Option to hide other observations on maps (Observation Detail page, Identify)

Because when you’re looking at an observation that’s ID’d very coarsely - like “plants” - it takes a long time to load the map because of all the observations on it. When the ID is that coarse, a map for every plant isn’t very useful anyway - and even in other cases, I don’t use the info on other obserbations’ locations 90% of the time. It eats my phone data, and it makes my poor old laptop cry.

It would be nice to have a setting for “ask before loading other observations on maps on observation pages” which, when turned on, would replace the typical map with one that ONLY shows the observation whose page you’re looking at, with a little button that says “Show other {ID}s on map.”

edit: spelling

Totally agree here, some observation pages are super slow to finish loading, and the hold-up does appear to be the map display.

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I’d be in favor of this for coarse IDs now that inat has so much data. Not at the species or genus level though or at least it should default on imho

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Thoughts on merging these two requests and expanding this one to include the Identify page? They seem pretty similar. Like @jdmore said, I think it’s the observation pinpoints on the map, not the map itself, that makes loading slow.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/option-for-maps-off-browsing/2749 (cc: @er1kksen)

I agree, if @clockwood and @er1kksen are amenable.

Sounds find to me. From the title of the thread I thought it was about something totally different. I think these do compliment each other and a single solution could probably cover both.

Hey, I just saw this, but yeah, that’s fine with me as well

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I like the general concept, but when comes to how to implement it, i’d rather have a little switch on the map. switch it on, and it pulls in other observations. switch it off, and it will only display your observation. the last switch setting should probably be sticky at an account / device / UI level. so you could default it to off on your phone but it would be on on your desktop.

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Talking with our dev team this is something we’re interested in trying out, in some as yet undetermined form. Should help speed things up.

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Are you still having slow loading issues since when the maps were redesigned with the orange squares?

Sorry I just saw this. It’s a little bit slow but acceptably so - much, much better than it was

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I’m going to close this as the maps should load much more quickly now.