Gold Story Pro is available as a one-time purchase again, alongside the monthly and yearly plans. Buy it once and keep it — no subscription, nothing to cancel. All three options unlock the same journal, maps, lessons and claim research. If you bought the earlier one-time unlock, it still works. Use Restore Purchase.

Adds a new tailings lesson, clearer claim-data freshness on the map, and an exact-value review before sharing support reports. Also strengthens journal recovery, photo handling, purchases, and accessibility.

Improves purchase and account-change reliability, data recovery, and accessibility.

Gold Story Pro now includes the complete app — journal, lessons, region and BLM claim maps, weekly-refreshed records, research leads, and due-diligence tools — with monthly and yearly plans. Both plans include a 3-day trial for eligible new subscribers. The separate Claims Pass is no longer offered; existing subscribers keep access through their paid term.

Gold Story is now a subscription: a 3-day free trial, then $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. The one-time Pro unlock is no longer sold — if you already bought it, it keeps working forever, exactly as before. Your records stay yours. Every find, trip, saved spot and photo you have already logged stays readable, and the full export — JSON, CSV, GPX, KML and photos — keeps working whether or not you subscribe. A subscription covers logging new finds, all lessons, the on-device AI notes and every offline region pack. The BLM Claims Pass is unchanged and still separate.

New: Research leads — historic producing sites with no BLM claim record nearby in this data, ranked straight from the records (Claims Pass). Navigate back to a saved spot with a live bearing arrow. Log a find hands-free with Siri. A journal widget for your home and lock screen. Optional private iCloud backup of your whole journal. Plus CSV and KML export, sharing without coordinates, and purchase reliability fixes.

• Your Pro unlock now survives a bad connection — it's remembered on the device, so an unreachable App Store can't drop you to the free tier mid-trip • A damaged journal file is set aside and never deleted, and the app says so plainly instead of closing • The map shows every find that has a location, not only the 20 most recent • A find that fails to save keeps the sheet and your entry open and tells you why, instead of closing as if it saved • Restore no longer reports "no previous purchase" when it simply couldn't reach the store • Small fixes throughout

• Claim maps (Claims Pass): browse BLM mining-claim records — active and closed — fully offline; California and Nevada at launch, refreshed weekly • Research log: one tap saves a timestamped due-diligence record of the claims you checked • Worldwide base map — the map now works anywhere, not just the US (gold-site and claim data remain US) • Edit a find's time and place after the fact, and backfill a GPS-off find's location from your trip's trail • Weight units: log and read finds in grains, grams, pennyweight, or troy ounces • Save any find's location as a spot; filter the journal by photo or located finds; optional value estimate at your gold price • Gold sites show full USGS detail with a producers filter; breadcrumb trails draw on the map and export as GPX tracks • 15 new field lessons including Rules by state (43 total)

The complete Pro lesson course is here — Reading the Water, Technique, and Legal & Safety, written in full: honest, plain-language guides to finding gold in US rivers. Unlock Pro and every lesson is waiting.

The complete Pro lesson course is here — Reading the Water, Technique, and Legal & Safety, written in full: honest, plain-language guides to finding gold in US rivers. Unlock Pro and every lesson is waiting.

• Smoother first launch — location access is now asked right when you need it, not over the welcome screen • Small fixes and polish

• Smoother first launch — location access is now asked right when you need it, not over the welcome screen • Small fixes and polish

• Small fixes and refinements throughout.

A polish release, top to bottom: • The map follows dark mode — a night-jungle basemap after sundown • The paywall scrolls, shows live App Store pricing only, and always answers your tap • Restore purchase now tells you when there's nothing to restore • Marking a spot without a GPS fix says so instead of silently discarding it • A quiet meter warns you before the free journal limit, not after • Find and trip rows respond like real buttons, with light haptics on key actions • Onboarding page dots are finally visible in light mode • One sheet style everywhere, and your data export always shares a fresh archive

• Tap to explore: you can now tap any of the 75,000+ historic USGS gold sites on the map to see its name and coordinates. • A clear hint reminds you to zoom in when the map is showing a whole region. • Small fixes and polish throughout. Good luck out there!

NEW — Records and a moment of gold: - Personal records: your biggest find, best trip, and best spot, right on the Stats screen — free for everyone. - When a find beats your record, Gold Story celebrates properly. You found gold; it should feel like it. NEW — on-device AI (beta), on Apple Intelligence iPhones (15 Pro or newer, iOS 26+, Apple Intelligence on): - Fill from notes: write "ran the box all morning, picker on bedrock, water low" and the method, water level, and condition tags fill themselves — only from words you actually wrote. - Trip recap: two warm sentences about your day at the river, written strictly from your own trip's numbers. If the AI can't stay factual, you get the plain stats instead. Everything runs on your iPhone. Nothing leaves your device — same as always. Free members get 3 AI assists a month; Gold Story Pro is unlimited.

Landscape is here - the map now fills the whole screen, so you can read far more terrain and gold sites at a glance. Rotate and prospect. Also in this update: - Lesson progress is now included in your data export. - Assorted polish. Happy hunting!

This update adds a quick intro for new prospectors and polishes the find log and offline maps.

Maintenance update: behind-the-scenes improvements and refreshed App Store info. Happy prospecting!

- Offline map packs now refresh on their own - fresh region data with no app update needed. - New appearance setting: System, Light, or Dark.