Platform Updates
Changelog
Follow along as Loclie grows. New features, improvements, and updates for Australia's regional community platform.
April 2026
Photo galleries with image rotation, redesigned detail pages, contextual help links, role-based access, nearby discovery, event reminders, improved search quality, and 12 new platform features.
Photo Galleries
Multi-image galleries (up to 15 photos)
Businesses, clubs, and groups can now upload up to 15 photos to showcase their venue from every angle. Gallery images appear in a thumbnail-strip carousel on detail pages and rotate with elegant crossfades on browse page cards.
Live card preview for image uploads
When uploading photos in the manage portal, a live preview shows exactly how the image will appear on the consumer app's listing card — complete with dark gradient overlay and text positioning.
Redesigned Detail Pages
Floating overlap card
Entity detail pages now feature a glass card that floats over the hero image, displaying the entity name, badges, review stars, and quick action buttons (call, website, directions, share) in one place.
Two-column desktop layout
On larger screens, detail pages split into a main content column (description, campaigns, experiences, reviews) and a sticky sidebar (opening hours, contact info, group stats).
Enhanced opening hours
Today's opening hours are highlighted with an orange background and coloured status dots (green for open, red for closed) for instant visual feedback.
Share button on every listing
Every entity detail page now has a Share button that uses your device's native share sheet, or copies the link to clipboard on desktop.
Nearby Discovery
What's Nearby section
Business and club detail pages now show a scrollable row of nearby businesses and attractions within 2km, with distance badges — helping visitors discover more of the local area.
Nearby Towns on town pages
Town detail pages now display up to 8 nearby towns within 50km in a compact grid with distances, encouraging exploration beyond a single town.
Seasonal highlights
Town pages show a 'What's in Season' section with currently-seasonal experiences and this week's events.
Search Quality Improvements
Smarter search reranking
Business categories and attributes (serves food, licensed, outdoor area, etc.) are now included in search relevance scoring, ensuring restaurants and pubs surface correctly for dining queries.
Open Now filter
The businesses browse page now has an 'Open Now' toggle that instantly filters to only show businesses currently open.
Enhanced follow-up suggestions
After Ask Bar results load, follow-up question chips are now larger and more prominent with a 'Keep exploring' header, encouraging deeper discovery.
Quick-favourite from search results
Heart icons on Ask Bar results let you save favourites without navigating to the detail page first.
Role-Based Access & Management
Role badges across dashboards
The manage portal now clearly shows your role (Owner, Moderator, Staff, Delegate, Member) on every business, club, and group card. Delegates can see and manage entities they help with.
Contextual guide links
Every page in the manage portal now links to the relevant help guide. New guide pages cover reviews management, experiences, and updated club creation with organisation types.
Notifications & Reminders
Event reminders
Subscribers to events now receive an in-app notification the evening before the event starts, with venue details and a direct link.
Group activity digest
Group members receive daily digest notifications when new posts appear in their groups.
Instant admin badge updates
The admin portal's pending approval badge now updates instantly after approving or rejecting items, instead of waiting up to 60 seconds.
User Experience Polish
Profile avatar display
Your profile photo now appears in the app header and profile page, pulled from your account. A 'Change photo' link is available on the profile page.
Recently Viewed on dashboard
Your dashboard now shows a scrollable row of recently viewed businesses and clubs for quick return visits.
Consistent back navigation
Back buttons throughout the app are now high-contrast glassmorphic pills that show context-specific text ('Back to Businesses', 'Back to results') based on where you came from.
Town hero banners
Town pages now feature a wider hero banner with gradient overlay and town name, with a gradient fallback for towns without photos.
Follow & What's On Notifications (earlier in April)
Follow businesses and clubs
New Follow button (Bell icon) on business and club pages. Following is separate from favouriting — it subscribes you to What's On notifications so you never miss their campaigns and updates.
What's On popup — 1-tap access
The centre pin in the navigation footer now opens the What's On popup with a single tap. Shows campaigns and events in time-based sections (On Now, This Week, Next Week) plus a new 'From Your Follows' section showing updates from entities you follow in other towns.
