Release Notes

Changelog at a glance

Version 1.1.0 is the current App Store release. Version 1.2.0 is in TestFlight beta.

Version	Status	Highlights
1.2.0	🧪 TestFlight beta	AI plant & object identification, SOPFEU Québec wildfires, data-package QR import & AirDrop, Data Layers screen
1.1.1	TestFlight (superseded by 1.2.0)	Live Data preview, worldwide emergency feeds, location-permission alerts
1.1.0	✅ App Store · Apr 24, 2026	Live Data subscription (ADS-B, AIS, weather radar, cameras), NOTAM/TFR, battery & performance
1.0.0	App Store · Apr 18, 2026	Initial release — free standalone TAK client, peer-to-peer mesh, Canadian feeds, Apple Watch

Version 1.2.0 — In TestFlight beta (not yet on the App Store)

A feature release on top of 1.1.x. New ways to identify what's in front of you, follow Québec wildfires in real time, import overlays with one scan or tap, and share them just as easily.

📷 AI Plant & Object Identification

• On-device identification — new camera button on the main map captures a photo, the on-device Apple Vision classifier returns the top candidates, and picking one drops a Cursor-on-Target marker at your GPS position with the species or object name. Fully offline, photos never leave the phone.

🔥 SOPFEU Québec Wildfire Feed

• Free Québec wildfire data — active wildfires sourced from SOPFEU (Société de protection des forêts contre le feu). Severity reflects the fire condition (Out of Control = Major; Being Held / Under Control = Moderate). Enable under Settings → Data Feeds → Natural Hazards. Often reports faster than NRCAN inside SOPFEU coverage.

📦 Data Package Import & Sharing

• Import via QR code — new Import via QR Code action on the Data Packages screen. Scan a QR holding an HTTPS URL pointing at a .zip data package; the app downloads it with built-in size and ZIP validation, then imports it through the existing parser.
• Open from anywhere — TAKAware Can now registers as a target for .zip, .kml, and .kmz files. Use Open In or Share To from Files, Mail, Safari downloads, AirDrop, or any other app to import overlays directly.
• Share exported packages — after exporting a data package, a prominent Share Package button appears so the .zip can be sent via AirDrop, Messages, Mail, or saved to Files.

🛰 Server Status Clarity

• Separate certificate and connection indicators — server profile rows in Settings now show two indicators: a key icon for certificate enrollment state and a network icon for connection state. When enrollment fails, the row caption surfaces the real reason (e.g. "Unauthorized — check username/password" for a 401) instead of a generic red dot.

🛠 Reliability & Bug Fixes

• TAK Server reconnect after identity change — fixes a TCP send-stuck state after a transient identity issue; the connection now resumes cleanly when a new client certificate is enrolled.
• Apple Watch on watchOS 26 — refreshed AppIcon catalogs so the Watch app installs cleanly on the watchOS 26 deployment target.
• Steadier overflow menu — the map overflow menu (… button) no longer resets its scroll position on every GPS update, so long menus stay where you left them.
• Reliable enrollment with self-signed servers — reworked the certificate-enrollment networking so the TLS handshake with OpenTAKServer and FreeTAKServer completes instead of failing; QR and username/password enrollment to those servers now succeeds.
• Full-screen on iPad — fixed the letterboxing that appeared after rotating; the app now fills the screen and supports Split View multitasking.
• Camera preview rotation — the plant & object identification camera preview now follows the device orientation as you rotate.
• Feeds load on launch — Weather Stations and Traffic Cameras appear automatically at startup, with no manual refresh.
• Automatic feed cleanup — stale feed markers, such as days-old road incidents, are cleared automatically.

🗂 Data Layers Screen

• One screen for every layer — a new Data Layers entry on the map overflow menu lists every imported KML overlay and data package, each with its own row and direct toggle. No more drilling into separate sub-screens to manage them.
• Per-row info modal — tap the info button on a layer row to see source metadata (filename, imported date, SHA-256 hash, remarks for data packages) without opening the management screen.
• Centre map on a layer — the info modal for a KML overlay includes a Centre map on this layer button that zooms the map to fit the layer's full extent, useful for confirming where a freshly imported KMZ actually lives.
• Refresh now for dynamic layers — Traffic Cameras and Weather Stations detail screens get a Refresh now button to re-fetch immediately instead of waiting for the next polling cycle.

🌪 Hazard Feeds & Map

• Live hurricane feed restored — active tropical systems load from the US National Hurricane Center again.
• Distinct hazard icons — earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, weather, and Ontario 511 roadwork each render with their own map icon, and carry the correct Cursor-on-Target incident type, instead of a generic dot.
• Last seen in the marker picker — tapping a cluster of overlapping markers now shows when each was last updated.

