Places and map

Frameleaf turns the location in each photo into a place name, so you can browse by country, region and city, search for a place, and see everything on a map.

Place names stay on your server

Place names are worked out on your own server from a built-in copy of the GeoNames database of world places. Looking up a location never sends it to an outside service.

When Frameleaf reads a photo’s metadata, any photo with a latitude and longitude gets a city, a state or region, and a country. The database is refreshed with each minor Frameleaf upgrade.

The place names appear in a photo’s info panel, power Places in search, and help smart search.

Places

Places, under Explore in the sidebar, groups your photos by country, then state or region, then city. Search the list to jump to a place.

Search by place

• Type place: and a city in the search box: place:Banff sunset. Use quotes for names with spaces: place:"Lake Louise". See Search syntax.
• Ask in plain words: photos in Banff last summer. A place only works when it’s a real city name; phrases such as “my hometown” are ignored, and Frameleaf tells you.
• In the filter panel, the Places section filters by country, state and city.

The map

Map, under Explore, shows your photos as clusters that grow with the number of photos they hold. Hover over a cluster to preview it, and click to open its photos.

• Search this area finds photos in the part of the map you’re looking at.
• Map settings choose whether to include archived photos and your partners’ photos, and show how many photos have no location.
• Albums have their own map, showing only that album’s photos.
• Search results can be shown on a map too.
• On a shared link, the map ignores every filter, so a viewer never sees your favourites or your partners’ photos.

Where map tiles come from

The map background is loaded from Frameleaf’s tile server, tiles.frameleaf.cloud, in a light and a dark style. The tile server sees which areas of the map you look at, not your photos. An administrator can use a different tile server; see below.

Fix a location

Open a photo’s info panel and choose Edit location to move the pin. You can also type the City, State/region and Country yourself:

• Names you type stay, even when Frameleaf reads the file’s metadata again.
• Emptying a field clears it.
• If you move the pin without touching the names, Frameleaf works the names out again for the new spot.
• You can move a photo’s location, but not remove it.

To change the location of many photos at once, select them and choose to change the location from the selection bar.

Locked photos

Locked photos are left off the map and out of Places until you unlock your session.

For administrators

Map and place settings are in Administration, then Settings, then Map & GPS Settings:

Section	Setting	Default
Map	Enable map features	On
Map	Light style	https://tiles.frameleaf.cloud/v1/style/light.json
Map	Dark style	https://tiles.frameleaf.cloud/v1/style/dark.json
Reverse Geocoding	Enable reverse geocoding	On

Use your own map style

A map style is a style.json file that sets how the map looks and which tile server it loads from. You can change the colours, show or hide layers, or move to another tile provider. The default light and dark styles make a good starting point, and there are ready-made styles and online editors too.

1. Go to Administration, then Settings, then Map & GPS Settings, and open Map.
2. Paste the link to your style into Light style, Dark style, or both. Using two styles lets the map match whether Frameleaf is in light or dark mode.
3. Save, then reload the map.

Build a style with MapTiler

If you’d rather not write a style by hand, MapTiler has a visual editor:

1. Create a free account at cloud.maptiler.com.
2. Click New Map, choose a starter map and click Customize, or pick a Standard Map and customise that.
3. In the editor, change colours, hide layers, or add optional layers such as administrative, topographic or water.
4. Click Save at the top right and give the map a unique name.
5. Click Publish at the top right. MapTiler shows your changes side by side with the original first. It warns that publishing changes the map for every app using it; since nothing uses it yet, that’s fine.
6. Click the map’s name at the top left to open its details page, and copy the link under Use vector style. The link includes your personal MapTiler key.
7. Paste that link into Light style or Dark style in Frameleaf, as above.