottom Sheet Redesign: Replaced the placeholder interface with rich, live Google Places SDK details when tapping external search pins on the map:
    • Hero Business Photo: Dynamically resolves and loads the primary Google place photo via Glide, collapsing automatically if no photo is available.
    • Business Category & Status Badges: Displays primary business category alongside live operational status (Open now, Closed, or Temporarily closed) and today's hours.
    • Direct Actions: Added one-tap "Call" (opens phone dialer) and "Website" buttons, paired with turn-by-turn "Get Directions" and "View on Google Maps".
  • Dynamic Homepage Subtexts: Added a single-line bold community subtext beneath the homepage logo on the green canvas. The tagline is randomized each time the app opens from local defaults and seamlessly updates from cloud configuration without extra Firestore reads.
  • Media Dashboard Taglines Manager: Integrated a dynamic taglines manager into the administrative media dashboard with live character counter (42-char limit) and live on-screen preview.
  • Native 9:16 Video Player Support: Upgraded the featured video and tutorial containers on the web portal to support 9:16 portrait aspect ratio, allowing YouTube Shorts and vertical mobile screen recordings to expand edge-to-edge on mobile devices without windowboxing.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Bottom Sheet Resource Resolution: Unified bottom sheet resource identification across CarteGallery using MaterialResourceHelper.
  • MapFragment Modernization: Replaced unsafe boolean unboxings with null-safe comparisons, streamlined duplicate coordinate checks, and improved snapshot file stream cleanup.
  • Landing Page & Sign-Up Flows: Improved iOS waitlist signup handling, email verification flow, and Google Group community visibility.
v87.0

Previous Update

September 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Carte Gallery Thumbnail Redesign: Replaced ambiguous corner badges with intuitive visual indicators:
    • Thick Black Border: Cropped and saved images are now outlined with a prominent 3.5dp black border.
    • White Text Icon Overlay: Images with attached JSON product data, prices, tags, or descriptions display a clean white text icon overlay on a dark translucent badge.
    • Active Carousel Pins: Live carousel items maintain the green primary accent stroke and checkmark overlay.
  • Fullscreen Gallery Thumbnail Viewer: Added instant tap-to-inspect on all gallery thumbnails. Tapping any photo opens a full-screen, high-resolution preview with an image counter pill (1 / N). Users can swipe horizontally to compare photos before dragging to the carousel, and tap anywhere (or tap the close button) to collapse back to the grid immediately.
  • Media Dashboard Hub: Created a dedicated administrative media dashboard (media-dashboard.html) for managing community videos and tutorials, and resolved latency when loading the What's New tile on the home screen.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Subscription Plans & Billing Fallbacks: Added default fallback pricing ($9.99/mo, $24.99/3 mo, $79.99/yr) and clear billing cadence subtitles to monthly, seasonal, and yearly cards in carte_plans.xml so cards are never blank while Google Play connects.
  • Billing Auto-Refresh & Reconnection: Added automatic billing service reconnection and re-query on screen resume, eliminating transient "Product details not available yet" errors on physical devices.
  • Plan Card Touch Targets: Made entire subscription card surfaces clickable with responsive touch ripple feedback.
v86.0

Previous Update

September 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Multi-State Map Layer FAB Cycle: Added comprehensive multi-layer cycling to the on-map FAB for producers. Tapping the FAB cycles through the complete suite of map views:
    • Green Map Pin: Insights layer & search demand data.
    • Teal Radar Icon: Local demand heatmap (0–10 km).
    • Orange Radar Icon: Area trends heatmap (0–50 km).
    • Purple Radar Icon: Regional reach heatmap (0–150 km).
    • Blue Map Pin: Default consumer search mapview.
  • Pro Subscription Gating for Analytics Heatmaps: The 3 analytics heatmaps (Local Demand, Area Trends, Regional Reach) are securely gated behind the Producer Pro subscription. Non-subscribers toggle seamlessly between the base Insights layer and Default search mapview.
  • "Get Directions" Navigation Action: Added a dedicated "Get Directions" action button to the Business Profile Info Card on Producer Detail pages. It launches turn-by-turn navigation directly in Google Maps (with browser directions fallback) while honoring grower privacy by routing to the public suburb/postcode if exact address visibility is toggled off.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Heatmap Lifecycle & Persistence Fix: Resolved an issue where analytics heatmaps disappeared after 3–4 seconds due to background GPS lock collisions and delayed Firestore query overwrites.
  • Search Overlay Isolation: Guarded scoped analytics heatmaps against accidental removal by search bar text watchers and empty search queries.
  • Tablet Layout Continuity: Verified that all recent layer cycling, heatmap overlays, and directions actions function seamlessly on tablet split-screen layouts.
v85.0