⌚ Apple Watch Ultra

• Submersion depth vital — record water depth and pressure as a Cursor-on-Target vital.

⚓ Marine & Nautical Charts

• Marine charts layer — a new optional layer (Map Options → Marine & Nautical) with high-resolution depth/bathymetry (CHS NONNA, Canada), US nautical charts (NOAA ENC), and global seamarks (OpenSeaMap); transparent over your basemap, with an opacity slider and offline tile caching.

Version 1.1.1 — TestFlight beta (superseded by 1.2.0)

A small reliability and App Store compliance release on top of 1.1.0.

🛠 Reliability & Bug Fixes

• Fresh-install crash — fixed a Core Data migration error that prevented some first-time installs from reaching the main screen
• Paywall clarity — Terms of Use and Privacy Policy links are now visible directly on the subscription sheet; subscription value wording tightened
• Live Data preview in What's New — first-launch and post-update What's New now includes a slide describing the Live Data subscription so users see the value before subscribing
• Entitlement cleanup — removed an unregistered App Group entitlement that was blocking CI archive builds, plus an unused restricted multicast network entitlement
• Remote ID debug logging — developer-facing improvements to BLE Remote ID scan diagnostics

Version 1.1.0 — April 24, 2026 (current App Store release)

Adds an optional Live Data subscription unlocking real-time feeds, plus a comprehensive set of performance, battery, and reliability improvements. All core TAK features remain free.

📡 Live Data Subscription

$1.99 USD/month or $14.99 USD/year with a 1-month free trial on the yearly plan.

• ADS-B aircraft tracking — live aircraft positions worldwide. Per-type filters (fixed-wing, helicopter, UAV, glider, balloon), altitude range slider, flight route arc
• AIS vessel tracking — live ship positions worldwide via AISStream.io. Ships show heading, speed, nav status, and destination
• Aircraft & vessel search — searchable list with unified filter (All / Aircraft / Vessels)
• Vessel watchlist — star any vessel to track it globally regardless of map position. Search by name or MMSI
• Weather radar overlay — live precipitation tiles from ECCC GeoMet (no key), RainViewer (no key), or OpenWeatherMap (free key). Rain, snow, satellite, wind, temperature, and pressure layers
• Traffic cameras — highway cameras from Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec 511. Tap to view still or live video
• Weather stations — NOAA and Weather Company personal weather station data
• Australia fires (NSW RFS) — major fire incidents from the NSW Rural Fire Service with category severity
• USA wildfires (NIFC) — active wildfire perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center
• New Zealand earthquakes (GeoNet) — felt earthquakes MMI 3+ from GeoNet, New Zealand's geohazard agency
• Worldwide disasters (GDACS) — UN Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System — earthquakes, cyclones, floods, wildfires
• NOTAM / TFRs — aviation notices and Temporary Flight Restrictions within 100 nm of your location (FAA per-user API key)
• Restore purchases — sync subscription across devices

🗺 Map & Search

• Collapsible position panel — tap the chevron to collapse your coordinate/heading/speed readout; tap any coordinate to snap the map to your location
• Home button with favorites submenu — the location icon in the position panel jumps to your position, or opens a submenu to jump to a pinned contact or favorite when any are active
• Sort map search by recently updated — toggle button in the search toolbar to switch from alphabetical to most-recently-seen order
• Dynamic search prompt — the search bar hint lists only the feed types currently enabled (contacts, aircraft, vessels, cameras)
• SOS hidden in standalone mode — the SOS button no longer appears when there is no TAK server connection and no mesh peers, reducing clutter in offline use

🌍 Free Data Feeds

• Worldwide earthquakes 7-day (USGS) — M2.5+ earthquakes globally for the past 7 days with no proximity filter, so every event appears on the map regardless of your location. Includes magnitude, depth, PAGER alert level, tsunami flag, felt count, and a link to the USGS event page

🔋 Battery & Performance

• Adaptive GPS accuracy — three-tier model: full precision in the foreground; best accuracy with a 10 m distance filter when backgrounded with an active TAK connection; reduced to 100 m / 50 m filter when backgrounded with no connection. Keeps GPS off the high-drain polling cycle when your position isn't being broadcast
• Force High Accuracy toggle — opt in to always-on full GPS precision regardless of background state (Settings → Location Reporting)
• Batch aircraft & vessel database writes — all feed markers now fetched in a single IN-predicate query instead of one query per contact, reducing Core Data overhead during busy feeds
• Stable feed marker IDs — markers for NWS alerts, wildfires, earthquakes, and NOTAMs now use deterministic string IDs instead of hash values that changed every app launch, eliminating unnecessary upserts and re-notifications on restart
• Feeds suspended in background correctly — non-critical feeds pause when the app is backgrounded and no server is connected, avoiding background network wake-ups

