Builds 15 + 16: your music comes back, the thing you typed comes first, and search where you are looking

Testers last had build 14 on iPhone and release 9 on Android, both from 7 September. Build 15 was finished but never sent out, because by the time it was ready there were four more fixes worth waiting a day for, so this is two builds in one. Every line of it is a reply to someone's email, including one of mine.

Fixed: your music comes back after a prompt

After a spoken direction, other apps' audio stayed at half volume until you killed Maple Maps. The phone ducks other sound for as long as an app holds the audio session, and we never let it go; I found this myself on a drive with the radio on. The session is now released the moment the last queued prompt has been said, and the phone is told to restore everyone else's volume.

Fixed: the thing you typed comes first

Search results were sorted purely by distance, which put "Borden Park Band Shell" above Borden Park itself because the band shell was a few metres nearer. Now a result whose name is exactly what you typed comes first, then names that begin with it, then everything else, still nearest first within each group. Quick filters such as Gas stay purely nearest first, since nobody types "Gas" hoping for a place called Gas.

A related fix from Pictou County: a search for "Bank of Montreal" missed the branch filed as "BMO" two blocks away while finding one in another province. The long and short names of the big banks now find each other.

New: search this area

Move the map to where you are actually looking and a "Search this area" button appears at the top. Tap it and the same search runs again there, anchored to what is on screen, and the map stays where you put it. Start a new search and it goes back to searching around you.

This is the answer to a complaint that arrived several times in one weekend: type a town three provinces away and get streets near you with a similar name. Sorting results by distance was right for a grocery store and wrong for a region, and the fix the other map apps landed on is the right one: let you point the search.

New: a ferry says so

Any route with a boat in it now carries a "Ferry" label with the distance aboard, next to the time and length. A tester on Québec's Lower North Shore sent screenshots of the app offering the Bella Desgagnés, a weekly coastal supply ship, as a way to drive to Route 138, with nothing to say so. The map data files that service as a ferry; we have reported it, and in the meantime no route with a crossing is silent about it. "Avoid ferries" in Settings still keeps them out entirely.

Changed: fastest route first, and gravel says so

Routes are listed by travel time, quickest at the top and selected. Before, the map provider's preferred route came first, and it preferred pavement even when the gravel road was six minutes quicker, which a tester near Lloydminster showed us side by side with Google. Now an option with a real stretch of gravel, two kilometres or a tenth of the drive, gets a "Gravel 14 km" label so you can decide. "Avoid unpaved roads" in Settings still does exactly that.

Fixed

• The voice finishes its sentence. Since build 13 the app gives up to three prompts per turn, and each new one was cutting off whatever was still being spoken. On short blocks, or through a car's Bluetooth with a half-second lag, that was a sentence chopped in the middle, which sounds exactly like reception dropping. A tester in White Rock ran two tests that proved it was us. Each prompt now waits for the previous one; only "turn now" and rerouting interrupt.
• The route reframes after the keyboard goes. Closing the keyboard could leave a route framed against the taller map, showing a whole province. The route is framed again once the map has its final size.

Changed: north up is remembered

The compass button while navigating switches between following your heading and keeping north at the top. That choice now sticks between trips instead of resetting every time, for the people who, in one tester's words, find a map gimbal annoying.

Also

The version and build number now sit at the bottom of Settings, after two testers went looking for them and found nothing. That was my mistake; a bug report should be able to say which build it came from.

Canadian-owned

Added from your suggestions: Modern Komfort (Ottawa and Fredericton), Earth Angels Home Care (Bridgewater, NS), Whiskeyjack Boutique (Windsor), Understory Cafe (Toronto) and FrancoisLambert.one (Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix, QC).

And a note, because several of you asked: the hollow leaf on Tim Hortons is deliberate. Canadian roots and a brand run from Toronto, but the parent company's executive offices are in Miami and its largest shareholder is Brazilian. That is exactly the case the hollow leaf exists for. What the leaves mean has the full rule.

Known gaps

• CarPlay is built but waiting on Apple's approval, so it is not in this build. Android Auto's car-screen map is still unfinished and stays off.
• Landscape is not supported yet. It is on the list.
• Transit directions are not in the app and are not planned for launch.

Reply to the build's feedback or email hello@maplemaps.ca. Screenshots help enormously.