Previous Update

September 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Integrated Top-Right Map Controls Pill: Consolidated My Location GPS focus, Zoom In (+), and Zoom Out (−) into a single, cohesive vertical control card positioned beneath the search pill, keeping the bottom-right corner unobstructed for navigation.
  • Target-Aware FAB Mapview Styling: Refined the map layer FAB styling to represent the destination mode—displaying a Green Pin on primary container in Consumer mode (to switch to Producer view) and a Blue Pin in Producer mode (to switch to Consumer view).
  • Native Touch Zoom Optimization: Restored full native hardware-accelerated touch gesture processing in Google Maps for fluid 60/120fps pinch-to-zoom on all physical mobile and tablet touchscreens.
  • Desktop & Emulator Mouse Wheel Support: Enabled smooth mouse scroll-wheel zooming in desktop and emulator environments without interfering with native touchscreen gestures.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Eliminated Bottom View Overlaps: Disabled default bottom-right Google Maps zoom controls to prevent overlap with the bottom navigation bar and layer switch FAB.
  • Vector Icon Standardization: Added vector assets (ic_add and ic_remove) with accessibility content descriptions for crisp, theme-aware map controls.
v84.0

Previous Update

September 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Tactile On-Map Role Switch FAB: Placed an on-map layer FAB directly on the map screen for both mobile and tablet. Producer accounts can now effortlessly switch between Consumer Mode (Device GPS focus, blue distance rings, search overlays) and Producer Mode (Business Pin focus, green zone reach circles, demand & analytics heatmaps) with tactile camera transitions.
  • Tablet Split-Screen Optimization & 3-Tile Grid: Re-architected tablet layout (sw600dp) with a uniform 3-per-row navigation tile grid and 2x enlarged header logo, matching mobile aspect ratios and eliminating image clipping.
  • Split-Screen Map Focal Point & Multi-Touch: Resolved Google Maps split-screen coordinate offset via a custom touch wrapper, ensuring pinch-to-zoom is anchored directly between the user's fingers in the right-hand pane, along with on-screen [+]/[-] zoom buttons and mouse scroll-wheel zoom support.
  • Real-Time Dual-Pane Home Refresh: Enabled dynamic LiveData synchronization so the tablet home hub automatically updates map snapshots, profile pictures, and status badges in real time as detail pane navigation occurs.
  • Save Search Banner in Tablet Pane: Fixed save search pill banner anchoring so it floats cleanly at the bottom of the right-hand map pane on tablet layouts for both consumer and producer roles.
  • Website App Showcase & Screenshots: Added a responsive horizontal screenshot carousel to the public site and established a dedicated asset showcase directory.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Layer Separation & Collision Elimination: Prevented overlapping blue and green distance rings and ensured Google search heatmaps and producer demand overlays are cleanly separated.
  • ProGuard / R8 Rules: Added explicit keep rules for custom touch gesture wrappers and models to guarantee release build optimization integrity.
v83.0

Previous Update

August 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Producer "Off-Season" Visibility Mode: Evolved the Paused visibility state into a seasonal break mode. Producers can now schedule an expected return date using an integrated calendar picker and provide custom return notes for consumers.
  • Instant Homepage State Synchronization: Resolved a UI refresh delay on fresh installs where the home screen remained on default layout after Google Sign-In. LiveData observation and resume triggers now update producer tiles and profile states in real time.
  • Status & Visibility Action Bar Styling: Standardized button stroke borders, icon tinting, and typography across all location status cards to high-contrast Carte Dark green.
  • Tester & Custom Recipient Dispatch: Added custom email templates, verified DNS authentication, and automated recipient selection tools to the developer correspondence dashboard.
  • Mock Heatmap Simulation for Debug: Added automatic fallback mock search volumes in debug builds to verify multi-tier demand heatmaps and radar analytics offline.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Room Schema & Migration Upgrade: Incremented Room database schema to v33 with backward-compatible persistence for seasonal return dates and notes.
  • Comprehensive Lint & Code Audit: Cleared all compiler, Android 14+ permission, and resource warnings across core adapters, view models, and ML Kit vision utilities.
v82.0

