Location journal for iOS
MeTrail is a location journal for iPhone. Record visits and stays automatically, revisit them on maps and calendars, and add photos and notes. Local-first, no account.
MeTrail does three things
Choose Power Saving, Balanced, or Precise to suit your needs. Background recording needs location permission and depends on iOS and location conditions. Missed visits can be added 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. The default Precise mode locates you only while you are moving and pauses when the battery runs low; Balanced and Power Saving lean on the system’s own visit records and use even less, at the cost of later arrivals. All three record stays, not continuous routes.
See how the day actually went
Monthly, quarterly, and yearly reviews now include a map of the places you went. Maps can show where your photos were taken, and you can add them to visits.
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. Show steps from Apple Health on trips between visits, each day, and in reviews.
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, with photos and pins if you like; exported data can be imported back. 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.
Open the inner display and the map gets the full width, with the panel docked beside it. More of the route stays in view while you read the day.
Web Viewer
Open a JSON viewer package exported from MeTrail in your computer’s browser. Replay visits by day and search places and cities. Files are parsed locally in the browser and are not uploaded.
On the export screen, filter by time and place, choose JSON only, and export a package.
Imported files are not uploaded
Search and filter through days, places, and cities, with the map following every selection.
OpenFreeMap street maps are on by default and can be turned off in the menu. Online maps request third-party map resources without sending the imported history.
Privacy
Visits, places, photos, and notes are stored on your device by default, with no account required. You choose whether to use iCloud sync, export, sharing, alert forwarding, family alerts, or Smart Summaries; related content goes to the service you choose. Adding visits to Calendar requires separate setup and permission, and events are stored and synced by the selected calendar account. Maps, place lookups, and weather may need a connection.
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.
