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Hide a cache

This page is for hiders. It covers what to check before you hide, how to place a cache in the app, who sees it, and how to look after it or hand it on.

Before you hide

A cache sends strangers to a place. Make sure they are welcome there and safe.

  • Ask the landowner. Get permission before you place a container on private land. On public land, ask the authority that manages it: the town, the forest office or the park.
  • Respect nature. Stay out of nature reserves and protected areas unless the rules there allow it. Keep away from nests, dens and rare plants. Finders follow your pin, so pick a spot reached by a path.
  • Keep it safe. No spots next to roads, railways, cliffs, water or busy junctions. A finder must not need to climb, trespass or take a risk you would not take.
  • Do not bury it, and do not damage anything. Do not dig, cut, drill or nail. Leave walls, trees and monuments as they are.
  • Do not alarm anyone. Stay away from schools, playgrounds, police and military sites, power stations and bridges. Use a clear container and label it with the cache code and a note on what it is.
  • Use a good container. It should be waterproof and sturdy, with a logbook and a pencil.
  • Hide near home. You maintain the cache. Pick a place you can visit again.
  • Follow local rules. Some places ban or restrict containers. When in doubt, ask first.

Hide your first cache

You need to be signed in with a verified callsign: an owner answers for the place and for every log on it. Until your callsign is verified, the panel says why and offers Verify your call, which opens Settings, where you verify it. Stand at the spot, or know its coordinates.

Each account hides at most 5 new caches in 24 hours. Your sysop can change that number. Past it, the panel says so; try again the next day.

  1. Tap + Hide a cache in the top bar. On a phone, tap Hide in the tab bar. The Hide a cache panel opens.

  2. Place the pin under Location:

    • On a phone the pin starts at your position.
    • Or tap Use my location, or tap the map.
    • Or type decimal degrees or a Maidenhead locator in Coordinates and tap Place pin.

    The panel shows Pin at with the coordinates and the grid square. Drag the pin to adjust it.

  3. Under Basics, type a Title and pick a Type. The line under the type says what it means.

  4. Under Difficulty & terrain, set Difficulty and Terrain with the sliders.
  5. Optional: open Advanced: hint, description, rating & sharing and fill in what you want (Options).
  6. Tap Hide cache. The map moves to your cache and opens its page.

Check that it worked

The cache page shows your title and a new code, for example AC-1234. The cache is on the map. Your first hide earns the Hider badge on your profile.

Options

Option What it does Default
Title The name finders see. Up to 120 characters. none, required
Type What kind of cache it is (Cache types). Traditional
Difficulty How hard the cache is to find, 1 to 5 in steps of 0.5. 1.5
Terrain How hard the place is to reach, 1 to 5 in steps of 0.5. 1.5
Hint A spoiler that finders open with a tap. Up to 500 characters. It never leaves this instance. empty
Description The story of the cache. Up to 4,000 characters. empty
Drive-in (car-accessible) Marks a cache you can reach by car. off
Country The DXCC entity it lies in, shown with its prefix, such as OE for Austria. the country of your callsign
Tags Words separated by commas, such as scenic, family, qrp. Up to 12 tags of 24 characters. none
Who can rate Finders only, Anyone signed in or Nobody (disabled). Finders only
Federation scope Who sees the cache (Who sees your cache). Public

Difficulty and terrain also add to a finder's points (Ranks).

The hide form offers Traditional, Multi-stage, Living (APRS), Audio and Virtual. SOTA summits, POTA parks and the other heritage places come from the sysop's import, so their badges stand for the real place. To hide a cache on a summit, hide it as a traditional cache.

A find counts as verified from the instance's minimum up, Location-verified unless your sysop asks for Radio-verified (How finds are verified). Under Advanced, the switch Radio-verified finds only sets your cache's own minimum to Radio-verified, whatever the instance's is. Turn it off under Edit and the instance's minimum applies again.

Who sees your cache

Instances can link up and share caches with each other. Federation scope decides what the other instances get:

Scope On this instance Other instances
Public map, search, RSS the whole cache
Unlisted its link and code only the title and position, without the description, kept off their maps
Local only map, search, RSS nothing

An Unlisted cache stays off the map, search, RSS, GPX downloads, offline packs and watch alerts. You see it on your own map and in your own search. Anyone with its link or code opens its page and can log it. Unlisted keeps a cache out of sight; it does not make it secret.

The hint never leaves this instance, whatever the scope.

Stages, living caches and media

Stages. A multi-stage cache leads finders through stages to the final spot (Multi-stage caches). Hide the cache first, then open it, tap Edit and add the stages under Stages.