Previous Update

August 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Pro Radar Navigation & Stability: Resolved a background LiveData recursive loop when navigating from Radar cards to the scoped demand heatmaps, delivering instant, freeze-free map transitions.
  • Prominent "Show on Map" Action Buttons: Redesigned all Radar card map triggers as prominent, pill-shaped buttons with dark green borders to emphasize key subscription features.
  • Radar Percentage Layout Enhancement: Converted zone percentage summaries into a clean 2-row × 2-column grid layout, preventing text overlap across all screen densities.
  • Card Height & Viewport Scaling: Added generous bottom padding and card margins across all radar cards to ensure full visibility and eliminate button clipping on narrow and thin device screens.
  • Location Status Card Height Optimization: Added minimum height baseline and density-scaled day squares to ensure action buttons never collapse when amber status notes are active.
  • Tester Correspondence Hub: Integrated responsive HTML email templates, Firebase storage asset hosting, and a local developer broadcast dashboard for closed testing communication.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Room & Firestore Entity Cleanup: Added extra property ignore annotations to suppress unnecessary Firestore deserialization warnings for local Room primary keys.
  • Product Tag Slide Editing: Removed unnecessary overlay buttons from photo slides for a streamlined product editing experience.
v81.0

Previous Update

August 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • In-Place Carousel Replacement Overhaul: Refined image replacement with direct entity-level tracking to guarantee that saving an edited photo immediately replaces the original carousel slot without duplication.
  • Splash Screen Vector Scaling: Scaled and centered the master vector logo asset within a 1:1 square canvas to prevent edge-clipping inside Android 12+ circular splash window masks.
  • Undistorted Progress Indicator Dots: Converted tab dot indicators into true, centered circles with increased horizontal spacing and comfortable touch targets across hero onboarding and reference flows.
  • Top-Right Price Badge Alignment: Standardized price tag overlays in the top-right corner across both the consumer pin bottom sheet and product detail carousels.
  • Image Management Layout Centering: Centered the Rotate, Reset, and Save action button row directly above the profile image studio.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Firebase SHA-256 Authentication: Updated SHA-256 certificate fingerprints and google-services configuration for seamless Google Sign-In on emulator and test environments.
  • Clean Build & Lint Audit: Cleared compiler and lint warnings across layout resources, accessibility descriptions, and adapter logic for an optimal production build.
v80.0

Previous Update

August 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • In-Place Carousel Photo Replacement: Resizing, rotating, or editing an image in the profile editor now replaces the corresponding carousel slot automatically with the modified bitmap while preserving the untouched original in Carte Gallery for reuse or export.
  • Gallery Crop Badge Indicators: Added a crop badge visual overlay on modified images in Carte Gallery to clearly distinguish edited photos from originals.
  • Pin Bottom Sheet Price & Location Inlays: Enhanced the map pin bottom sheet photo carousel with top-right price tag pills, bottom description overlays, and dynamic location & distance metrics (km / mi) with auto-truncation.
  • Strict 4:3 Aspect Ratio Consistency: Standardized photo aspect ratio constraints across the profile editor, map pin sheet, and consumer detail product carousels to eliminate margin letterboxing.
  • Location Carousel Auto-Focus: Opening the location & status page now automatically scrolls to and focuses on the active location card.
  • Hero Flow Visual Refresh: Refreshed brand background containers, card hierarchy, and contrast across all onboarding and hero reference flows.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Image Studio Action Controls: Relocated image manipulation action buttons into a dedicated clean row between the section title and image viewport to keep image editing uncluttered.
  • Unified Image Carousel Adapter: Consolidated carousel slide binding across bottom sheets and detail views into a unified component supporting real-time price and description tags.
v79.0

Previous Update

August 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Producer Pro Analytics Redesign: Converted the radar analytics page into an intuitive horizontal swipeable ViewPager2 carousel with dedicated tabs for Local, Area, and Regional cards, providing spacious dedicated views for all histograms and radial charts.
  • Interactive Radar Heatmap Navigation: Added direct "Show on Map" actions across Local, Area, and Regional cards with tailored visual color palettes (Cyan/Green for Local, Gold/Orange/Red for Area Trends, and Lavender/Indigo/Purple for Regional Reach) and automatic camera framing.
  • Fullscreen Product Image Inspection: Tapping any product photo in the producer detail view now opens an immersive fullscreen viewer with full swipe support and instant tap/back collapse.
  • Look-Ahead Weekly Status Notes: Tapping individual day squares in the producer's weekly availability card allows consumers to preview upcoming day-specific notes and announcements (e.g., modified hours or early closures).

