How mileage tracking works

**Automatic tracking** — when you grant Always location access and (recommended) Motion & Fitness access, MileLedger detects that you have started driving without any action on your part. The app uses Core Location for GPS coordinates and Core Motion to distinguish driving from walking, cycling, or stationary activity.

**Manual recording** — you can start a live recording from the Drives tab at any time, or add a past drive by typing in start/end addresses and a distance. Past entries use MapKit to look up addresses and can optionally estimate the road distance.

The app monitors significant location changes to wake up in the background. Once motion data suggests you are driving, continuous GPS sampling begins.

After the vehicle stops, MileLedger waits approximately 15 minutes before finalising the trip—this settle period prevents one long drive from being split into fragments when you briefly stop at traffic lights or a drive-through.

Trips shorter than roughly 0.5 miles (804.672 m) are saved but flagged as **Short Trip** and will not appear in most mileage reports by default.

Distance is calculated from GPS coordinate samples that have been filtered to remove low-accuracy readings. Because only real GPS data is used, a trip recorded in poor signal conditions may be marked **Needs Review** rather than showing an inflated distance.

Other quality flags—**Low GPS Accuracy**, **Possible Duplicate**, **Interrupted Session**—give you a clear signal that a drive may need a manual correction before you include it in a report.

The phone app is where drives are created—automatically or manually—and where you edit or delete them. The web app at /app/drives lets you view and filter synced drives (including Needs Review badges). It does not create, edit, or delete drives.