What's new: AR in a minute, safer saving and a 7-day warning before deletions

Over the last day we've shipped a batch of fixes and improvements to AR Works. Some came from looking closely at where new projects get stuck, and some came straight from your bug reports. Here's what changed.

Your first AR experience in about a minute

• Starter project. When you create a project you can now begin with a ready-made Starter project: a sample picture to point your phone at, with animated 3D content already sitting on it. Publish it, open the link on your phone, point it at the sample picture (on another screen or printed) and you'll see AR straight away. Then make it yours by swapping in your own picture and content.
• A getting-started checklist. The editor shows four steps (choose your target picture, add something to show, preview it, publish) and ticks them off as you go.
• A clear status in the editor. The editor header now tells you whether a phone can open your project yet, and what's missing if it can't. There's also a Help link to the quick-start guide.

Fewer experiences that open but never appear

Image tracking works by recognising your target picture through the phone's camera. Two common mistakes stopped experiences from working, and the editor now catches both.

• No target picture set. It was possible to publish a project whose first scene had no target picture, which phones then couldn't open. Publishing now checks this first and helps you fix it, or switch to World mode, which needs no picture at all. If you drop a picture into your scene as content, we'll also ask whether you meant to use it as the target.
• A target picture that's too plain. Phones find a target by its detail: corners, texture and contrast. Plain logos and icons on a white background often can't be found at all. The editor now rates your target picture (good, fair or too plain to track well) as soon as you choose it, then again with the exact measurement once it's published, and shows tips when it needs more detail. This one came from a bug report this morning, so thank you.

Staying signed in and never losing work

• Each device keeps its own sign-in. Signing in on your phone to test your AR no longer signs you out on your computer.
• No more silent save failures. If your sign-in runs out while you're editing, you'll see a "You've been signed out" box. Your work stays on screen, and saving carries on as soon as you sign back in.
• Saving retries automatically if your connection drops for a moment, and you'll be warned before leaving the editor with unsaved changes.
• Back to the right place. Links that ask you to sign in, like the ones in our emails, now take you back to where you were going afterwards.
• Safer password changes. Changing your password now signs you out on your other devices.

We're also working on keeping Safari and iPhone users signed in between visits. More on that soon.

Fair warning before inactive Free projects are deleted

As we announced yesterday, from 1 December projects on Free accounts that haven't been edited for 30 days will be deleted. We've added proper warning:

• We'll email you at least 7 days before a project is deleted, with a Keep my project button. One click (after signing in) keeps it.
• Your dashboard and the editor show the date too, with the same Keep button.
• Nothing is ever deleted without that email being sent first.

Pro and Education projects aren't affected.

Smaller changes

• Open counts. Published projects now show how many times they've been opened. We only store a count, nothing about who opened them.
• "What are you making?" A short, optional question on your dashboard helps us build the right things for you.
• "Made with AR Works". The AR viewer's start screen shows a small link to AR Works. It disappears as soon as the AR starts, and never appears on projects with their own branded loading screen.
• Policies. We've updated our privacy policy and cookie policy to cover these changes.

Found a bug? Have Pro on us for a week

Bug reports like this morning's make AR Works better for everyone. If you report a genuine bug through Support > Report bug and we confirm it, we'll upgrade your account to Pro for 7 days as a thank-you. Please tell us what you did, what you expected to happen, and which device and browser you were using.