Recording Trips

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

JourneyPulse records your routes as trips (also called "recordings" in the app). You start them yourself, let them start automatically or use Siri and Control Center. Everything is stored locally on your iPhone (see Privacy).

On this page: Starting and stopping · Automation · History and trip details · Logbook · Export · Fuel and consumption

Tip: For clean recordings in the background you need the location permission Always and Precise. More in Getting Started and Energy and Battery.

Starting and stopping

• Manually: In the Live tab you start and stop recording with the controls of the live view. While recording you see duration and distance. A red REC icon in the status bar shows that recording is active.
• Save and start over: A long press on REC opens a dialog to end or reset the trip.
• Siri and Shortcuts: "Start a trip with JourneyPulse", and similarly to end it.
• Control Center: A "Trip recording" toggle that shows whether recording is active and starts or ends it.
• CarPlay: Start/stop is also possible there, see CarPlay.

Recording stops automatically

If the vehicle stands still for a longer time (after a short grace period at the beginning), JourneyPulse ends the trip by itself. Stops of about one minute or more are marked as a stop in the trip.

Resuming

If the app is closed or restarted while a trip is running, JourneyPulse continues the open trip on the next launch. Trips that run past midnight are split at the change of day.

Don't close the app manually in the app switcher while recording: a forced quit makes iOS stop background location unreliably.

Automation

Under Settings → Tracking Profiles & Energy you choose how actively the app records:

Profile	Behaviour
Foreground only	Recording stops as soon as you close the app. No Dynamic Island, no widgets, no background usage.
Background – with trip recording	Clean routes in the background, with automatic accuracy and energy-saving standstill.
Background – significant places only	Only captures places where you stay longer. Saves battery but doesn't record detailed routes.

Further switches: Motion detection for energy saving, Automatic accuracy and High precision on foot / by bike. Battery details: Energy and Battery.

Automatic trips at home

Under Settings → Home automation: when you leave the area around your "Home" place, recording starts; when you return and stay put, it ends. Requirements:

• A saved place with the category Home (see Places and POIs).
• Location permission Always.

You can set the radius (below 100 m the area becomes jittery due to GPS noise, above 500 m the trip starts too late) and the standstill time until the trip ends. With Record without gaps a recording is always running: at home a "Home" section begins, and a new trip starts when you drive off. The split only happens once an accurate position is clearly outside the radius, so brief false reports from GPS or the home beacon don't create tiny trips.

Optional detection via Bluetooth beacon (vehicle and home beacon) is described in Places and POIs.

History and trip details

The History tab lists all trips, grouped by day. Each row shows name, time span, distance, mode of transport and, if set, the purpose. Swipe a row to the left to delete it; Delete all is at the top right.

Mode of transport

From GPS and motion data, JourneyPulse automatically detects whether you were on foot, on a bike, in a vehicle or staying somewhere. For vehicles the hint "probably train" may appear. For long recordings, time spent at home is excluded.

What the trip details show

• Name (rename with the pencil icon), time span, distance, mode of transport
• Time spent away from home, number and duration of stops
• Average speed per mode of transport
• ECO analysis for car trips: score (0–100), share of smooth driving, hard accelerations, abrupt braking
• Map with start, end and waypoints; tap a waypoint for details
• Waypoints list with speed, course and GPS accuracy
• Summary: a readable description of the route. Optionally with minor/major roads, public places from Apple Maps, a "human style" or — on devices with Apple Intelligence — AI text. You can share or copy it.

Route recording has no gaps even on long, straight sections (e.g. motorways).

Logbook

Every car trip can be given a purpose: business, private or commute. Trips between home and work are pre-set as commute, trips to places marked as customer as business. After a trip a notification can ask for the purpose; you can change it in the trip details (section Logbook).

In History → Logbook you'll find:

• Period (month, year or custom range)
• Totals per purpose, days with a commute (e.g. for the commuter allowance) and trips without a purpose
• Export as CSV or PDF report
• Switch Ask for the purpose after every trip

The logbook is a private overview and not a tax-compliant logbook for the tax office.

Export and sharing

Where	What
History, "Share" icon	All trips as CSV, GPX or PDF
Trip details, "Export"	Single trip as GPX, CSV or PDF
Logbook	CSV or PDF report
Settings → Maintenance & Diagnostics → Backup	Places and trips as JSON, trips as GPX, full backup, working times as CSV

Sharing uses the normal iOS share sheet. GPX files can be opened in many map and sports apps.

Storage

Trips are stored in a local database on the device. Optional iCloud sync (trips and places) is under Settings → iCloud Sync. There is no automatic deletion period: trips remain until you delete them yourself.

Fuel and consumption

Under More → Fuel you keep a fuel log:

• Add refuelling with litres, price per litre and total amount (two values are enough, the third is calculated), odometer, full tank, date, station, fuel type and note. A receipt can be scanned.
• Odometer: The first entered reading is the reference point; after that the app updates it from your trips. Please check it against your dashboard occasionally.
• Key figures: average consumption, remaining range, distance since last refuelling, cost per 100 km. Only full-tank refuellings serve as reference points for the consumption calculation.
• Nearby fuel stations (radius 5/10/25/50 km, sortable by price or distance) via the Tankerkönig service.
• Refuelling strategy: consumption per road type from OBD trips, cheapest time to refuel. Optionally Suggest worthwhile fuel stops and automatic fuel station detection during a stop.
• The navigation's fuel stop planner suggests the cheapest station along the route when range is too low, see Navigation.

For automatically pre-filled prices you need a free Tankerkönig key (optional). Consumption from the vehicle requires an OBD adapter, see OBD.

More questions: FAQ · Known Limitations