Pikpin FAQ

This page summarizes the questions Pikpin users ask most often, especially around postcard visibility, region downloads, and 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 the backend already has data 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.

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.

Open Pikpin and expand the lower-left menu on the home screen.
Tap the gear icon to open Postcard Downloads.
Switch to the Featured tab.
Choose the theme or recommendation you want and download it.

The Featured tab contains curated content sets. If you want a new theme, support messages are more useful when they include place names, coordinates, or notable landmarks.

Postcard Display and Map Interpretation

This section explains why the app may not always match in-game assumptions.

The postcard screen is focused on postcards and point-of-interest data, not on acting as a real-time game object classifier.

At the moment it does not split cards into “this is a mushroom spot” or “this is a big flower spot,” and it is not intended to be a live flower-and-mushroom status board.

No. The flower on the postcard is mainly decorative and should not be treated as a live indicator of nearby big-flower status.

Keeping accurate real-time flower and mushroom layers at wide scale is expensive and technically difficult, so the postcard artwork is not meant to be a precise live status layer.

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.

Not yet. Favorites are currently stored locally on your device and do not sync automatically across devices.

If you delete Pikpin, your favorites are removed with the app. There is currently no account system for cross-device sync.

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.

Right now, a few small ads in the search screen help cover part of the ongoing operating costs.

If you want to support Pikpin, using the app and sharing it with friends is already helpful.

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