Field manual · 08/17

Tracker

The Tracker records where you have been — for after-action review, for proof of coverage, for a training log, and for finding your way back. It keeps recording with the app closed and the screen off.

starting a session

Open the Tracker tab and start recording. The red indicator in the map controls blinks while a session is live — tap it any time to jump back to the session.
Pick the activity. It colours the session, filters the list, feeds the calorie estimate and is written into the GPX as the track type.
Walk. Use LAP to mark sections and Mark to drop a pin at the current fix without leaving the screen.
Stop when you are done. The session is saved to the history.

You can also start and stop recording from a quick-action chip, from Siri ("Start recording in Tactical GPS"), from the Lock Screen Live Activity, from the home-screen widget or from your Apple Watch — without opening the app.

activities and laps

Ten activities, picked from a sheet when you start or changed afterwards in the session view:

Activity	Activity	Activity
Hiking	Walking	Running
Cycling	Mountain Biking	Skiing
Paddling	Driving	Flying
Other

The track list has a filter chip per activity plus a Statistics panel breaking your totals down by activity and by year — total distance, total time and track count.

Track folders PRO

A session's row menu has Move to Folder… — pick an existing folder or New Folder…. Filed sessions group under a collapsible amber header with a count, which keeps a season of recordings, or one trip's legs, together in the list.

Activities survive a round trip. They are exported as the GPX track type, and an imported GPX's type is matched back to the closest activity.

Laps

The LAP button drops a section mark while recording. The session then shows a lap table with distance, time, pace and ascent for each lap, and the lap points are marked on the elevation profile and on the map. Laps are carried in the CSV export.

how densely it records

Settings → Tracker → Recording Interval sets how often a point is kept:

Automatic (by speed): Roughly one point every 3–4 seconds at any pace
By distance: Every fix (5 m), every 10 m, 25 m or 50 m
By time: Every 5, 15, 30 or 60 seconds

Automatic spaces points by how fast you are moving — about 5 m on foot, 15 m on a bike and 40 m in a vehicle — so the track stays faithful to the shape of your route without bloating the file when you speed up.

Battery profile

Settings → Tracker → Battery Profile trades precision against endurance. It seeds the recording interval, which you can still change afterwards.

Profile	The app says	Fix accuracy
Precise	Best possible trace · highest battery use	Best for navigation
Balanced	~10 m fixes · good for hikes of a day or more	Nearest ten metres
Power Saving	~100 m fixes · multi-day trips, coarse trace	Nearest hundred metres

Tracker settings

Elevation Noise Filter — 1, 3, 5 or 10 m — sets how much altitude jitter is ignored before ascent or descent is counted. The app's own guidance: lower for a barometric receiver, higher under poor sky. The default of 3 m suits a phone.

pauses, warnings and interruptions

The session badge tells you what the recorder is actually doing:

REC: Recording normally
MOVING: Movement detected
PAUSED: You paused it
AUTO-PAUSED: Auto-paused — standing still
GPS LOST: Signal lost, or a fix rejected as a spike

Auto-Pause When Stopped stops the clock when you stand still, so moving time and average speed mean something. GPS Signal Loss Alert warns you rather than letting a track quietly develop a hole.

An interrupted recording is not lost. Every fix is written as it arrives, so a crash, a force-quit or a flat battery cannot take the track with it. The session is closed at its last real point and offered in the Tracker as Recording Interrupted — choose Resume, which books the dead time as paused, or keep it as recorded.

reviewing a session

A saved session shows the track on a map with the full statistics:

Group	Readouts
Distance & time	Distance, Duration, Moving time
Speed	Average speed, Overall average, Max speed, Pace
Vertical	Ascent, Descent, Ascent rate, Elevation
Effort	Effort Dist, Calories, Laps

Effort Dist is a flat-equivalent distance: your real distance plus 1 km for every 100 m of ascent (the kilomètre-effort convention). A climb-heavy 8 km day and a flat 8 km day read the same on distance but very differently here, which is the honest way to compare routes and plan timings.

The interactive profile

Elevation and speed profiles with an X-axis toggle between Distance and Time. Drag across the curve and the point under your finger is marked on the map preview — so a hard section on the graph becomes a place on the ground. High and low points and lap marks are drawn on the curve.

Calories

Estimated from the activity's metabolic equivalent, your moving time and your body weight. Weight is off by default — set it in Settings → Tracker → Body Weight (kcal estimate), from 50 to 120 kg, and the estimate appears.

Session actions:

Play on Map replays the track as a moving marker over the map, running against the real timestamps so recorded pauses play through. The transport bar has play/pause, a scrubber, a 1× / 10× / 60× speed button and a camera toggle between follow and whole route. PRO

Mark drops a pin at the current fix, named for the session.

Add to Layer turns the recorded track into an editable route you can style, export and navigate.

Backtrack navigates you back along it — see Navigation & Directions.

Resume Recording continues into an existing session instead of starting a new one.

Share offers GPX, a point-by-point CSV and Copy Stats as text. The CSV columns are time, latitude, longitude, altitude_m, speed_mps, lap, with ISO-8601 timestamps.

Tracking session

widget, live activity and watch

Home-screen widget

Shows the running session with DIST, MOVING, SPEED and ASCENT, or NOT RECORDING with a Start pill that opens the Tracker.

Live Activity

A Lock Screen card and Dynamic Island presence with the same readouts plus TOTAL, and working Pause, Resume and Stop buttons — so a session is controlled without unlocking the phone.

Apple Watch

Start and stop from the wrist with live distance and elapsed time. See Apple Watch.

Track appearance on the map is set in Settings → Tracker: Show Tracking Route on Map, Tracking Route Color and Route Line Width from 1 to 10.

Track recording is a Pro feature. Free users get a demo session that replays a prepared track, so the session view, the statistics and the profiles can all be inspected before buying.

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