Build 17: a LOCAL badge for independent shops, and the emails of a single day

Independent shops get a red LOCAL badge, starting with Edmonton and Calgary. Then ten fixes from one day of your emails, arriving in your own driveway among them.

Testers last had build 16, on iPhone and Android, from 8 September. This one has a single new thing and then a list, and the list is almost entirely the emails of one Sunday.

New: a LOCAL badge for independent shops

Search results and place cards now mark independent businesses with a red LOCAL badge: one business, at one address, licensed by its city, with no chain behind it. It starts with Edmonton and Calgary, because both cities publish their business licences as open data, and it grows city by city as more of them do.

A local shop gets LOCAL and never a leaf. The leaf is a claim about ownership we have checked; the badge says only that this is the one shop on the block, which is what makes it possible for tens of thousands of small businesses at once. Nobody has to research who owns a bakery for the bakery to count.

The whole list is searchable on the site: the Canadian brands, and now the local independents by city and category, with a "Not right?" link beside every entry. That link is how the badge stays honest, so use it. maplemaps.ca/canadian

New: Coffee, not just Tim Hortons

The Tim Hortons quick button is now Coffee. A tester in Aurora pointed out that a button for one chain gave visibility to one chain, when the point of the app is the other kind of business. It now finds every café nearby: independents, Canadian chains and Tim Hortons alongside them, each with whatever mark it has earned.

New: the map follows you while you browse

With no route running, the map used to sit still while you drove off the edge of it. Now it keeps you centred until you drag it away, and the locate button brings it back. Two testers asked in the same week.

Fixed: arriving

A tester in Rivière-Beaudette sent a screenshot from his own driveway: the app saying "rerouting" over and over, and asking him to turn onto the next street. The map had placed his house on that street, fifty-five metres from where it is, and the app was trying to reach a pin it could not get to. The same happened to him in a golf club parking lot.

Two fixes. Navigation now ends when you are next to the pin, or when you have stopped within 120 metres of it, whichever comes first. And there is no rerouting at all within the last 200 metres: a parking lot is not a wrong turn. The misplaced address has gone to the map provider.

Fixed: the route you picked stays picked

A tester driving Frankford to Flinton chose the second route, the one she knew, and heard directions for the first. What happened is that one early off-route fix on a rural road triggered a reroute, and the reroute asked the map for its preferred route, which was the first. A reroute now asks for alternatives and keeps to the road you chose wherever it can.

Changed: roads called by one name

The map hands us every name a road has, and the voice was reading all of them. "Macdonald Cartier Freeway/ON-401 E" is now Highway 401 East. "County Road 2/ON-34/ON-2/County Rd-34" is County Road 2. Glenmore Trail stays Glenmore Trail rather than gaining an "AB-8" nobody uses. A signpost drops the province and keeps at most two destinations. The letter "E" at the end of a name is now East, and "Tr" is Trail, which three testers in Calgary and Ontario asked for in the same day.

Fixed

Android back button. It closed the app, from Settings and from a place card. It now steps back one screen, and does nothing while navigating, where End is a deliberate press.
The map no longer spins at a red light. Stopped, the map turned to whatever the compass said, which on some phones was north. It now holds your last heading.
Android arrow lower on the screen. The position arrow sat in the middle; it now sits in the lower part, as on iPhone, so the road ahead gets the space.
Route options on narrow phones. The arrival time ran over the traffic badges. They wrap now.

Also

The "Suggest a Canadian-owned business" link in Settings opens the list on the site, with the form, instead of an email draft. MEC has a solid leaf again: it was bought back by a Canadian investor group in May 2025, and a tester sent the press release.

Known gaps

CarPlay is built but waiting on Apple's approval. Landscape is not supported yet. Multiple stops on a route are on the list, and after this week's emails they are near the top of it.