Crosposting from this post in #news-and-updates.
You should now see the following rectangle and circle tools in the map view at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations
If you select either one of those shapes, you can then draw that shape directly on the map to restrict your search’s area.
Here’s an example of using the circle tool. (Note that when drawing a circle, its center will be where you start drawing the circle.)
Start with:
And then draw a circle to limit your search area:
You can expand the shape by dragging one of the white points (yellow arrow) or drag the entire shape by using the move tool on the bottom (red arrow):
Note that when you draw, resize, or move a shape, the search URL also changes to reflect the search, so you can bookmark that shape search if you want. The shape is using the Bounding Box and Circle URL params described here.
Click on either Reset (yellow arrow) or on the X next to Custom Boundary (red arrow) to remove the shape.
Or you can just click on the Draw a rectangle/Draw a circle icon to make a new shape and remove the existing one.
Depending on character size, word length, and window size, the buttons might appear in a second row. For example, here’s what it looks like in Greek on my laptop:
