Cachly 8.1 with CarPlay
Cachly 8.1 has been approved by Apple and will be released on January 5th @ 10 am Pacific.
We’re excited to announce the upcoming release of Cachly 8.1. This release brings something geocachers have been requesting for years: full CarPlay support. Now you can search for geocaches, navigate to them, and even log your finds — all from your vehicle’s dashboard.
We’ve also introduced Trips, a powerful new way to organize your geocaching adventures, along with voice-activated logging, improved offline maps, and dozens of quality-of-life improvements.
CarPlay: Geocaching on the Road
CarPlay transforms how you geocache while traveling. Whether you’re on a road trip hunting for new finds or exploring a new city, Cachly’s CarPlay integration keeps geocaching at your fingertips without distracting from the road.
Find Geocaches as You Drive
The CarPlay map displays nearby geocaches in real-time as you travel. Cache pins appear with familiar icons showing the cache type — Traditional, Multi, Mystery, Event, and more. Zoom in and cache names appear right on the map, making it easy to spot that highly-favorited cache you’ve been meaning to grab.
The map supports intuitive gestures on compatible displays: pinch to zoom and two-finger rotation let you explore the area naturally. A cache count button shows how many geocaches are currently visible, and tapping it reveals a scrollable list with all the details you need: distance, difficulty, terrain, size, favorite points, and your highlight colors.
NOTE: Limitations of CarPlay prevent tapping of map pins. Apple does not allow this.
Navigate Your Way
When you’re ready to grab a cache, Cachly gives you options. Choose from:
- Pro Offline Maps — Cachly’s built-in navigation using your downloaded offline maps
- Apple Maps — Hand off to Apple’s navigation
- Google Maps — For those who prefer Google’s routing
- Waze — Community-powered navigation with real-time traffic
Set your preferred app once, and Cachly remembers your choice. Navigation couldn’t be simpler.
Multi-Cache Routes
Planning a power trail or a day of caching? CarPlay lets you build routes with multiple stops. Browse the cache list, tap Select, choose the geocaches you want to visit, and hit Navigate. Cachly guides you from cache to cache, showing your progress (“2 of 7”) and automatically advancing to the next destination.
If you disconnect from CarPlay— your route is saved. When you reconnect, navigation picks up right where you left off.
Log Without Touching Your Phone
After finding a cache, tap Log Cache on the CarPlay screen and speak your log message. Cachly captures your words, lets you review them with text-to-speech playback, and submits your log — all without touching your phone.
Voice logging supports all the log types you’d expect:
- Found It
- Did Not Find
- Write Note
- Attended (for Events)
- Will Attend
- Webcam Photo Taken
Your log templates from the iOS app work here too. Set up a template with your signature sign-off, and Cachly combines your voice message with the template automatically. Prefer to skip the voice input entirely? There’s a setting for that — submit logs with just your template in a couple of taps.
No internet connection? No problem. Logs save as drafts and sync when you’re back online.
Proximity Alerts
Enable proximity alerts and Cachly notifies you when you’re approaching a geocache — perfect for those serendipitous finds while driving through unfamiliar territory. Fine-tune alerts to only notify you about caches with 2 or more favorite points, so you’re alerted to the good ones without constant interruptions.
Trips in CarPlay
Your offline lists (called Trips in CarPlay) are fully accessible in CarPlay. Before heading out, create a Trip in the iOS app, and they’ll appear in the CarPlay Trips browser. Each Trip shows the cache count and last update date, and you can display all caches from a Trip directly on the map.
Trips support custom sorting, so you can arrange caches in your preferred order on your iPhone and CarPlay respects that order. Or sort by distance to always see the nearest caches first.
CarPlay Settings
Customize your CarPlay experience with a full settings menu:
- Filter options: exclude finds, exclude hides, sync with iPhone filters
- Three pin style options
- Voice logging preferences
- Navigation app selection
- Proximity alert configuration
- Sorting
- Alerts
Getting Started with CarPlay
CarPlay is a Cachly Pro feature. If you’re already a Pro subscriber, simply connect your iPhone to your CarPlay-compatible vehicle and tap the Cachly icon on your dashboard.
For the best experience:
1. Download Trips before your drive — Prepare offline lists with full cache data while on WiFi.
2. Download offline maps— Grab map regions for your destination area.
3. Set up log templates — Configure your templates in the iOS app for faster logging.
4. Create and Edit Trips — Create and update the lists you want accessible.
Pro Offline Maps Improvements
We’ve continued refining our offline vector maps with several visual improvements:
- Smarter land cover — As you zoom in, land cover layers become more transparent, revealing finer map details underneath.
- More trails — Updated styles now display additional path and trail types that were previously missing.
- Toggleable layers — New settings let you show or hide planet landcover and hill shading to customize your map appearance.
- Dark mode fixes — Resolved issues with overlapping landcover in dark map styles.
Under the Hood
Cachly 8.1 includes significant technical improvements you’ll feel even if you don’t see them:
- Memory management overhaul — Major reductions in memory usage mean smoother performance, especially when browsing large offline lists or viewing many caches on the map.
- State restoration rebuild — We’ve rebuilt state restoration using modern Apple APIs. When you switch away from Cachly and come back, you’ll return exactly where you left off.
- Stability improvements — Dozens of crash fixes and edge case resolutions make 8.1 our most stable release yet.
Thank You
Cachly 8.1 represents months of development and testing, and we couldn’t have done it without our incredible beta testing community. Your feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions shaped CarPlay into something we’re truly proud of.
As always, we’d love to hear what you think. Find a bug? Have an idea? Reach out through the app or visit our support channels.
Happy caching — and happy driving!
— The Cachly Team
Note: Cachly 8.1 is requires an active Cachly Pro subscription.
