Pikpin FAQ

This page summarizes the questions Pikpin users ask most often — from postcard visibility and region downloads to accounts, collection lists, and Pikpin Plus — along with a few common misunderstandings.

Downloads and Data Coverage

Many “nothing is showing up” reports are actually download-scope issues.

The most common reason is that the related region data has not been downloaded yet, or the downloaded pack does not cover the area you expected.

Pikpin mainly shows data already downloaded to your phone. Even if data is available for a place, the screen can still look empty until the matching pack is installed locally.

A good order to check is:

Open the main menu from the lower-left corner of the home screen.
Tap the gear icon to open Postcard Downloads.
Download the pack for your current country or larger region.
If your city belongs to a broader regional pack, start with the larger region.
After the download finishes, return to the postcard view and check again.

When you first open Pikpin, the onboarding flow walks you through preparing map data and explains why region data needs to be downloaded first. If you skipped it, you can always download manually using the steps above.

For places like Taiwan, Japan, and the United States, packs are often grouped by larger regions rather than city-by-city downloads. Missing results do not always mean the place has no data yet.

This does not always mean the coverage label is wrong. More often, it means completeness still varies within the same region.

For example, a pack labeled “Kanto” may include the whole Kanto region in scope, but the actual data may currently be much denser around Tokyo, Yokohama, or central Saitama than in mountains or remote suburbs.

Large-region coverage means the region is part of the plan, not that every city, town, rural area, and mountain area is equally complete right now.

Remote areas, islands, and mountain regions usually take longer to organize than city areas, so new downloads may not immediately fill every part of the map.

The Featured tab has been removed. The themed content that used to live in Featured is now provided as collection lists published by an official account.

You can find these lists under community lists (public collections): explore the lists shared by the official account and save the ones you like, just like any other public collection.

If you'd like the official account to curate a particular theme, support messages are more useful when they include place names, coordinates, or notable landmarks.

Not necessarily. Search mainly looks through data already downloaded to your phone, so first check whether the matching country or region pack is installed.

If the pack is installed and the place is still missing, that area may not be complete yet, the name may be different, or the place may need later cleanup.

Postcard Display and Map Interpretation

This section helps you understand what the markers and postcard display on the map actually mean.

No. Flowers in Pikpin are mainly visual decoration to make places easier to browse. They do not mean that a place is actually a big flower in the game, and they do not mean there is a currently interactable big flower or mushroom nearby.

Pikpin focuses on postcards and place data, not on live flower-and-mushroom status.

Postcard images are not always fixed forever. Some source photos can change when the upstream point-of-interest photo changes.

If you want to verify the point itself, focus on the location, title, and surrounding landmarks rather than only the card artwork.

Yes. Under Map Postcard Style in Settings, you can switch how postcards appear on the map, currently between Default and Rounded Square.

This is a personal display setting. It only affects what you see, and it does not change the underlying place data or what other people see.

Accounts and Cloud Backup

Signing in is optional. This section explains what signing in does and how backup works.

Pikpin currently supports Apple and Google sign-in. Once signed in, you can use a profile and back up or restore supported collection data to the cloud. Some features, such as publishing public collections, also require signing in first.

In addition, subscribing to Pikpin Plus also requires signing in first, so your benefits are tied to your account and can be restored when you switch devices.

Browsing the map, downloading region data, searching, and local collections still work without signing in.

Backup mainly covers your local collection data — the postcards you've saved and your collection lists. Downloaded region data and image caches are not included, so you can download them again on a new device.

Pikpin is local-first: a backup runs automatically each time you reopen the app, and you can also trigger a backup manually from Settings at any time.

After switching phones or reinstalling, sign in to the same account and choose to restore from the cloud to get your collections back.

Be careful: "backup" overwrites the cloud copy with your local data, and "restore" overwrites your local data with the cloud copy. Both directions replace the other side and do not merge. Confirm the direction first so you don't overwrite the copy you wanted to keep.

Once signed in, open Settings, go to your profile or account page, choose to delete your account, and confirm as prompted.

If you cannot use the app, email [email protected] and tell us you want to delete your account and which sign-in method you use. Deletion disables account features, removes account data, and turns off the public visibility of that account's content. Subscriptions and purchase records are managed through the App Store or Google Play.

Collection Lists and Community Lists

This section covers how to organize collections, how to share lists, and how routes open.

You can create custom lists to organize the postcards you want to save, and as needed you can:

set a cover for each list so it is easy to recognize;
reorder the postcards inside a list;
manage list items in bulk (for example, organizing several postcards at once).

Lists are based on local data on your device, and can be included in account backup once you sign in.

Community lists are the public collection feature: you can explore public lists shared by others, save the ones you like, and publish your own lists to share.

When you choose to publish a list or make your profile public, the related content (such as the list title, cover, and saved postcards, along with your public profile fields) becomes visible to other users or visitors. Collections and lists you have not published stay private.

Before sharing, avoid putting anything you don't want public into list titles, covers, or your profile. You can also unpublish content after sharing.

No. Pikpin helps you organize the places you want to visit into a multi-stop route, lets you reorder the stops, and then opens the route in Apple Maps or Google Maps.

Support for multiple stops, travel modes, and place names can differ between map apps. Use the map app you open as the source of truth for navigation.

Note: Apple Maps currently supports multiple stops only in driving mode, and Google Maps doesn't show custom stop names (it labels them A, B, C). There are also limits on the number of stops (about 15 for Apple, 9 for Google); extra stops are dropped.

Pikpin Plus and List Export

This section explains what a Plus subscription includes and how list export works.

Pikpin Plus is an optional subscription. With Plus you can:

increase your collection capacity (save more postcards);
create more collection lists;
remove ads in the app;
export collection lists (CSV or Markdown).

Pricing, billing, renewal, cancellation, and refunds are handled by the platform you use, such as the Apple App Store or Google Play. Subscribing to Plus requires signing in, and benefits are tied to your Pikpin account, so sign in to the same account to restore them when you switch devices.

Yes, this is a Pikpin Plus feature. Plus users can export collection lists as CSV or Markdown, making it easy to back them up, organize them, or use them in other tools.

If you are not a Plus user yet, you can subscribe to Plus to use export.

Reports and Support

The more concrete information you include, the easier it is to understand what went wrong.

Screenshots plus text are usually the easiest to understand.
Include country, city, district, or a recognizable landmark if possible.
If you remember, mention which region packs you already downloaded.
Screenshots of the postcard page or download page help a lot.

A screenshot alone often does not make the exact location obvious, especially for foreign places or visually similar tourist areas.

That depends on the issue. Data corrections usually require confirmation, content cleanup, rebuilding, and then a later update into Pikpin.

It is not instant, but reports with clear location details and screenshots are much easier to process than very short descriptions.

The most direct way is to subscribe to Pikpin Plus: it supports ongoing operation and removes ads in the app at the same time.

If you don't subscribe, a few small ads in the app still help cover part of the ongoing operating costs. And of course, using Pikpin and sharing it with friends is always helpful too.

You can leave a comment or send a message on Threads @pikpin.official, or use the in-app feedback flow.