Schools on Loclie
School registration
Schools can now register on Loclie as a new type of club. Schools get their own dashboard with contextual labels, campaign creation for school notices, and member management for parents and staff.
Invite codes for easy joining
Schools (and other clubs) can generate shareable invite codes. Share a link like app.loclie.com.au/join/ABC123 in newsletters — parents click and join instantly. Codes can grant staff or member roles, have expiry dates, and usage limits.
Staff and member roles
Extended member roles: owner, staff, moderator, and member. Schools can issue separate invite codes for staff (teachers) and members (parents/students) with appropriate access levels.
Subscriber-Only Content
Campaign visibility controls
Schools and organisations can create campaigns visible only to their members and followers. A 'Subscribers Only' badge with lock icon appears on restricted campaigns. Public campaigns remain visible to everyone.
Attractions Upgrade
Hero-style attraction cards
Attractions now display as full hero cards with gradient backgrounds, category badges, distance from user, and Directions buttons — matching the visual quality of business cards across the app, Ask Bar results, and the attractions browse page.
Navigation footer fix
The Attractions button in the Explore menu now links correctly. All five Explore items (Town, Amenities, Attractions, Journey, Businesses) are properly positioned.
Business description enrichment
Over 1,000 businesses enriched with AI-generated descriptions using web research, dramatically improving search relevance for queries like 'lunch options' or 'Chinese food'.
Campaign semantic search
Campaigns now have embeddings and participate in the Ask Bar's hybrid search pipeline. Queries like 'any specials this weekend?' can surface relevant promotions alongside business results.
Attractions Entity (earlier in April)
New entity type: Attractions
Over 77,000 tourist destinations imported from OpenStreetMap including parks, walking trails, lookouts, museums, beaches, memorials, nature reserves, public art, and playgrounds across 22 categories. Each attraction has its own detail page with description, address, and map.
Amenity/Attraction split
Parks and playgrounds moved from amenities to attractions, creating a clearer distinction: amenities are infrastructure you need (toilets, hospitals, parking), attractions are places you want to visit.
Area-wide attraction search
Attractions are searched across all towns in your local area, not just your primary town, since they tend to be sparse per individual town.
Ask Bar v13 — LLM-as-Selector
Streaming pipeline with visual feedback
The Ask Bar now streams results via Server-Sent Events. As your query processes, the mascot animation changes colour through three stages: blue (searching), amber (ranking), and purple (selecting best matches). You see exactly what's happening instead of a blank loading spinner.
8 entity type search
The Ask Bar now searches across businesses, events, amenities, attractions, jobs, clubs, groups, and experiences simultaneously.
Campaign type intelligence
"What's on?" queries now correctly prioritise event-type campaigns, while "deals" and "specials" queries prioritise promotion-type campaigns.
Temporal search
Queries like "this weekend", "tonight", or "in May" now filter events by date range at the database level for more accurate results.
Opening hours awareness
Time-sensitive queries like "dinner tonight" check business opening hours and exclude businesses that are closed.
Clarification for broad queries
Ambiguous queries like "What's on?" or "Things to do" now show clickable refinement options instead of guessing what you meant.
Quick search typeahead
As you type, a dropdown shows instant entity matches by name before you press Enter.
Campaign System Upgrade
Four campaign types
Campaigns now have distinct types: event, promotion, announcement, and offer. Each type is filtered and displayed appropriately in search results and the What's On feed.
Campaign metadata
Campaigns can now be tagged with attributes: kid-friendly, has food, live entertainment, outdoor, free entry, and age group.
Compulsory opening hours
Businesses must now provide opening hours when registering, ensuring the AI search can accurately answer time-sensitive queries.
Entity Framework v2
Clubs vs Groups distinction
Clubs are now clearly defined as organised venues with address and opening hours (RSLs, bowling clubs), while Groups are informal community groups with discussion boards (book clubs, walking groups). Each has its own management dashboard.
