Trail Guide
Track-O-Tron 1.0 · iPhone
The questions that come up most, answered — and a real address to write to if yours isn't here.
Common questions
Does it really record with the phone in my pocket?
Yes. Start a recording and lock the screen — the app keeps receiving GPS fixes in the background until you stop it. iOS shows its standard location indicator while this is happening, so you always know.
Make sure location access is allowed in Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services › Track-O-Tron, with Precise Location on. If access is denied the Start button says so.
My track looks sparse or has gaps. Why?
A few honest reasons: GPS fixes with poor accuracy (deep canyons, dense forest, indoors) are discarded rather than drawn as noise; paused stretches are deliberately left as gaps rather than bridged with a straight line; and the recording density is tuned per activity — a drive records a point every 25 meters, a walk every 5.
Does it work in airplane mode, or without cell service?
Recording, yes — GPS is a receiver, not a connection, and the stats, milestones, and reports are all computed on the phone. The map tiles come from Apple Maps, so with no connection at all the background map may be blank while your track still draws correctly on top of it. It fills in when you're back in coverage.
I paused a recording, and the app got quit. Is my track gone?
No. Tracks are saved to disk continuously while recording. If iOS (or a low battery, or you) terminates the app mid-recording or mid-pause, relaunching brings the track back exactly where it was, paused, with Resume and Stop waiting. Nothing you've recorded is lost.
Can I change the activity mid-track?
Yes — tap the activity label next to Pause while recording and pick a new one. GPS tuning switches immediately, and a track that used more than one activity is honestly labeled "Multi" in your history.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. Track-O-Tron is free — every feature, unlimited tracks. No subscription, no account, no ads, no in-app purchases.
How do I get a track into another app — or onto my photos?
Open a saved track and use the share button to export it as a GPX file — a plain standard format that Gaia, CalTopo, Strava, Garmin, and most mapping software read directly.
To geotag photos from the same outing, feed that GPX file to our companion app Geotag-O-Tron: it matches photo timestamps against the track and writes the coordinates into the photos.
Why does the drive icon menu include a galloping horse?
Because Settings › Vehicle exists, and somebody was going to ask for it eventually. Car, motorcycle, boat, horse, airplane, cable car, paper plane, hare, or tortoise — the choice says more about you than the speed graph does.
What is a smoot, and why can distance be measured in giraffes?
A smoot is 5 feet 7 inches — the height of Oliver Smoot, who in 1958 was repeatedly laid end over end across Harvard Bridge by his fraternity to measure it. A giraffe is about five meters, nose to hoof. Fathoms and furlongs are offered in the same spirit, here and in Altim-O-Tron alike.
How much battery does recording use?
Continuous GPS costs something; there's no way around physics. The app keeps it reasonable by tuning accuracy and point spacing to the activity, and by telling iOS what kind of movement to expect. A day-hike is well within a modern iPhone's budget — an all-day drive is a good time for a car charger.
Which iPhones are supported?
Any iPhone that runs iOS 17 or later — iPhone XS and newer.
Still stuck?
Write with your iPhone model, iOS version, and what you saw versus what you expected. Screenshots (and, for tracking oddities, an exported GPX of the track in question) help enormously. There's no ticket system and no bot — it's a small operation, and messages get read.