Location journal for iOS
MeTrail records arrivals, stays, and departures in the background, with no check-ins. Months later you can still return to that day — the path on a map, the hours on a timeline, the place in its own file.
MeTrail does three things
The default Power Saving mode relies on the system’s own visit records, at almost no extra battery cost. Switch to Balanced or Precise for faster alerts, and add a missed visit by hand.
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 path 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
Two or more days away from your home city become a trip on their own: 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
MeTrail does not keep GPS running like a navigation app. Power Saving relies on the system’s own visit records at almost no extra cost; Balanced and Precise react faster, and Precise uses noticeably more battery and pauses when it runs low. All three record stays, not continuous routes.
See how the day actually went
Put the places and their order back on the map, with paths between stops. 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 visit, 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 style and sound, and get a milestone alert when a regular place hits its 10th, 50th, or 100th visit. Let family know when you arrive or leave, or set rules by place, time window, and frequency to forward alerts to Bark, Telegram, Discord, 14 more channels, or your own endpoint.
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’s path 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, choose JSON only, and export a 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. Your history stays on your device first. Sharing, export, iCloud sync, alert forwarding, family alerts, and Smart Summaries are all yours to turn on, and only then is the related content sent out.
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.