Club delegation
Club owners can now grant team access to other users by email for managing campaigns and announcements.
Redesigned club pages
Club detail pages rebuilt to match the visual quality of business pages with full hero images and action buttons.
Performance & Reliability
Database optimisation
Added 7 missing foreign key indexes, removed ~100 unused indexes, and fixed RLS policy re-evaluation overhead.
Supabase security fixes
Resolved all findings from Supabase Security Advisor.
Reduced Ask Bar candidate count
LLM now evaluates 15 candidates instead of 30, cutting response time by 1-2 seconds without quality loss.
Documentation
Comprehensive guide update
Fixed 30 guide pages for accuracy and created a new Attractions guide page. Fixed navigation references, entity type coverage, and removed documentation for non-existent features.
Website accuracy update
Updated marketing website to replace push notification claims with campaign system, fix amenity numbers (143K+ points of interest), and add attractions coverage.
March 2026
App store builds, Capacitor v8 native shell, card styling improvements, tourism centre guide, and critical bug fixes.
App Store Builds
Capacitor v8 native shell
Fresh Capacitor v8 setup for Google Play and Apple App Store builds. The native app loads from the production web app at app.loclie.com.au — updates deploy instantly without app store review.
App icons and splash screens
Custom app icons (orange map pin on white) and splash screens generated for all iOS and Android density variants.
UI Improvements
Announcement box redesign
Business and club announcement boxes on hero cards are now more opaque, larger, and use bold text for better readability.
Sticky header fix
Fixed the app header scrolling away instead of staying fixed at the top — caused by a CSS layer specificity conflict during the Tailwind v4 migration.
Card badge repositioning
Removed the Details button from entity cards and moved distance badges to the top-right corner for a cleaner layout.
Custom action buttons
Businesses can now add a custom call-to-action button with configurable label, URL, and icon to their listing.
Business Announcements
Compulsory expiry dates
Business announcements now require an expiry date, ensuring stale announcements are automatically removed.
Bug Fixes & Reliability
Event edit authorisation
Fixed event edit routes using a nonexistent created_by column — now correctly checks the event_accounts junction table with staff role fallback.
GPS location override prevention
Prevented the periodic GPS check from overriding a manually selected town, so users stay in their chosen location.
Duplicate business prevention
Added server-side name normalisation and duplicate detection to prevent accidental creation of duplicate business listings.
Orphaned business account handling
Business account queries now gracefully handle orphaned records where the linked business has been deleted.
Tourism Centre Guide
Visitor information centre documentation
New guide section for tourism centre operators covering how to use Loclie, entity mapping processes, and phased onboarding workflows.
February 2026
Manage portal mobile experience, AI engine upgrade, and a redesigned app navigation.
Manage Portal — Mobile Navigation
Mobile navigation menu
The Manage portal now features a hamburger menu and slide-out drawer on mobile and tablet screens, so business owners and event organisers can access every dashboard section on smaller devices.
App Navigation Redesign
Arc submenu navigation
The bottom navigation has been rebuilt around four primary tabs — Home, Discover, Explore, and Profile. Tapping Discover or Explore opens a radial submenu with quick access to Clubs, Events, Groups, Jobs, Town, Amenities, Attractions, and Businesses.
AI Engine Upgrade
Cohere embeddings and reranking
The AI search engine now uses Cohere for both embeddings and reranking, improving result relevance across all content types.
Business Enhancements
Expanded business categories
Business categories have been expanded to roughly 200 subcategories with a principal and secondary category model, making it easier for customers to find exactly what they need.
Marketing Website
New pages and sections
Added dedicated pages for businesses, event organisers, and clubs, along with new feature showcase sections and screenshots.
January 2026
The biggest month yet — launching the Manage portal, overhauling AI search, introducing the geographic area system, and a platform-wide glassmorphism redesign.
Manage Portal Launch
Dedicated management app
A brand-new management portal at manage.loclie.com.au gives business owners, event organisers, and club managers a dedicated space to manage their listings, separate from the consumer browsing experience.
