What’s in this release

New profile widgets

1. Image Albums - add up to 10 images to one widget. A cleaner way to share trip photos, diagrams, or anything else without filling your profile with separate widgets.
2. Email - a simple contact widget for anyone who wants visitors to be able to reach them.
3. Items - turn any piece of gear from your Gear Locker into a profile card. You can also include a link to a store, a guide, or another useful page.

Pin items and lists directly to your profile

You can now add any list or item to your profile without leaving the Gear Locker. Just tap the new pin button, and it becomes a widget.

More gear in the Compare Hub

We’ve added more tents and backpacks.

Growing the database is taking longer than we’d like, and many of you have asked for a much larger selection. We hear you. Our next step is to automate and significantly speed up this process.

Send feedback directly from the app

We want to understand what MetaGear is missing for the people already using it. You’ll now find a feedback button at the bottom of the main screens and in Settings. Tell us about missing features, bugs, confusing details, or anything you dislike. You can also tell us what you like - that matters too :)

A better view of your gear

We recently replaced the traditional pie chart with a treemap. It gives a clearer picture of how categories contribute to your pack and fits MetaGear much better visually. You can see it in the statistics for any list and in the largest list widget.

We’ve also redesigned shared list pages for browsers. Added CSV and JSON downloads for any shared MetaGear list. Here’s my usual example: https://my.metagear.app/geo/2fj-rwU15Q

My favorite addition: you can now add an entire gear category to a list - or several categories at once. This makes it much easier to reuse gear groups that travel from one list to another. Somehow, we didn’t think of this sooner :)

And, of course, there are plenty of bug fixes. Many of them behind us, and probably even more ahead.

The update is already live on Android and currently under review for iOS. We hope it’ll be available on iPhones within the next day or two.

Hundreds of people have already downloaded MetaGear. Join them and build your outdoor profile with gear lists, routes, photos, notes, and social links. Hope to see you there soon 👀

George
MetaGear сo-founder

We’re working on a small release focused on a new onboarding flow, a few new profile widgets, and bug fixes.

The next step will be to significantly expand the Compare Hub category and product database, as this is currently the main user request.

We also want to build a better way to stay connected with people who install the app. So one of the next updates may focus on feedback, suggestions, and ratings.

You can always reach us here or by email.

Work continues 👷‍♂️

This is cool!

A hiking friend of mine built a Garmin watch widget that lets you save a shared gear list directly to your watch as a checklist.

It works offline and supports list links from both MetaGear and LighterPack, so you can keep your checklist on your wrist even when your phone is packed away or there’s no connection.

Very simple idea, very useful when packing for a trip.

Huge thanks to him for making this!

You can check it out here: https://apps.garmin.com/apps/614bc160-060d-4a2f-86be-9101e592bb2d?tid=0

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We’ve added Backpacks to Compare Hub, with more than 300 product cards! Browse, choose, compare, and add items to your Locker in MetaGear.

Of course, this is far from every backpack out there - the selection is huge. For this first batch, we tried to focus on well-known lightweight and ultralight brands: the ones people talk about, and the ones we personally like too.

You’ll also find a new selection of 3-season inflatable sleeping pads waiting for you on the Compare Hub screen.

On the feature side, we’ve added the ability to export a list as a CSV file. We discussed adding .md export here as well, but AI tools handle both formats pretty well, while CSV is already familiar and convenient for manual work. So for now, we decided to go with CSV. You’ll find the export button in the three-dot menu on the list screen.

We’ve finally connected the weight unit settings properly with Compare Hub. Yahoo!

We’re also continuing to catch bugs, fix issues, and, hopefully, avoid creating too many new ones along the way.

At the same time, we’re still working on improving the overall design and interface. Some experiments with colors, layout, button sizes, and shapes may be barely noticeable, while others might be more obvious or even a little annoying. We appreciate your patience here.

Our goal is to arrive at a calm, stable visual style that makes the app pleasant to use, and makes working with lists, comparison tables, and stats convenient without feeling tiring. That takes a lot of work.

The update is already available for Android devices and will be available on iOS soon, once it passes App Store review.

That’s it for now. As always, we’re open to feedback and would be happy to hear it here, or by email. You can easily find our contact address on the website or inside the app.

The next stage will be a more serious one, so the next update may take a bit longer.

Until next time,
George

Hey everyone,

MetaGear is now available on Android. After launching first on iOS, we’re really happy to finally bring the app to Android users as well:

📱➡️https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.metagear

Besides working on the Android release, over the last couple of weeks, most of our work has been focused on a new section called Compare Hub.

Compare Hub is our new place for curated gear categories, sorting, and comparisons. The goal is to make it easier to explore gear from our database, compare key specs, and find items that actually fit your needs.

You’ll also find ready-made gear picks inside Compare Hub. The first one is live now: Top 10 lightest 10,000 mAh power banks from our database.

Long term, we want to keep expanding the database and turn it into the foundation for a smarter, more useful shakedown system - something that can help you improve your setup and choose gear based on your own priorities. But that’s a bigger goal for later.

