MapRoulette silently added a new feature a while ago: the ability to select an area you want to work in. This is one of the most requested features in MapRoulette and I am pretty excited to publicly announce it!

Here is how it works. Go to MapRoulette and select a new challenge. You will see this screen:

Notice the button at the top? It says what it does on the tin - it lets you select a work area that will be remembered until you cancel it. (I will show you how to do that later.) When you click the button, the challenge selection window disappears and you will get this notification:

It tells you to click on the map to set the center of your work area. It will then draw a circle that defines your work area. The initial radius of the circle is determined by the current map zoom, so if you want to define a large area, try zooming out first. Here, I zoomed out to the United States and clicked somewhere in Utah. This gives me a work area of about the size of the state:

Right now, only circular areas are supported.

You can change the radius using the + and - keys on your keyboard. You can click anywhere else on the map to set a new center for your area.

Once you’re satisfied with the area you have set, click the notification in the top left to confirm your selection. The challenge selection window will re-appear, but will show only challenges that actually have work in your area, and tell you how much:

(Right now, there is an annoying little bug that will cause MapRoulette to first tell you that everything is done and you need to pick a different challenge. I hope to squish that really soon. Just click OK.)

As you see, there are only two challenges in my area that need work! Yay. If I select one of them, sure enough the next task I get is in Utah:

Resetting your work area is pretty much the same process. Instead of selecting an area like I described before, just click the notification without doing anything on the map, and you will be back to the old behavior where your work area is the entire world.

I hope you enjoy this new feature! Let me know if you have any questions.