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I would happily use the Google Maps "share" feature, but I've yet to encounter any but the simplest of scenarios where it actually preserves the entire context of what I'm trying to share: the viewport, the start and destination, stops along the way, route choice, the time of day, all of it.

If I'm sending a screenshot it's because I want to send exactly what I see on my screen and not have my recipient's gmaps instance happily recompute a route it thinks is better or leave out the routing information I included, or switch from biking to driving directions, or whatever else.

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It's of course about lock-in. In the early Web-GIS era there were a few competing but popular notation standards for sharing lat/lon/zoom/<sometimes more> that was meant to be human readable and compatible with any WMS or similar.

Ah... to imagine a world where you could just share a coordinate string and people could open it in whatever map app/page they wanted. Geo URI is probably the closest we have today but I don't think much of anything outside the OS Geo community accepts it.

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I think that's actually a separate issue. What I specifically want from a Google Maps share URL is for it to be something I can send over text that will reproduce for my recipient exactly what I see.

A lat/lon/zoom/start?/dest? is kind of what a Google Maps share currently is, but it's neither an interoperable standard nor a reliable capture of the current state, so really the worst of both worlds.

(Also, hi AB! Nice to see you on here)

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Hi! I think I’m on the same page (give or take a zoom level) now. That is hard to do between separate geodatabases (hence CRS, placenames, geocoding, etc.) but Google isn’t even doing it within their own. And the only way I can obtain a link is to first place a pin, which wants to snap to nearby features. If I try to link a nice trail near my home it snaps to the quarry instead, making me look like a maniac with a terrible idea of what a “quiet walk” looks like.
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I've noticed similar things with off-road biking as well. Hydrocut generally does an okay job of snapping to the trails there since Google knows about them, but I was at Rondeau this weekend, and Google kept insisting I was on the adjacent Lakeshore Rd rather than the Harrison trail [1] that I was actually on. And this had real consequences because my youngest and I had become separated from the rest of our group and were trying to use a "share my location" through Signal, but the Android system-supplied location used was the one that had been unhelpfully snapped to the road.

[1]: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/ontario/harrison-trai...

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The other reason someone might want a screenshot specifically isn't to share a location, but to share a route. For instance, I might want to text a friend a screenshot of my driving route. Maps can sometimes route weirdly, so this is definitely a use-case I've needed before.
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Google does provide an interoperable standard for communicating lat/lng pairs via text: https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/

I believe it was their response to what3words. It's not as good at the "communicating by text" use case as what3words.

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I have a seething hatred for google maps links people send on mobile because Google no longer shows you the map in your mobile browser. It has for at least a year or twoo required Google Maps be installed to show you what the person linked to.
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It's not about what you want. It's about increasing engagement with the Google platform
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Today I noticed that Amazon Pharmacy decided to blank out my prescription info that I was screenshotting to send to my doctor. WTF.
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From the same lunacy that forces me to write my 30-something character Wi-Fi password on a "secure password field" that only shows me the last character, almost ensuring that I will make an unlimited number of typos and spend way too much time for something that should only take 30 seconds.

It's not clear who it is protecting against, it does not seem to be effective at protecting against anything at all, it is actively annoying to the user, and has no way to disable. Perfect example of the usual "security theater" feature.

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That seems oddly user hostile for apple. Especially for Wi-Fi passwords, which are a very common thing to share. Android has had a feature for years that generates the password as a plaintext-encoded QR code so you can share a wifi password without the other party even needing to type it in. And at least on my pixel 9, I have a toggle on the password entry field to toggle visibility.

I don't have an iOS device handy to compare against, but it surprises me that Apple wouldn't also recognize that Wi-Fi passwords in particular are extremely common things to share.

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Super secure!!1one

Unsecure: open Shortcuts, tap Gallery, search “Adjust Clipboard”. Add to Action Button folder and run from Action Button. - Or add “Dismiss Siri and Continue” action after “Get Clipboard” so you can say “Siri, Adjust Clipboard”.

Type in the still-unreasonably small window, tap Done, paste password. (Then clear clipboard I suppose and consider privacy implication if your clipboard syncs to Mac.)

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Was referring to the other point.

Could write my own phone operating system to not be subject to the iOS WiFi password field display settings though!

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Just need some help mining the ore to make sure it’s conflict free (OK would actually really like that if it were possible!)
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Apple gave too much power to iOS developers. They can use DRM strong enough that when your iPhone is open in iPhone Mirroring on your Mac, and you record your Mac screen with a third-party tool, the iPhone screen is blacked out.
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And if you take a screenshot of a product in the Amazon app it hijacks that and copies a link instead.
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I bet this is the inverse problem. Someone thought "oh a prescription is definitely privacy sensitive information, I should ensure the OS does the right thing" not realizing this counter productive behavior.
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Yeah, health information is interesting in general because it needs to be kept strictly secret from unauthorized people, but people also often need or want to share their own information and have every legal and moral right to do so.
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Good thing if you have GMaps open to the directions list while driving and tell Siri to take a screenshot, it doesn’t throw up a full page of nonsense over your directions that only Voice Control (not Siri alone) or a [potentially nonexistent] passenger could close.

Oh wait it absolutely does.

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Blame Apple for even allowing apps to be aware of the user taking a screenshot.

Just like their iCloud Keychain API that lets apps secretly track users across app reinstalls and device resets.

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Getting your account back on reinstall is good
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That's what a username and password are for. I'd rather not be forcibly tracked.
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I have 200+ different passwords stored in iCloud Keychain, each 20+ characters long. How am I supposed to remember all of those?

Do you use the same password on every site? How do you deal with data breaches?

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Major reason I don't use password managers that much.

> Do you use the same password on every site?

I use a password I can reconstruct in memory for sites I care about logging in by hand. If I don't, or don't mind resetting my password each time, I just use random garbage + whatever platform password manager is the one active today, with vague hopes that it'll still be there the next time I need to log in.

> How do you deal with data breaches?

Who ever cares about those? I'm yet to hear about anything impactful being released on those. It only matters if you actually do reuse the same e-mail/login and password combinations on both important sites and garbage sites. Which is something you should not. But 2FA and magic links tend to solve that vendor-side, these days.

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You can just use your own password manager and it wouldn't automatically do anything to apps on reinstall, right? Or a physical notebook, maybe.
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I’d love to have my own password manager that syncs between all my devices without relying on a third party server, but I don’t know of one. Do you?

A physical notebook is so easily lost I wouldn’t even consider it.

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I use KeepassXC and Syncthing. It's not a single password manager doing both the managing and syncing, but it works very well, and I sync between phone/laptop/desktop without any third parties.
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Do they work on iOS?
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Keepass database is an openly documented format, and there are several apps available on iOS that use it and can store the database in your iCloud (ie syncthing is not required, unless you need to sync to non-iOS devices)

Just search for keepass in the app store (Keepassium, KeePass Touch, Strongbox, ...)

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I see there are a lot of Keepass apps in the App Store. How do I trust the developers not to steal my credentials though?
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Great name.

Frank Dux was a fraud! :)

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It's massively confusing to users though.
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Maybe, so long as it's optional.
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I can fucking type my username and password, thank you.

And I prefer to see and choose the data an app stores on my fucking ICLOUD ACCOUNT. And fucking DELETE it when I want.

There's no way to do that from an iOS device.

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I thought your other comments about writing your own were sarcasm about how that's such a terrible situation if that's the kind of thing it would take.

But this one looks like you actually mean it? Yikes.

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Someone should follow you around saying that to you every time you complain about anything
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How else are they gonna track you? Think of the big tech
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