First Thoughts On The Februrary 2026 ArcGIS Online Update
Last time I did one of these things, I threw some confetti for reaching full feature parity with Web App Builder. I wonder what is coming next. Let me check this year's Roadmap...
Here's what happens in this series:
- I read the official What's New in Experience Builder Blog post.
- I maybe try a few things for a few minutes.
- I attempt to translate the What's New page from developer to English.
- If I don't think something is going to be very important to many people, I leave it out of my notes.
- I might make some guesses how the new stuff can be used. (Tips and Tricks LLC offers no guarantees that anything said in this post will actually work.)
Other than a lot of Web App Builder stuff, there is a lot of AI stuff on the horizon. Which brings me to the first not technically Experience Builder update that we need to talk about, big stuff is happening with the JavaScript API...
JavaScript API Updates
None of this technically matters today, since ArcGIS Online users don't have direct access to the API and the next version of Developer Edition isn't out yet, but you should really read the Release Blog if you are on Developer Edition. It's not even the 4.X API anymore. There are big breaking changes coming with imports and all Widgets are now officially deprecated. (Not Experience Builder Widgets. Separate concept. We've talked about this.)
And coming back to the AI lead in, the AI Components package should now be active. Check out the video of an AI Data Explorer Widget you could build, if you haven't vibe coded it already.
Map Viewer Updates
There are a lot of small changes to the Web Map Viewer. I'm not sure how many of them have an Experience Builder impact. Time based visibility and Arcade expressions in popups of hosted imagery layers should carry over at least.
Now, we can finally get to the actual Experience Builder updates, starting with the framework wide updates.
Accessibility
- Headers and Footers clarify their roles to screen readers.
- A good reason to use official Headers and Footers on Single Page applications, something I have previously advocated against.
- Widgets that now meet accessibility standards:
- Date Filter - New Widget, who dis?
- Fly Controller
- Legend
- Login
- Query
- Section
- Use a keyboard to navigate Views in Views Navigation.
- Text widgets, Legend widgets, and other non-interactive elements can have keyboard focus when they are scrollable.
- The Journey Template meets accessibility standards.
- The Insert Widget Panel in the Builder has been prioritized for keyboard navigation.
- I don't see how the Builder, or a Map for that matter, could ever be made fully accessible, but I guess adding more accessibility features is never a bad thing.
Actions
The Filter Data Records and Select Data Records Message Actions support the Data Filtering Changes Trigger. This could be huge and open up lots of new interactivity options.
Arcade
- The AI Arcade robot is now in Experience Builder to help you write Arcade.
- Conditional and Dynamic Styling for foreground colors (that's text and icons.) in List Widget items.
General Settings
- Cheating cheaters can now copy other people's apps.
- If you turn on the Page level Restricted Visibility from the last update, there is a little icon on Restricted Pages.
Languages
America hasn't been the best neighbor to Canada lately. We win gold medals with too many men on the ice and we haven't let them see the Stanley Cup in over three decades. I think I've heard about a few non-hockey related issues as well. But now an American company is letting French Canadians read Experience Builder apps, so everything is cool, right?
SQL Expression Builder
You can remove All from the Dropdown List of Unique Values.
Themes And Templates
There's a new Page Template called Concourse and a new Theme called Calcite. Use that Calcite Theme if you want to make the most ESRI looking app ever. Go over here to see the colors and whatnot.
Widget time! What do we have?
New Widgets
- Date Filter - Filter stuff by date or date range. Several different selection modes including a calendar.
- Theme Mode Switcher - Toggle in or out of the Dark Side. There's probably a Palpatine and/or a Skywalker involved.
Widget Updates
- Add Data
- Preserves data structure of KML files and different geometry types are split into separate layers.
- You can choose specific layers to be added from WFS or WMS.
- WFS lets you limit the number of records, up to 30,000.
- Analysis - Reorder parameters by clicking and dragging.
- Chart
- It promises to never forget your title again. It's a great title, really. Very memorable. It started with a T, right?
- For Series Charts, X and Y axis have been renamed Category and Value Axis.
- Directions - Re-live the good old MapQuest days and print out your directions. Hey, MapQuest still exists, who knew?
- Draw
- Import and export your drawings in JSON format.