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Spatial Demand Aggregation Pipeline: Upgraded Cloud Functions and Firestore security rules to aggregate live search points into Geohash-6 demand clusters for real-time Pro Heatmap rendering.
  • Accessibility & Touch Target Standards: Optimized all action buttons and interactive calendar day indicators to comply with Android 48dp touch target guidelines.
v78.0

Previous Update

August 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Unified Hero Onboarding & Transitions: Redesigned new installation discovery, producer registration, and Producer Pro analytics into full-screen hero swipe panels with integrated Clickwrap terms agreements and direct Google Sign-In.
  • Interactive Image Studio & Rotation: Added real-time pinch-to-zoom, pan, 90° rotation, and viewport cropping across profile and product management with instant cloud sync propagation.
  • Unified 4:3 Aspect Ratio: Standardized photo carousels across the pin bottom sheet, producer profile, and product slides with dark framed backdrops for zero-crop presentation of both portrait and landscape shots.
  • Tablet Dual-Pane Map Centering: Adjusted camera tilt and dynamic search padding to guarantee true 2D center focus on the right-hand map pane.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Bottom Navigation Dynamic Visibility: Restored responsive bottom navigation on phone views while keeping tablet dual-pane layouts clean and uncluttered.
  • Codebase Cleanup: Removed deprecated bottom sheets and orphaned database entities for a clean, warning-free build.
v77.0

Previous Update

August 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Firestore Profile & Gallery Synchronization: Improved cloud synchronization logic between Room DB, Firestore, and Firebase Storage across devices and emulators.
  • Cross-Device Gallery & Carousel Sync: Fixed background gallery download pass ensuring images uploaded on physical devices seamlessly sync to account galleries on signing in.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Sync State Management: Resolved background download lock flags during remote profile restoration.
v74.0

Previous Update

July 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Refreshed Homepage Tiles & WebP Assets: Updated all primary homepage tile graphics with high-resolution, optimized WebP imagery.
  • Thicker Tile Borders & Tactile Press Animations: Enhanced homepage UI with 2.5dp solid white card borders and interactive press-scale animations for touch feedback.
  • Google Sitemap & Web Indexing Fixes: Added sitemap.xml and search engine optimization fixes across public web portals.
  • Location Manager & Opening Hours UI: Streamlined day/hours management UI and cleaned up compiler warnings across location components.
v73.0

Previous Update

July 2026

🚀 What's New & Updated

  • Inline Product Categories Creation: Upgraded Product Categories management to support inline batch card creation and direct card editing without modal dialog popups.
  • Manage Locations Details Card & Opening Hours: Redesigned location manager with a comprehensive Location Details Card, support for custom opening hours per location slot, and customer pin sheet visibility.
  • What's New Media Portal Integration: Connected the "What's New" tile to carteapp.au/whats-new.html with automatic video ID parameters and website header navigation.
  • ABN Regulatory Compliance: Published ABN 36 753 506 175 across web footers and legal disclosures.

🔧 Fixes & Optimizations

  • Touch Target Guidelines: Expanded location item edit button touch targets to 48dp x 48dp for improved accessibility.
  • Public Account & Data Deletion Portal: Full deployment of carteapp.au/delete-account.html for Google Play Data Safety compliance.
v72.0

Previous Update

July 2026
  • Public Account & Data Deletion portal deployment.
  • Producer onboarding role switch and default placeholder update.
v71.0

Previous Update

July 2026
  • Producer onboarding instant role switch and tile initialization.
  • Default producer placeholder updated to "Your Business Name".
v70.0

Previous Update

July 2026
  • In-App Feedback pipeline and automated Resend integration.
  • About Carte navigation and YouTube thumbnail auto-loader.
  • Target SDK upgraded to Android 16 (API 36).
v69.0

Previous Update

July 2026
  • Dynamic YouTube thumbnail extraction for home tile.
  • About Carte tile link update and web credential fixes.
v68.0

Previous Update

July 2026
  • In-App Web Release Notes integrated into Settings.
  • Upgraded target SDK level to Android 16 (API Level 36).
  • Gallery sync stability, deduplication, and hero carousel rendering fixes.
v67.0

Previous Update

July 2026
  • In-App Feedback system upgrade and HTML integration.
  • Carte Gallery sync performance and carousel fixes.
v66.0

Previous Update

June 2026
  • Integrated secure, Firebase-backed Beta Testing sign-up form at /tester-signup.
  • Migrated web presence to Firebase Hosting at carteapp.au.
  • Launched real-time Firestore-backed web fallback page at /producer to render shared pins.
  • Linked internal app settings and producer onboarding flows directly to HTML Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.