What it does
Trip Tracker records a trip live from your phone’s GPS. While you travel it shows distance, elapsed time, moving time, your speed now, your average speed while moving, your top speed and how accurate the GPS is. Afterwards it lists every sharp speed-up and hard slow-down with the clock time and place, splits the trip into legs between marks, and draws the route and a speed chart.
Nothing is uploaded. The page works out everything in your browser and needs no internet once it has loaded. A trip is kept only if you tick the box to keep it on this device.
When you want splits and elevation from the saved file, open the GPX in the GPS track analyser; to plan a pace, use the pace calculator, and to turn a drive’s distance into money, the fuel cost.
How to use it
- Pick how you travel: Walk, Run, Cycle, Car, Bus or Train. The mode sets how fast is believable and how steep a speed change must be to be listed. Choose km or miles.
- Press Start. Allow location when your browser asks. Wait for the accuracy to read a few tens of metres or better.
- Press Mark point whenever you like, with a short label such as “Bus stop”. A mark is also added by itself every 1 km (or every mile).
- Pause stops recording and counts no distance across the pause. Stop ends the trip and shows the results.
- Download the GPX or CSV, or the report as an image, PDF or Word file.
What each option does
- Mode: sets the fastest speed that is believed (walk 4 m/s, run 8, cycle 20, car and bus 60, train 100) and the steepness of a speed change that counts (walk and run 0.8 m/s², cycle 1.5, car, bus and train 2.5, sustained over at least two readings). A reading that implies a faster move is dropped as a jump.
- Accuracy filter: readings the phone says are worse than 50 m (65 m for car, bus and train) are ignored. The count of ignored readings is shown.
- Dark screen: a dim black view with big numbers, to save battery and glare. Tap anywhere to leave it.
- Keep my trips on this device: off by default. When ticked, the trip is saved about every 15 seconds, so a crash or reload can be recovered, and finished trips are listed to reopen or delete. Clear saved trips removes them all.
- Try with a sample trip: loads a made-up drive so you can look around without GPS.
Why it must stay open
This is a web page, not an app. Browsers stop giving location to a page that is minimised, in another tab or on a locked screen, to save battery. That is a browser limit and no web page can get round it. So:
- Keep the page open with the screen on. The tool asks the browser to keep the screen awake (a “wake lock”) and tells you whether that worked.
- If the page does go to the background, the tool notes it. When readings return after more than 20 seconds, it records a gap: its length and the straight-line distance across it, counted as a minimum and shown separately. It never invents points, and the GPX starts a new segment there.
- Use Dark screen and plug the phone into a car charger on long trips. GPS and a lit screen drain a battery quickly.
- Phones stop the wake lock in battery-saver mode. Turn that off for the trip.
Safety: set everything up before you go and do not handle the phone while driving. Passengers can press the buttons.
Worked example
Press Try with a sample trip. It is a made-up car drive near 1°N 1°E, in open sea, so it is not a real route. It shows 2.84 km tracked in 4:46, of which 3:49 is moving, an average of 44.7 km/h while moving and a top speed of 50.7 km/h. It lists one hard speed-up (about 4 to 12 m/s in a few seconds) and one hard slow-down (about 12 to 2 m/s), one gap of 31 seconds with at least 0.37 km straight-line distance, a “Corner shop” mark and automatic marks at 1 km, 2 km and 3 km, which split the drive into five legs.
FAQs
Why does the distance seem a bit short? GPS readings jitter, and the tool joins the readings it keeps with straight lines. Tight bends are cut a little, and readings it drops are not counted. Gap distance is a minimum for the same reason.
Why was a gap recorded when I was standing still? It is not, unless the page was hidden. A quiet spell with no movement is just stopped time.
Does it need internet? No, once the page has loaded. GPS works without a data connection. The route drawing has no map underneath, so there are no map downloads.
Can it run in the background or with the phone locked? No. See “Why it must stay open”.
It says location is blocked. Allow location for this site in your browser’s site settings (the icon beside the address), then press Start again. Location also needs a secure (https) page.
How accurate are the speed changes? Speeds come from the GPS, smoothed lightly. A change is listed only if it lasts two readings in a row, so single glitches are ignored, but a bumpy GPS on foot can still list a few extra.
Is my trip stored anywhere? Only in this browser, and only if you tick the keep box. It is never sent to a server.
Where the numbers come from
- Distances use Vincenty's (1975) inverse formula on the WGS84 ellipsoid (a = 6 378 137 m, f = 1/298.257223563), with the haversine formula as a fallback, written by fibub from the published equations; the same maths as the GPS track analyser.
- Positions, accuracy and speed come from your browser's Geolocation API. GPX 1.1 is an open format. Screen Wake Lock is a web standard.
- Speed limits per mode, the accuracy filter, moving time, speed-change detection and legs: written by fibub from first principles; they are sensible defaults, not official figures.
- The sample trip is synthetic, generated by fibub from a made-up speed plan; it is not anyone's real route.
Standard scientific values, such as constants, atomic weights and melting points, are facts found in every textbook; we name where ours were checked. If you are an author or publisher and want a value, a credit or a table changed or removed, tell us and we will act quickly.
Last updated 2026-11-12.