Automatic footprint journal · Local-first
MeTrail · Automatically record your daily footprint
MeTrail quietly captures arrivals, stays, departures, and daily routes in the background, so you can look back on a day, a trip, or a month without rebuilding it by hand.
Review place history on maps, timelines, calendars, and place pages. Add notes, photos, tags, sharing, exports, and arrival or departure automation when a visit needs context or a next step.
Core experience
The product story stays simple: capture your daily footprint automatically, review it clearly later, and keep it private, portable, and useful over time.
Less manual work, fewer missed stops
MeTrail uses the iOS visit pipeline to capture arrivals, departures, stays, and daily footprint history for you, so the log keeps growing without manual check-ins.
See how a day unfolded
Replay places, order, and routes on the map when you want to review a commute, errand run, or travel day instead of guessing from scattered clues.
Take your history with you
Filter footprint history and export it as CSV, TXT, JSON, GPX, or KML for backup, analysis, migration, and long-term archive.
Multi-device when you want it
Enable iCloud Sync and iCloud Drive Sync only when you need multi-device access. If you prefer privacy-first local storage, keep everything on device.
Jump back to any day
Jump from today to last week or last month through timeline, week, and month views built for calendar review, not just raw logs.
Find the places that matter
Group recurring places with favorites, tags, colors, and filters, then open each place together with its full visit history and memory context.
Turn routes into something readable
Generate readable cards with maps and summaries when you want to share a route with friends or keep a clean record for yourself.
Let visits trigger follow-ups
Set rules by place, time window, and frequency, then send events to Bark, Feishu, webhooks, and more through Hook Automation.
Save the thought that belonged there
Drop a short note into a visit while it is fresh, then pair it with photos or tags so a place keeps more than just coordinates.
Use cases
The most common patterns are trip recap, everyday recall, and using arrival or departure events to trigger the next message or workflow.
After a trip
Common use case
For travel and business trips
“I let MeTrail run quietly during the day, then at night the map and timeline give me the exact order of stops and how long each one lasted. It saves me from rebuilding a trip out of photos, receipts, and half-remembered messages.”
Use case · Trip recap
On ordinary weekdays
Common use case
For commutes and errands
“Most weekdays do not feel important enough to log on purpose. A few weeks later, though, MeTrail can still tell me where I went after work, which stop I made on the way, and how long that whole loop actually took.”
Use case · Everyday recall
When alerts need to go somewhere
Common use case
For family and team follow-ups
“Once arrival and departure events start flowing to Bark, Feishu, or a webhook, MeTrail stops being just a journal. It quietly becomes the trigger that sends the next reminder, update, or heads-up on time.”
Use case · Automation follow-up
FAQ
Covers permissions, battery impact, privacy, exports, migration, automation, and how arrival/departure recording actually works.
MeTrail depends on the iOS visit mechanism to recognize arrivals and departures, so “Always” plus Precise Location keeps records flowing while your phone is locked. It is not nonstop GPS tracking, so day-to-day use is usually much lighter than live navigation.
Yes. You can keep reminders inside the app, or use `More > Settings > Tools > Hook Automation` to send events to Bark, Feishu, WeCom, Telegram, or your own HTTP endpoint with rules by place, time window, and frequency.
Start with four checks: iOS notification permission, Focus mode, Background App Refresh, and the in-app arrival/departure switches. If you use Hook Automation, inspect recent send records there and retry failures.
You can export data manually, or turn on iCloud Sync plus iCloud Drive Sync. On a new device, sign into the same Apple ID and enable sync, or move over the files you exported yourself.
By default, it does not. Visits, places, photos, and notes stay inside the device sandbox with no third-party trackers. Data leaves the device only when you choose to share, export, or enable iCloud for your own private storage.
MeTrail saves the arrival first and fills in dwell time after iOS confirms that you actually left. That usually happens once you reach the next place and stay briefly, so departure details can show up a little later.
Open the place detail and adjust the pin, widen the flexible boundary, or refresh the address. Large campuses, malls, and parks often need a quick correction because the area itself is broad.
CSV works well for spreadsheets, TXT for plain backups, JSON for structured processing, and GPX or KML for map tools and geographic archives. MeTrail supports all five.
MeTrail loads history in pages instead of pushing everything into memory at once. Photos and attachments are usually what consume storage, so you can clean them up or back them up through iCloud Drive when needed.
Ready to look back later
Set it once and let MeTrail record quietly in the background. Later, review a day, recap a trip, export an archive, or send arrival and departure events where they need to go.
Requires iOS 18.0 or later. Background logging, notifications, and automation depend on system permissions.
Why people keep it
