Tutorial

When something goes wrong

Almost nothing here is unrecoverable. Every screen in a walk has a way forward, and when it doesn't, there's one page that does.

GPS says I'm not here, but I am

This is the most common one and it isn't your fault. Phone GPS in a city is routinely thirty to a hundred metres out — tall buildings bounce the signal, tunnels and stations kill it, and a phone that's been in a pocket takes a while to catch up.

So the app never blocks you on it. Every screen that names a stop carries an “I'm at [landmark] now →” button. Tap it. That credits the stop and brings up the planet, exactly as arriving would have.

You'll find it on the next-stop card, on the live walking map, in the full stop list, and on the help page. There's an equivalent “I'm at the Sun now” for the start of a walk.

Location switched off entirely? The walk still works — it just can't guess which stop you're at, so you tell it. Turning it back on: camera and location permissions.

I can't reach this stop

At true scale an outer planet lands wherever the astronomy puts it, which is sometimes across water, behind a fence, inside somewhere that's closed, or just two hours further than you have in you today.

Use “Can't get to [planet]? Skip this stop”. It confirms first, then moves the walk on to the next one.

What skipping does and doesn't do:

• It doesn't count as found. Your walk reads "6 of 8 found, 2 skipped" — honestly.
• It doesn't finish the walk. Only finds do that.
• It doesn't lock anything. Double back a month later and the stop is still there to claim.

Without this, one unreachable stop would point every future scan at the same place you can't get to, forever. That was the bug it was built to fix.

It credited the wrong planet

On a walk with a small Sun, the inner planets can sit close enough together that one GPS reading covers two of them. If you land on a stop page and it's named the wrong one, tap “Not the stop I'm at →” at the top. That un-does the credit and opens the stop list so you can mark the right one.

You can un-mark any stop at any time from the stop list, on the help page or on the mission map while the walk is active. If un-marking drops you back below the total, the walk stops being "finished" too — the numbers stay truthful.

When the app genuinely can't tell two nearby stops apart, it doesn't guess: it asks "which stop are you at?" and credits nothing until you pick.

I don't know where I'm supposed to be

Scan GO. That's its whole job — it works out where you are in the walk and shows you the matching screen, whether that's the Sun, a stop you're standing at, or directions to the next one. It works even with no location at all, in which case it falls back to the next stop you haven't found.

For the full picture, open the help page. It lists every stop in the walk with its status, and each one gives you directions, "I'm here", re-open in AR, un-mark, and skip. Nothing in a walk dead-ends: there's always a route back to a stop list.

The printed Lost? code goes to this page. If you're wondering why a code labelled "Lost?" doesn't just wipe your walk — that used to be exactly what it did, and being four hours into a mission and one tap from destroying it turned out to be a bad place to put a reset button.

I want to do a different walk

You have two options, and neither loses anything.

Switch to another walk

Starting a new mission while one is unfinished asks you to confirm, naming how far into the old one you got. Say yes and the new walk becomes the active one; the old one keeps every find, sitting where you left it. Walks you've started before are listed on the help page so you can jump back any time.

Put a walk down without picking a new one

“Put this walk down for now” clears the active pointer and keeps the progress. Useful when you're travelling: with nothing active, scanning your card in a new city offers you that city's walks instead of the half-finished one from home.

A finished walk gets out of the way on its own. Once complete it stops shadowing later scans, so your card goes back to offering whatever's nearby.

I want to start this walk over

Two ways, depending on where you are. On the finish screen there's Walk this again. Any other time, open the help page, open Start over at the bottom, and choose “Reset this walk to the beginning”.

Both erase this walk's finds and put you back at the Sun. Both confirm first, naming how many finds you're throwing away. Other walks are untouched.

I want to clear everything

Also under Start over on the help page: “Clear everything on this device”. This is the real factory reset, and it's deliberately easy to find — someone handed a second-hand phone, or testing a walk, or simply wanting a clean slate has a legitimate reason to be here.

It confirms first, and the confirmation counts exactly what goes:

• Every walk's progress, on every mission you've started.
• Any walk you saved to this device from the planner or from a shared link.
• Any unfinished builder drafts.

Afterwards the device behaves as if you'd never opened the site. Published walks are still out there, obviously — but a walk that only ever existed on this phone is gone for good. This cannot be undone. Export anything you built first: the planner has a share link and a JSON download for exactly this.

There is a developer page at /clear whose main control is that same wipe. Scanning the printed Lost? code sends you to the help page instead, on purpose.

Where my progress actually lives

On your phone. Specifically, in your browser's own storage on the device you're walking with. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and we could not look up your walk if you asked us to.

That's a deliberate trade, and it's worth knowing both halves:

Practically: walk a mission in your normal browser, not a private window, and don't clear site data mid-walk. If you do lose progress, nothing is broken — pick the mission again and use "I'm here" on the stops you've already done to catch back up.

Walks you built are the ones worth protecting, since they may exist nowhere else. In the planner, use Copy share link or the JSON download and mail it to yourself. Then it survives the phone.

The AR won't start

Working down from most to least likely:

• Camera permission. The usual cause. Turning it back on.
• You're on a desktop. Live AR needs a phone — desktop browsers aren't supported by the AR engine, and it'll say so rather than showing you a dead camera.
• The card is too small in the frame, or out of focus. Get closer so the printed border fills a decent part of the picture, and give the camera a second to focus.
• Light. Harsh glare across the card and deep shade are both harder than plain daylight. Tilting the card away from a reflection often fixes it instantly.
• You're pointing at the wrong side. It's the busy printed border — the wallet card's frame, or the back of the postcard. The postcard's artwork front isn't a tracking target.

If it just won't play ball, don't lose the moment. Take an ordinary photo with the card visible somewhere in the shot, and add the planet afterwards with the photo editor. Same true scale, works on any device, and you can do it on the train home.

Still stuck

Tell us what happened. Which walk, which stop, what your phone did — it's the fastest way for a real problem to get fixed for everyone behind you.