Recent icons on live maps
Watchtower can draw your attention to recent source events, published reports, issued warnings and newly encountered live aircraft or vessel contacts. Eligible icons blink until you open them. This guide describes the shared native-map behavior introduced in October 2026.
How it works
- A supported point first encountered with an authoritative source timestamp between now and 30 minutes ago becomes unread.
- The icon alternates between its normal appearance and a dimmed appearance, with a steady amber unread ring. It remains unread after 30 minutes while its source is still eligible and the marker remains available.
- Click or tap the icon to open its normal details and stop its blinking. Opening the same record through a supported native event list also marks it read.
- A source refresh or ordinary aircraft/vessel position update does not restart an acknowledged identity. Expanding a cluster does not mark every member read; choose the individual record.
With your device’s reduced-motion preference enabled, unread icons use a steady ring. Live attention pauses when the map is hidden, access is being verified or replay is active. Aircraft replay and saved investigations retain their historical display.
Map coverage
| Native maps | Eligible point layers |
|---|---|
| Natural Hazards | Existing native and expanded source events, issued warnings and expanded USGS earthquake markers. |
| Global 3D / 2D globe | Source-dated earthquakes, volcano events, individual thermal detections, aircraft, vessels, weather warnings, reports and qualified operational/incident markers. |
| Conflict & Military; Air & Aviation | Source-observed aircraft/vessels and published report points. Aviation 2D and 3D share the same aircraft acknowledgement. |
| Marine Intelligence; Weather Alerts | Current source-position vessel contacts, issued warning points and source-dated cyclone positions. |
| Outages; Mobility | Source-dated operational incidents, reports, notices and admitted disruption observations. |
| Incident Graph; Linked Events | Source-native observed incidents and published reports; Linked Events observations/advisories with an explicit source clock. |
| Insurance; Crime & Terror | Qualified observed hazards, issued point warnings and precisely source-dated reporting/event points. Source geometry and evidence qualifications are retained. |
Why some markers stay steady
Static facilities, cameras, country/financial aggregates, history, user annotations, imagery, reference assets, modeled risk, forecasts and propagated satellite/orbit positions do not become new events when their data is retrieved or recalculated. This applies to reference-only layers in Countries, Infrastructure, Commodities, Bonds, Banking, Risk Overview, Geopolitical, Monetary, Gold, Resources, Cyber, Sanctions, Digital Money, Wealth, Debt, Health, Politics, Satellite, Aurora, the Solar-system atlas, Spatial tools and War Room.
Unknown, date-only or otherwise coarse times are not converted into precise recent events. GDELT ingestion times are not publication/occurrence times. A warning’s future effective time is not its issue time. Expired, stale, resolved and unsupported source records do not acquire new-event attention. Existing coverage gaps and native access limits still apply. External AIS, Google and OpenStreetMap embeds retain their providers’ controls.
Remembering what you opened
Acknowledgements are stored locally for your verified account in this browser. Guest state lasts for the browser session. They do not synchronize through your Watchtower account to another device. Existing Natural Hazards acknowledgements are carried forward. The bounded store contains source/event identity keys and local acknowledgement clocks, without copying coordinates, source text or your private investigations. It retains up to 12,000 entries, pruned 30 days after last use; clearing browser data or capacity pruning can remove older acknowledgements. If browser storage is unavailable, the current page continues in memory.
The map’s small unread-icons note links back to this guide. It describes eligible displayed source records, not worldwide detection or emergency delivery.