Pokemon Go’s Latest Update Fixes The Nearby Bug (Sort Of)

Pokemon Go’s “nearby” menu was, on the game’s launch, a great way to find out which Pokemon were around your location, with a handy one-, two- or three-step symbol showing exactly how close said pocket monsters were. A glitch that showed all Pokemon as three steps away destroyed its usefulness almost entirely, then Niantic removed steps altogether in a great example of salting the earth on which something beautiful once grew. Now, like a Moltres from the ashes, a new “sightings” menu — with added long grass — has taken its place.

As part of the most recent Pokemon Go patch notes, Niantic’s 0.33.0 update for Android and 1.3.0 update for iOS implements “a variation of the ‘Nearby Pokémon’ feature” for a “subset of users”, although we’ve seen the new screen — which you can see above — on every single device that has been updated to the newest version of the app.

Notably, the new “sightings” screen does not show duplicate monsters, and also apparently updates itself more often — which should make it more accurate, despite being less accurate overall because it doesn’t have any kind of directional information included. Reddit users believe it’s accurate to within a 100m-225m radius of your current location.

It’s definitely still vague, and it’s nowhere near as good as the original system — or, like we’ve dreamed, any screen that actually points you in the correct direction — but it’s an improvement from no “nearby” feature at all. Baby steps, guys. [Pokemon Go]


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