🛠 Reliability & Bug Fixes

• Automatic feed retry — all data feeds (severe weather, wildfires, vessels) now retry on transient network errors with exponential back-off, keeping the map current on spotty connections
• TAK server reconnection — fixed a race condition where simultaneous connection attempts from multiple threads could corrupt the connection pool
• Feed marker flicker on refresh — resolved a race where the "known incidents" set was cleared on a different thread from the one writing new markers, causing duplicate notifications
• AIS vessel race condition — vessel cache mutations and the flush timer now run on a dedicated serial queue, preventing crashes from concurrent dictionary access
• Timer thread safety — polling timers are now created on the main run loop, fixing a category of intermittent failures where feed updates would silently stop
• Subscription unlock — paywall now dismisses immediately after purchase completes instead of waiting for the next Transaction update event

🔒 Security

• App Transport Security tightened — removed the blanket NSAllowsArbitraryLoads exemption; all TAK connections use NWConnection directly and are unaffected
• Keychain migration — API keys (OpenWeatherMap, Weather Underground), TOFU server certificates, and OTS session tokens moved from UserDefaults to the iOS Keychain
• TLS 1.2 minimum — enforced across all NWConnection paths (TAK server streams and API client)
• Input validation — BLE mesh reassembly buffer capped (max 500 chunks, 100 concurrent messages); aircraft, vessel, and alert coordinates validated for WGS84 bounds before use; XML text buffers capped at 64 KB per element
• Credential encoding — OpenTAKServer login credentials are now percent-encoded before transmission, fixing auth failures for passwords containing special characters

Version 1.0.0 — April 18, 2026

TAKAware Can is a full-featured situational awareness app for iPhone and iPad, built on the open-source TAK Aware platform. Version 1.0.0 ships with a complete feature set — standalone or connected to any TAK server.

🗺️ Map & Navigation

• 10 basemaps — Apple Standard, Satellite, Hybrid, Flyover (3D photogrammetry), ESRI Satellite, ESRI Ocean, OpenStreetMap, OpenTopoMap, Carto Dark Matter, OpenSeaMap
• 3D map perspective — two-finger drag tilts the map; Flyover mode renders full photogrammetry city models
• Gyroscope-driven pitch — tilt the phone to adjust the horizon angle without touching the screen
• Go-To location — coordinate and address entry supporting DMS, DDM, MGRS, Decimal, UTM, and address search. Drop a point or navigate directly
• Turn-by-turn navigation — drive, hike, or drone modes with voice guidance, elevation profile, alternate routes, and off-route detection
• Range & bearing lines — distance, compass bearing, and elevation delta to any contact
• Range rings — concentric distance rings around any map point
• Geo-fence creation — draw polygon geofences with enter/exit notifications
• Offline tile caching — download map tiles for offline use
• Compass toggle — switch between north-up and heading-up map rotation
• Map search — search contacts by callsign and zoom to ~1 km view on result
• Radial context menu — long-press or single-tap any info bubble to access chat, navigate, route, range, elevation, and more

📡 Situational Awareness

• Floating info bubbles — real-time callsign, team, role, battery, altitude, and last-seen age for tracked contacts
• Breadcrumb tracks — follow the trail of any moving contact
• Info bubble last-seen age — compact relative timestamp (now / 3m / 2h / 1d) updated every 30 seconds with a colour-coded freshness dot
• CoT type labels — human-readable CoT type name in contact list and detail views
• Self-status panel — expandable overlay showing your own vitals and sensor data
• Sensor broadcasts — barometer, magnetometer, and activity recognition included in outgoing CoT
• Auto-switch CoT type — automatically changes to vehicle type when driving, restores on foot
• Contact list — live last-seen time, distance, and directional arrow relative to map orientation. Filters to TAK operators only
• Bubbled CoTs Only filter — hide all contacts without a pinned info bubble for clutter-free tracking

🛣️ Free Data Feeds

• 511 road incidents — construction, closures, and accidents for Ontario, Quebec, BC (DriveBC), and Alberta as CoT markers
• Alert Ready (National) — Canada's emergency alert system: amber alerts, severe weather, wildfires, evacuations, earthquake EEW
• Active Wildfires (NRCAN) — Canadian wildfire hotspots with severity based on hectares and control stage