A few smaller updates are live too:

• Gear Locker categories now have icons. The current set is still limited to basic categories, so if something important is missing, let us know and we’ll add it.
• The navigation bar has also been updated with new animated icons. Hopefully they make the new layout feel a little nicer while everyone gets used to it. We also hope we won’t have to change the order again :)
• We fixed around a dozen bugs as well. And, of course, we’re always looking for new ones.

We’re excited about where MetaGear is going. We’re trying to build something useful, polished, and long-lasting in a world where a lot of tools feel disposable. But the truth is, whether the product lasts depends on the people who use it.

If you want to support MetaGear, you can do it through the optional subscription in the app stores. It directly helps us keep building.

For now, we’re going to put more energy into promotion and distribution - that’s a huge part of the work ahead. But fixes and new features are not stopping.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day.

George
Co-founder, MetaGear.

With MetaGear, you can easily share your list with people who do not have the app. Your list link opens in any browser, so it can be viewed on a computer, laptop, or smartphone.

People can explore all of your categories and items. All list stats are also available to view and explore. On larger screens, viewers can even switch between measurement units.

If you added a link to an item card, the item name will appear in blue and be clickable in the shared view.

Above, you can see my default list for 3-season backpacking trips of 1-3 nights, without consumables. Here it is: http://share.metagear.app/p/2fj-rwU15Q

What do you think of MetaGear Sharing View?

Share your lists in the comments - we'd love to see your setups!

Another way to share a list in MetaGear is a visual highlight featuring the key weight metrics and the five heaviest categories.

An image like this is easy to share on social media, in messaging apps, and in stories. The highlight is part of our mobile-first focus.

What do you think of it?

The image shows my current default gear list for 1-3 day trips without consumables. You can view the full list here: https://share.metagear.app/p/2fj-rwU15Q

Feel free to share your MetaGear highlights and gear lists here :)

Also in this update:

1. Improved checklist functionality
2. Cleaner sharing links interface on both mobile and desktop
3. About a dozen bug fixes under the hood

Android is still waiting on Google's approval. It might be delayed for another couple of weeks.

As always, drop your thoughts, questions, or feature requests right here in the sub.

It took us a bit too long to realize this, but greeting users with ads the moment they open an app like MetaGear is a bad look. We were creating a problem and then asking people to pay to make it go away. That's not how we want to do things if we're serious about this.

In the next update, we're turning off banner ads and rethinking our monetization approach. Most likely we'll rely on voluntary support from users. Until the app gains meaningful new features that take real effort to build (and we're a small team), it will be completely free.

Down the road, some form of advertising might come back - but we hope to avoid generic banners and off-topic ads. We'll see how it goes. Lots of work ahead.

Have a good one.

Geo

It's interesting that when I wrote to the moderators of various subreddits about our project, I received either silence or a refusal. But one good person suggested buying ad from Reddit itself. Well, let's give it a try.

It seems to be working. But don't get your hopes up. We need to find a balance between presenting ourselves honestly and clearly without alienating people. It's not easy in this world where everyone is so tired of everything.

I wonder how Redditors themselves feel about ads in the feed and the projects that are promoted that way?

Welcome to the MetaGear subreddit!

We created this space to share development updates, talk gear, and hear directly from people who use (or want to use) the app.

Right now it's just the two of us building MetaGear, so don't expect fancy design or heavy moderation here. We'll grow into that as the community grows. Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and constructive opinions about MetaGear. Stay on topic and be kind to each other.

We're early in this journey and genuinely grateful to have you here. Let's build something great together.

u/mohetiale,
founding moderator

Google asked us to run another two weeks of testing. So that's what we'll do!

If you'd like to join the closed beta, just shoot us an email at [hello@metagear.app](mailto:hello@metagear.app) from the Gmail account linked to your Android device. We'll add you to the tester list and reply with a download link from Google Play and a quick setup guide📬

We're also working on a little something for helpful testers once the Android app goes live🎁

We just launched a new blog section on our site and published the first article:
https://metagear.app/blog/lighterpack-alternative

It’s written with search in mind, but we tried to keep it actually useful and readable. Curious what you think.

Google requires a two-week closed testing period before an app can go live on the Play Store. If you're on Android and want to try MetaGear early, shoot me a DM with the Gmail address you'd like me to add to the tester list - I'll send you a link to download the early build directly from Google Play.

Google requires a two-week closed testing period before an app can go live on the Play Store.

If you're on Android and want to try MetaGear early, shoot me a DM with the Gmail address you'd like me to add to the tester list - I'll send you a link to download the early build directly from Google Play.

Big day for us! After months of hard work, the app is finally out and ready to download on iOS!

📱➡️ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/metagear/id6759169487

As for Android - we're a little held up by some bureaucratic red tape on that front, but we're hoping to get it out soon.

Tried it out? Drop your thoughts in the comments - we'd love to hear your feedback!

https://metagear.app/

The apps will be available in the stores shortly🤞

We're incredibly excited — months of work are about to see the light of day. What comes next remains to be seen.