Labels: always, or only on demand
An Area’s name can be drawn on the map permanently, or only when it is relevant. One checkbox — Show label on demand — and it is purely about legibility.
What each one does
Label always shown (the default, with the box unticked). The Area’s name sits on the map whenever the Area is on screen.
Show label on demand (ticked). The name appears only when it is doing something: while somebody is inside the Area, when a reader taps it, or when it is the Group’s Meeting Point. That is exactly what the editor’s hint says.
Either way the Area itself is still drawn, still named in the Friends list, and still named in notifications. This setting is about the text on the picture and nothing else.
When to hide a label
When the venue image already says it. A piste map with the lift names printed on it does not need them repeated in an overlay, and two copies at slightly different positions look like an error.
When Areas are small and close together. Twenty stalls in a market hall produce twenty labels that overlap into a grey smear, and the map becomes less useful than one with no labels at all.
For large background Areas. An Area covering the whole campsite has its label somewhere in the middle of everything, competing with the people drawn on top of it.
When to keep it
For the handful of places people navigate by. The stages, the entrance, the bar. If somebody would say meet me at X, X’s label should be on the map without anybody having to tap.
When the image is plain. An aerial photograph or a blank site outline needs labels — they are the only thing making it a map of somewhere rather than a picture of a field.
The rule of thumb
Label the places people say out loud; hide the rest. A venue with five permanent labels and fifteen on demand reads far better than one with twenty of either.
What it does not affect
- Whether arriving there notifies anybody — announced or quiet.
- Whether the Area can be chosen as a Meeting Point. It always can, and choosing it shows its label regardless of this setting.
- Whether a person inside it is described as being there. They always are.