Living caches. A living cache moves with a beaconing APRS station (Living caches). Pick Living (APRS) as the type and, under Station, one of your own stations from Settings → My stations, for example OE8APR-9. Switch on Log rendezvous when I meet other living caches if you want meetings with other living caches recorded. You can also turn your own station into a cache: Settings → My stations, then Become a cache or Turn into a cache.

Media. Open your cache and add photos and sound under Media. You must be signed in as the callsign that owns the cache.

  • Photos: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF or AVIF. Sound: MP3, Ogg, WAV or M4A.
  • Up to 6 items per cache: a photo is at most 2 MB, a sound at most 3 MB.
  • A cache holds at most 10 MB of media in all, audio clues included, and all your caches together 50 MB.
  • The app scales a photo to at most 1,600 pixels on its longest side before upload.
  • Everyone can see and play the media.

Maintain your cache

  • Needs maintenance. The cache page shows needs maintenance when a finder ticked The cache needs maintenance on a find or a Couldn't find it, or flagged it later with Report a problem, or when the last three find or Couldn't find it logs are all Couldn't find it. The flagged log shows flagged: needs maintenance in the logbook. Your next maintenance log clears a finder's flag; the next find clears a run of did-not-finds. Notes do not count.
  • Owner alerts. You get an alert each time someone logs a find, a Couldn't find it or a maintenance flag on your cache. It shows under Settings → Notifications, and by push or in the email digest if you switched those on.
  • Maintenance log. After a visit, open the cache, tap Add a note, write what you checked or fixed and tap Post as maintenance.
  • Disable or enable. Edit → Status disables a cache or makes it active again, and the logbook records the change as a disabled or enabled log. Archiving it records a note. An owner's disabled or enabled log sets the status the same way.
  • Your caches offline. Offline → Your caches → Pack my caches stores all your caches for a field trip. It flags the ones that need a visit: three or more did-not-finds in a row, no find for months, or disabled.

Edit your cache

Open your cache and tap Edit, next to the favourite heart. Only the owner sees it.

  1. Change what you need. The form is grouped as the hide form is:
    • Basics: the title, the status, difficulty and terrain;
    • Location: type new coordinates or a locator under Move to; a living cache has none, it follows its station;
    • Details: hint, description, drive-in, country and tags;
    • Verification, rating & sharing: Radio-verified finds only, who can rate, the federation scope, and for a living cache the rendezvous switch.
  2. Tap Save changes. The cache page shows the new version.

Moving a found cache. Until its first find, a cache moves anywhere. The first find fixes where it was found, and from then on Move to takes it at most 100 m from that place; your sysop may set another limit. The form shows the limit, and the distance from the found place as you type. Every past find still points to the place its finder visited. To move a cache further, archive it and hide a new one at the new place. If the coordinates were wrong from the start, ask your sysop to correct them. A living cache follows its station and has no limit.

Status. Disabled keeps the cache on the map and refuses finds, for a cache that needs repair. Archived takes it off the map, for a cache that is gone; the app asks first. Either one can be set back to Active here.

Stages. A multi-stage or audio cache has Stages at the end of the form: the open start and the locked stages in order, each with its unlock, position and clue. Add a stage, and Remove stage 1, Remove stage 2 and so on beside each stage, change the list; Save stages stores it. A finder who unlocked a stage you changed, or one after it, unlocks those stages again, so the app asks before it saves. An audio stage's clip uploads once the stage is saved. Once the cache has a find, each stage it had then moves within the same limit as the cache and stays part of the cache: its Remove stage button is off. A stage you add later is free until a find includes it.

Cache adoption

When an owner stops looking after a cache, or leaves, the sysop can offer it for adoption. The sysop sets this up (Cache adoption).

Adopt a cache. You need a verified callsign.

  1. Open Nearby and pick For adoption under Show. The list shows caches up for adoption, nearest first. Most are archived, so they are not on the map.
  2. Tap a cache. The Up for adoption card shows the sysop's note.
  3. Tick I have checked that the container is in place if you visited the site. Add a Note for the sysop if you like.
  4. Tap Request adoption. The card says your request is waiting for the sysop.

The sysop approves one request, and you get an alert. The cache becomes yours with all its finds, logs and media. If you ticked the box, the cache is active again. If not, it stays archived until you check the container and set it Active yourself under Edit (Edit your cache). You can tap Withdraw my request while you wait.

If your cache is offered. You get an alert, and the cache page shows Keep my cache. Tap it and the offer ends. The cache cannot change hands for 14 days after the offer, so you have time to answer. A cache whose owner erased their account has no waiting time.

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