Rebuilding Betterlytics’ world map - paving the way for advanced geographical insights

Hey Indie Hackers,

I wanted to share some behind-the-scenes about a recent upgrade coming in the next Betterlytics release: a complete rewrite of our world map visualization.

Betterlytics has always been a privacy-first, cookieless analytics tool. The world map already showed visitor locations while respecting user privacy. No cookies, no personal data collected.

But the original map implementation was showing its limits: it was slow due to redundant rerenders and Leaflet repeatedly attaching event listeners, which also made it less interactive and unable to easily support the advanced features we want to build next.

So one of our developers rewrote the map’s event handling by overriding Leaflet’s built-in functionality, focusing on smoothness and responsiveness. Instead of relying on Leaflet’s buggy tooltips and delayed mouse events, we implemented a custom tooltip component using direct DOM manipulation for snappy hover highlights and reliable country selection. Now it feels fluid and lag-free, even on fast mouse movements.

This rewrite doesn’t affect how we handle privacy or data collection, that's already rock solid. Instead, it’s the foundation we need to bring richer, more interactive features like:

• Popup drilldown charts showing traffic breakdowns by country

• Historical session replays on the map

• Other advanced geographical drilldowns to help you better understand your audience’s behavior

These will roll out over the next few releases, starting with this fundamental map upgrade.

We’re excited to keep pushing how privacy-first analytics can still deliver meaningful, detailed insights.

If you’re curious to explore or have feedback, Betterlytics is open source here:
https://betterlytics.io
https://github.com/betterlytics/betterlytics

Would love your thoughts or ideas for map-based features!