- Meanwhile in the Custom Widgets Group, has been hard at work adding so many additional features to the Community Draw Widget. It just isn't a close race anymore. The Community Empire has launched an exoplanet mission and is nearing a Scientific Victory while the ESRI Empire just finished researching Flight.
- It will accept drawings from exported from the official Widget.
- And, as I'm writing this, literally right now, he sent me an update for testing to make exports compatible to import into the official Widget.
- Edit
- Customize fields while Batch Editing.
- Popup Titles are now Editor Titles.
- Highly requested/Web App Builder parity feature - Merge, Split, Copy and Paste to your hearts content.
- Paste to same layer or another layer of same geometry type.
- List - Place a List in an Accordion, scroll around, close it, re-open it. Still at the same spot.
- Login - I'm just going to direct quote this because I don't get the utility, but there must be a reason, right?
You can choose to have the widget sign the user out of their account and from any resources in the app that required separate login.
- Map - Big stuff here. Pretty much all these updates are highly requested.
- I know what your thinking websites just don't track you enough. Good news! Experience Builder can now follow your live updating location. Yehaw!
- Start it by default or after hitting Locate.
- The map can move and reorient with the user.
- You get to decide where the Map Tools go. Finally!
- The way Tools hide on small maps has changed. Slightly unclear on how based on the What's New text, but I think it's based on where you put them.
- In previous iterations of Experience Builder, the hiding order was based on what type of Tool it was, and one of the first Tools to hide on Mobile was Locate, the Tool you probably want most on Mobile.
- The way Tools hide on small maps has changed. Slightly unclear on how based on the What's New text, but I think it's based on where you put them.
- Google Photorealistic 3D Basemaps
- Change the color of links in Popups.
- The ESRI default is a grey color that does not meet accessibility standards, so you should really take a look at this setting and probably change them to good old fashioned blue.
- I know what your thinking websites just don't track you enough. Good news! Experience Builder can now follow your live updating location. Yehaw!
- Map Layers - Why isn't this documented? It's huge!!!!!!!!!
- If there is one thing I have been advocating for for the past two and a half years, it's the ability to make thematic layer groups.
- Last year, ESRI introduced the ability to turn all the layers on or off at once and I got excited.
- I thought I could combine this with the ability to customize what layers are in a Map Layers Widget and make a thematic on/off switcher.
- Instead, it just turned every layer on/off.
- I cried.
- It works now. Do it. It works now. Thanks, .
- I thought I could combine this with the ability to customize what layers are in a Map Layers Widget and make a thematic on/off switcher.
- Near Me - By tradition, Near Me gets it's own private What's New page.
- If you get more than 10,000 result, there will be an extra button click before all the data loads, instead of instantly locking up the application entirely.
- Display results from hidden layers or un-hide them with a Near Me search.
- Trigger Near Me from a URL.
- Oriented Imagery Viewer
- Re-designed user interface.
- New Search Tools
- Explore Images - See images by map location.
- Explore Images 3D - See images by vertical location.
- Display Images - See images related to specific features.
- Improved performance due to caching.
- Time filters.
- Print
- Chose to make the legend based on the Print Service, Map visibility or what's in the Map, visible or not.
- Make the user's username the default author.
- Search - Auto close the Search Panel after a Search. I thought we did this like two years ago.
- Select - Pick the default selection tool and make it run when the Widget loads.
- Swipe - View the Sublayers of a Group Layer, but not if they were added at run-time, don't get greedy.
- Table - You can chose to use the Webmap settings for displaying fields and editability.
- Text - If you add a Text Widget and then don't edit it before publishing your app, it won't display with placeholder text. But come on, that's on you. Why aren't you putting text in your Text Widget?
- Timeline - Do you begin at the beginning of time or somewhere in the middle? Deep philosophical question. And now a choice in the Timeline Widget.
- Widget Controller
- More grab handles for Builders and users to resize a Floating Panel.
- The Theme Mode Widget just works in a Widget Controller, instead of opening a Panel that the user needs to click again to switch the Theme.
I came into this update thinking there wasn't much to talk about. But, yeah, there's some big stuff in this one. Don't have much more to say. See ya in June, if we aren't all replaced by robots.
