Ocelot.social 3.19+20 “Map Cat” – Where is it happening? More maps for better orientation 🗺️

October 6, 2026About 3 min

With ocelot.social 3.19 “Map Cat” you can see where things are happening on more pages. This version is mainly about making events, users and groups visible on maps, and easier to edit there. 💚

On top of that, a lot has been improved and changed under the hood. You’ll find the details in this post, including the smaller improvements from the follow-up release 3.20.

Maps

Events

Creating and editing, now with a map: set the exact location with the mouse and move it
Event view: map with location for viewing, with a link to the full map

Users and Groups

Creating and editing, now with a map: the location can now be set and moved with the mouse, accurate to the district
Map with location on the user or group profile, with a link to the full map

Full Map

Place an event pin directly on the map to create an event
New design for popups
Legend: show and hide layers, show past events

Creating and Editing Posts and Profiles

For posts, users and groups:

better validation of entered data, with clear feedback
a warning about unsaved changes when leaving the page

Video Calls

microphone icon on the video tiles: who’s muted is now visibly muted
audio is kept when switching off the camera: no more audio loss during video calls

Post Overview – Newsfeed

Noticeably faster loading – the software was significantly optimised for this.

Under the Hood

A New Foundation

A lot was tidied up behind the scenes in this version, which you’ll notice in speed and stability. Here are the details for the technically curious:

own schema declaration in the backend: the old database libraries (neode, neo4j-graphql-js) are completely gone
backend moved to modern modules: tests migrated from Jest to Vitest and parallelised
moved from yarn to npm, smaller Docker images, Node 26 compatibility
automated releases & changelog: versions and release notes are now generated directly from commits
more test coverage, and an automated check for unwanted visual changes to the UI

Bug Fixes & Cleanup

notifications in hidden groups work correctly again
the group description preview is fixed
favicons are served correctly
social media links the browser shouldn’t follow are no longer rendered at all
plus more stable e2e tests
repaired Docker and CI pipelines
as well as numerous dependency updates for security and stability

Also: Release 3.20 — smaller improvements

Shortly after 3.19, the smaller release 3.20 followed, sharpening a few things and laying the groundwork for upcoming group permissions.

Creating a group – the group type is now picked from cards instead of a dropdown; types you can’t choose are shown with a reason instead of simply being left out
Locations – a profile now shows the place you actually selected again, instead of the district your pin happens to sit in; the location field no longer empties itself when search results arrive late
Buttons – filled primary and danger buttons now darken on hover instead of fading to a barely readable lighter shade
Translations – every language now uses its own quote characters, alongside various translation and grammar fixes
also fixed: the oversized heart button on comments, and a stray trailing dash at the end of new post addresses

A gap in JoinGroup allowed any userId to be supplied without checking who was asking: any signed-in user could have used this to add someone else to a public group, or file a join request in their name for a closed one. From now on, only the group’s admin or owner may do this.

For Network Operators and Developers

Group.groupType is deprecated as a field; new integrations should use Group.visibility instead (same three values)
the MinIO image now runs rootless in development and testing (Chainguard base); existing local data volumes need a one-time ownership change (chown)
larger version jumps for some dependencies, including @sentry/node

Full Changelog

You’ll find all the details in the changelog, as well as in the release notes for 3.19.0 and 3.20.0.

What’s Next?

As always, you can find the currently planned steps on our roadmap.

Open source thrives on you and the community. If you like ocelot.social, we’d appreciate your continued support: