Recording a trip

Every recording starts with a tap. The app does not watch for driving, so nothing is recorded until you tap Start trip, and nothing is recorded after you tap Stop.

What the app asks for

Two prompts, both on first run, and you can skip either. Adding road by hand and importing a GPX file work without them.

• Location, the one Android calls “While using the app” — it is what matches your drive against Interstate routes. Deny it and nothing records: the dashboard says “Location access needed” and offers Grant access and Add by hand.
• Notifications — the recording banner and the trip result. Deny it and recording and matching still work; what you lose is the banner, the result and the achievements.

Android asks once. If you deny a prompt for good, the app can’t raise it again — Settings has Open app settings, which goes to the system page where the permission can be granted.

Two permissions the app does not hold, and one it has no use for:

• Background location. The app never reads your position when no trip is running, so it doesn’t ask. Recording is started by you, with the app on screen, and the recording service keeps location access for the whole drive on that basis.
• Physical activity. The app holds no health or fitness data of any kind and reads nothing about how you move.
• Microphone. The app records no sound. Spoken milestones are off until you turn them on, and they speak through Android’s own voice.

Your first drive

Tap Start trip before you set off — the green sign on the dashboard. An orange bar appears with the elapsed time and a Stop button, and a notification stays in the shade for as long as the recording runs. Android requires that notification for any app reading location this way, and it carries its own Stop.

Then drive. Nothing else is needed, and nothing on screen has to be watched.

What the live card shows

Once enough fixes agree on a road, the dashboard’s card fills in:

• the route shield and, where the road is signed for it, the direction plaque;
• the state you are in, or an honest state instead — “Matching…”, “Probably I-95”, “Waiting for GPS…”, “Off interstate”, “Stopped”;
• your position, as MI 36.4 · APPROX. MILE MARKER — the road’s own reference mile, read between the two junctions that bracket you. It can sit half a mile from the sign on the road. Where no junction anchors it, the figure reads ≈ MI 36.0 · ROUTE MEASURE instead;
• a guide sign for what is ahead: the next state line, the end of the route, or mile 0 on a beltway, with the distance in whole miles;
• a coverage strip of the road around you, driven and not yet driven, with the car’s position on it and a note such as “new pavement ahead”;
• miles matched this trip, as 31.5 mi of Interstate this trip · 12.0 mi new, or “No exit-to-exit miles yet”;
• a chip for each achievement earned since you set off.

The card catches up every 15 seconds while it is on screen, so give a new road a few fixes and a few seconds before you doubt it. Nothing the card says is the record: it is the app thinking out loud while you drive.

Stopping

Tap Stop in the app or on the notification. The trace is then matched on the phone — no signal needed — and the map fills in. A notification reports the result: Trip processed: 74.2 mi, 31.5 new interstate mi.

If you are signed in, the finished trip is sent to your account when the phone next has a network. Nothing is sent while you are driving.

Battery

Recording keeps the GPS receiver on for the whole drive, which is what a navigation app does too. The app asks for a fix every second until it is sure which road you are on, then every 5 seconds, and goes back to every second whenever the road it settled on stops fitting.

Between trips the app asks for nothing. There is no background service and no wake-up, so a day with no recording costs no battery at all.

When a trip ends itself

A recording you forget to stop does not run all day. It ends when the vehicle has stayed inside 200 meters for 10 minutes, or when no GPS fix has arrived for 10 minutes.

Gaps and interruptions

Losing GPS in a tunnel or a canyon leaves a gap in the trace. A short gap inside one run of travel is filled when the road runs through and the travel on both sides shows the drive continued. Long gaps are left as gaps rather than guessed at.

If Android kills the app mid-drive, the points already written are kept. The next launch finishes that trip and matches it, and says so: “Interrupted trip recovered”, with up to the last minute before the stop missing.

In the car

Android Auto is built in. Plugged into a head unit that runs it, the app draws a pane with the shield, the road, the mile and what is ahead, plus Start and Stop. Three switches under Settings, In the car control the rest: spoken milestones (off until you turn it on), an offer to record when the phone connects to the car, and small cards on the car screen for a new Interstate, a state line or a badge.

The car pane has not been confirmed on a real head unit yet, and Google has not been asked to distribute the app to cars. If nothing appears in your car’s app list, that is expected rather than a fault of your setup.

What the app doesn’t record

Anything you didn’t start. There is no trip detection while the app is closed and no collection in the background. What it holds is the positions of a trip you asked for, and your data says where those go.