🌐 Mesh Networking

• Device-to-device CoT exchange — no server required. Auto-discovery over WiFi and BLE
• BLE background mesh — maintains mesh connectivity when the app is backgrounded. AES-GCM encryption via pre-shared key
• Multi-hop relay & bridge mode — relay CoT across devices; bridge mesh traffic to a connected TAK server with smart deduplication
• Mesh listen mode — receive CoT from peers without broadcasting your own position
• Mesh peer notification — in-app alert when a new peer joins

🔗 TAK Server Connectivity

• Multi-server support — configure and connect to multiple TAK servers simultaneously
• Three connection methods — mTLS certificate enrollment, OTS username + password (OpenTAKServer / CloudTAK), and plain TCP (FreeTAKServer, port 8087)
• One-screen server setup — scan QR, enter URL, upload data package, or configure manually. App auto-detects connection type
• QR code onboarding — supports OTS 5-field iTAK, ATAK tak:// deep links, iTAK 4-field, and signed session-token URLs (compatible with OpenTAKServer and CloudTAK deployments)
• Channels & Data Sync — browse server channels and download mission data packages per server
• Video feeds — incoming RTSP video stream support; outbound RTMP streaming to connected servers

💬 Chat & Contacts

• Chat with private threads — group channels and direct messages with a thread-based inbox
• Chat persistence — message history preserved across sessions
• Push notifications — alerts for chat messages, emergency beacons, feed incidents, and geofence events

⌚ Apple Watch

• Live health vitals — heart rate, SpO2, steps, and active calories broadcast via CoT. Per-vital sharing controls
• Emergency beacon — one-tap emergency broadcast from the Watch with rate limiting
• Compass & speed — Watch magnetometer-driven compass with live speed display
• Chat with dictation — reply to messages from your wrist using voice or free-text
• Adaptive vitals — passive collection by default; auto-escalates to live mode during an emergency

📤 Export & Import

• TAK data package export — all CoT as a standard .zip data package
• KML track export — breadcrumb tracks as KML for use in other mapping tools
• CSV contact export — contact list as CSV
• Chat log export — full chat history as plain text
• CoT JSON import — import CoT from JSON for offline device-to-device transfer
• Photo attachment — attach camera captures or library photos to CoT markers and share via mesh
• USB file sharing — access app files via Finder and Files app

🔒 Security

• BLE mesh encrypted with AES-GCM when a pre-shared key is configured
• Log files and Core Data encrypted at rest
• TLS 1.2 minimum enforced on all server connections
• Keychain credentials use ThisDeviceOnly protection
• BLE advertising hides callsign to prevent passive identification

Supported Devices

• iPhone — iOS 17.0 and later (iPhone X and newer)
• iPad — iPadOS 17.0 and later
• Apple Watch — watchOS 10.0 and later (Series 5 and newer)

Roadmap

Planned features for upcoming releases. Dates and scope may change.

The AI plant/object identification, SOPFEU wildfire feed, server-status clarity, and Data Layers work is already in the 1.2.0 beta above. The items below are still ahead.

Version 1.3.0 — Localisation & Battery

Friendlier for non-English users and easier on battery in the field.

• French Canadian localisation (fr-CA) Phase 1 — onboarding, main screen, settings, and What's New translated to fr-CA. Foundation infrastructure lets future languages (Spanish, German) drop in with no app changes.
• IMU-based GPS suspension — uses Core Motion activity recognition to pause GPS polling while stationary, cutting battery drain significantly on long stakeouts or briefings.

Version 1.3.1 — Off-Grid & Satellite

Keeping CoT flowing when the network is constrained or absent.

• Carrier-constrained satellite optimisation — marks the app as satellite-optimised so position, chat, and emergency CoT keep flowing on carrier satellite links (T-Mobile Starlink Direct-to-Cell and similar) while bulk traffic is deferred. In development.
• Apple Watch Ultra water depth — broadcasts submersion depth, pressure, and water temperature as a CoT vital for swiftwater, flood, and maritime SAR. In development.
• Per-feed Device/Server source selection — when connected to a TAK server that already injects a feed, the device can defer to the server feed instead of polling the source directly.
• Garmin inReach satellite positioning — broadcasts CoT messages via Iridium when the phone has no cellular or Wi-Fi (pending Garmin SDK partnership).

Version 1.3.2 — Multi-Server UX

Cleaning up the TAK Server enrollment flow for users who connect to more than one environment.

• One-shot enrollment retry — enrollment runs once on profile creation with a clear success or failure surface, plus an explicit Re-enroll button instead of silent retry loops.
• Manual cert mode — per-server toggle to skip the online CSR enrollment endpoint entirely and use an imported .p12 data package instead, for hardened environments that disable online enrollment.
• Allow hostname mismatch — per-server toggle for staging environments whose certificate CN does not match the public hostname.