Everything the maps can do, in a couple of minutes: how to read the navigation that says where you are, how to find a single Pokémon, what the settings change, and what a link carries when you send one.
The navigation sits at the top of the panel and gains one chip for every step you took: the map, the place you tapped, the Pokémon you picked. The last chip is always what the panel underneath is answering, so one glance says what you are looking at.
Tap the ▾ on a chip to swap just that step and keep the rest: another region, another place inside it, another Pokémon. It is the fastest way to ask the same question about something else.
The ✕ on a chip drops that step alone and leaves everything to its left standing — so clearing the place keeps your Pokémon, and clearing the Pokémon keeps the place. The map itself has no ✕, because there is no view without a map.
Routes, cities and caves answer with their wild encounters — the method, the levels and the odds. Tall grass, water and cave floors are separate habitats, exactly as they are in the games.
Gyms, shops, Poké Centers, gifts and trades each carry their own mark, drawn where the game puts them. Tapping one answers with that thing, never with the whole town around it.
Type a Pokémon in your own language, or a route, city, cave or whole map. Picking a result opens its answer in the panel.
Every place that Pokémon lives is highlighted and listed. Selecting one focuses it: the camera flies there and the facts — method, levels, odds, editions — appear under the grid.
Switch families of markers on and off, or turn them all off at once to read the map bare. Some maps also carry the night and morning palettes from the games themselves.
Settings stay as you left them the next time you open that map. Reset puts the map back to how it first arrived.
Everything on screen — the map, the place, the Pokémon, the open panel — is in the address bar. Copy the URL and whoever opens it lands on exactly this view.
On a computer, right-clicking the map offers a link to that precise position. On a phone, the navigation at the top already describes the view the link will carry.
Inside a map, the help icon in the panel opens this same guidance without leaving your view, plus a legend naming every icon the map draws.