Admin, business, and event dashboards migrated
The admin dashboard, business dashboard, and event dashboard have all moved from the consumer app to the Manage portal with a desktop-first glassmorphic design.
Club management
Full club management — creating clubs, managing members, handling join requests, posting updates, and moderating discussions — is now on the Manage portal.
Clubs & Events — Linked Together
Club-event association
Club owners and moderators can now link events to their club when creating or editing an event. Linked events appear on the club's page, and event cards display the associated club name with a direct link.
AI-Powered Search Overhaul
Hybrid search (V11)
The Ask Bar has been completely rewritten with a hybrid search architecture combining semantic vector search with PostgreSQL full-text search, then fusing scores for the best results.
AI re-ranking
An AI reranking layer intelligently filters and orders results so the most relevant businesses, events, and amenities appear first.
Clubs in search
Community clubs are now fully searchable through the Ask Bar with vector embeddings, alongside businesses, events, jobs, and amenities.
"Open Now" indicators
Business results in the Ask Bar now show an "Open" badge when the business is currently open, based on their listed hours.
Customisable Top Questions
The homepage now shows your personalised top questions. Add and remove questions from your settings to get one-tap access to the searches you use most.
Rotating example questions
The Ask Bar placeholder cycles through example questions to inspire new searches.
Geographic Area System
Town links and cross-border areas
Towns are now linked into local areas that cross state and LGA boundaries — so twin towns like Cobram and Barooga share content automatically.
LGA normalisation and regions
Local Government Areas are fully normalised with a dedicated table, and regions group LGAs into broader geographic areas for better content discovery.
Glassmorphism Design System
Platform-wide glassmorphism
Every page across the platform — businesses, events, clubs, amenities, jobs, maps, and dashboards — now uses a consistent frosted-glass aesthetic with backdrop blur, translucent surfaces, and soft shadows.
Unified HeroCard system
All content cards (businesses, events, clubs) now use a unified HeroCard component with full-bleed hero images and consistent interaction patterns.
Time-aware backgrounds
The app background adapts to the time of day with smooth palette transitions across six time periods — dawn, morning, midday, afternoon, sunset, and night.
Events & Campaigns
Unified "What's On" feed
Events and business campaigns are now displayed together in a unified feed, accessible from the centre navigation pin. Swipe through cards or browse by section.
Events page redesign
The events page combines community events and business campaigns in time-based sections — On Now, This Week, and Coming Up — with category filtering.
Business Features
Hero display cards
Business listings now use full-bleed photo background cards, replacing the previous grid layout for a more immersive browsing experience.
Context-aware opening hours
Business cards display opening hours that adapt to the current time, highlighting whether the business is open now and showing today's hours.
Business updates, experience time, and accommodation
Businesses can now post updates, specify how long a visit typically takes, and add accommodation details for lodging businesses.
Ownership transfer on claim approval
When a business claim is approved, ownership is automatically transferred to the claiming user.
Menu link feature
Businesses can now add a direct link to their menu, displayed prominently on their listing page.
Interactive Map
Amenity-focused map redesign
The map page has been rebuilt with checkbox controls for 16 amenity categories — medical, education, parks, transport, fuel, and more — making it easy to find specific facilities.
User location and directions
The map and Ask Bar results now show your location and offer one-tap directions to any business or amenity.
Media & QR Codes
Image editor and preview system
A new image editor lets business owners and event organisers drag, zoom, and position their photos with multi-format previews and a safe-zone overlay.
Universal Discovery Poster QR codes
A new poster QR system lets admins place tracked QR codes in towns. Scanning takes users to a /discover page, and all scans are tracked with analytics in the admin dashboard.
Landing Page
Featured business carousel
The homepage now showcases featured businesses in an auto-scrolling carousel with verified and approved filters.
Animated HeroPin mascot
An animated Loclie pin mascot greets users on the landing page with depth effects and smooth palette-blended transitions.