Location journal for iOS
MeTrail quietly records arrivals, stays, and departures in the background. Months later you can still return to that day — the route on a map, the hours on a timeline, the place in its own file.
MeTrail does three things
The default Power Saving mode uses system visit events to record arrivals and departures. Choose Balanced or Precise (Beta) when you need a different recording approach.
Map, timeline, calendar, and place files are four doors into the same history. Look by a day, by a place, or by a trip — every route leads back.
History is written on device and depends on no account. Change tools or change phones whenever you like — you can take the whole thing with you instead of leaving it locked in an app.
Looking back
Memory fades; the record does not. Open any date and MeTrail lays out the order of places, how long each stay lasted, and the route between them — no more rebuilding a day out of photos, receipts, and half-remembered messages.
Place history
Every place keeps its own file: first visit, most recent visit, total visits, total time — plus the photos and notes you left behind. The places you keep returning to surface on their own.
Trip recap
Put several days of routes side by side: how many places you passed through, which days you were moving, and the stop you lingered at longest — the whole trip laid out in order.
Features
Recording is only the start. What decides whether it was worth it is whether you can find that day again months later.
Three modes, battery on your terms
Power Saving uses system visit events. Balanced and Precise are in Beta, with separate stay confirmation settings. Precise uses continuous location updates while moving, uses more battery, and pauses when the battery is low.
See how the day actually went
Put the places, the order, and the route back on the map. A commute, an errand run, or a travel day reads clearly instead of being reassembled from memory.
Jump back to any day
The timeline shows the details; weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly reviews show what changed, and the year story becomes one long image. Set reminders to revisit your history each week or month.
Keep the thought that belonged there
Write a line into a journey, attach a few photos, add a tag, and keep the arrival weather and calendar events alongside it. Come back later and the place file holds more than coordinates and timestamps.
Let a visit trigger the next step
Give arrivals and departures their own message style and sound, picked from 30 built-in tones, and get a milestone alert when a regular place hits its 10th, 50th, or 100th visit. Or set rules by place, time window, and frequency to forward events to 15 channels including Bark, Telegram, and Discord.
The record stays yours
Filter history and export it as CSV, TXT, JSON, GPX, or KML. Turn on iCloud sync only when you actually need a second device.
Screens
The same record answers a different question depending on where you open it: how today went, how often you go there, what changed since last month.
Pick a screen to switch
The day route on a map, with every place below it in the order you went. One glance covers the day.
Web Viewer
MeTrail Web Viewer is a static page that reads the export package from the app. Drop the file in and the history opens as a map, a timeline, and lists of places and cities. Parsing happens inside the browser tab — the file is never uploaded.
On the export screen, filter by time and place, then save the viewer JSON package.
A plain static page in any desktop browser. No sign-in, no upload, no waiting.
Search and filter through days, places, and cities, with the map following every selection.
Parsing, filtering, and the map all run on your own machine. Online basemaps stay off until you turn them on.
Privacy
MeTrail has no accounts and no third-party analytics. History is written into the device sandbox, and it leaves this device only when you share it, export it, or turn on iCloud yourself.
FAQ
Permissions, battery, privacy, place matching, and moving to a new phone.
Install it, grant the permission once, and let it run. On the day you need to look something up, you will be glad it was on.
Requires iOS 18.0 or later. Background recording, notifications, and automation depend on system permissions.
