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Last updated: 09/15/2026
Contents
- What TripSnap does
- Setting up — worker mode, car, permissions
- Permissions, and what each one is for
- How automatic capture decides a drive happened
- Free and TripSnap Pro
- Classifying trips and stating a purpose
- Reports, pay periods and sending to a manager
- Shifts, earnings and the self-employed view
- Mileage rates and custom employer rates
- Where your data lives, and backing it up
- Troubleshooting
- Frequently asked questions
- A note on tax and reimbursement
- Contact
What TripSnap does
TripSnap is an automatic mileage tracker for iPhone. It notices when you get into a car you've saved, records the drive in the background, and keeps a log you can turn into the document that gets you paid — a PDF expense report for an employer, or a year-to-date mileage total for a Schedule C.
Your log lives on the device. There is no account, no sign-in and no TripSnap server, so nothing syncs and nothing is uploaded to us. Your trip log leaves your phone only when you export or email it yourself; the only services the app talks to are Apple's — geocoding, maps and the App Store — as set out in the privacy policy.
Setting up — worker mode, car, permissions
Onboarding asks three things, in this order:
- Who you drive for. Employee reimbursement, Gig & self-employed, or Both. This is a presentation setting, not a different app — it decides whether TripSnap talks to you about reimbursement and submission deadlines, about Schedule C and shifts, or both. You can change it any time in Settings.
- Your car. Connect to the car first, then add it, so TripSnap can offer you the connection the phone actually has. See How do I pair my car with TripSnap? below.
- Permissions. Location, and optionally Motion & Fitness and notifications. The screen explains what each one is for and then hands you to the iOS prompt with a single Continue button — it doesn't tell you which option to pick, and the choice is yours to make in the system dialog.
Permissions, and what each one is for
| Prompt | What it does | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Location — Always | Records where you drove and how far, including while the app is closed. Without Always, a drive that begins with TripSnap in the background is never captured. | Yes, for automatic tracking |
| Precise Location | Approximate location is accurate to a few kilometres, which makes a mileage figure meaningless. With it off, distances are wrong rather than merely imprecise. | Yes |
| Motion & Fitness | Detects that you've started or stopped driving, which sharpens where a trip begins and ends. | Optional — capture is degraded without it |
| Bluetooth | Read only to check whether Bluetooth is powered on, so TripSnap can warn you that your car stereo won't be able to connect. It never scans for or connects to devices. | Optional |
| Notifications | The classify prompt after a trip, the weekly classify reminder, and the unclaimed-mileage warning. | Optional |
Two more settings live in iOS rather than in TripSnap, and both silently break background capture when they're off: Background App Refresh (Settings → General → Background App Refresh) and Low Power Mode, which lets iOS defer background work. The Tracking Health card watches both.
How automatic capture decides a drive happened
TripSnap uses connections your phone already has, in confidence order:
- CarPlay. Nothing but a car presents a CarPlay audio route, so a CarPlay connection is proof on its own.
- A saved Bluetooth car stereo. Factory head units speak Classic Bluetooth, which iOS never exposes to apps as a scannable device — the audio route is the only handle an app gets on them. TripSnap matches the route against the cars you saved.
- Automotive motion — provisionally. If iOS reports vehicle motion for a minute and no saved car is in the audio route, the drive is recorded as provisional and marked Confirm? It is worth nothing, and excluded from exports and shift pay, until you classify it; if your car appears mid-drive it is upgraded in place, and if you never answer it is deleted after seven days. On by default; Settings → Tracking turns it off.
Nothing scans for Bluetooth devices and nothing pairs. An earlier version did scan, and it was the wrong trade: the list filled with watches, earbuds and the neighbours' television, while the one device you were actually looking for — your factory stereo — could never appear in it at all.
Because iOS doesn't wake a suspended app for an audio-route change, TripSnap also registers for significant-location changes, then re-checks which car is connected when the system relaunches it. That's why a trip occasionally appears a minute or two after you set off rather than the instant you close the door.
One precondition is easy to miss: TripSnap can only see a Bluetooth car while the phone is sending audio to it. A connected-but-silent stereo is invisible to every app, so the Vehicles screen shows a "Looking for your car…" status line and offers Connect to this car the moment a route appears. Every decision the pipeline makes — what the route showed, what started, what was refused — goes into the detection log in Settings, which you can share with support. It records no locations.
Free and TripSnap Pro
Recording is free and never stops. On any plan TripSnap captures every drive with no monthly limit, lets you classify trips, prices per-car fuel and energy cost, and exports CSV, JSON and GeoJSON — plus the Shifts CSV, which always exports every shift you have recorded. There is no account and no ads.
The free plan opens your ten most recent drives. Older drives are locked, never deleted: they stay on your iPhone and come back exactly as driven when you subscribe.
TripSnap Pro is an annual subscription — $39.99 a year in the U.S. storefront, with one month free for new subscribers — that opens your whole log and adds the formatted PDF report and send-to-manager flow, shift tracking with take-home per hour, Insights, and reimbursement deadline alerts. Every control that leads to a Pro feature is marked PRO in the app; tapping one opens the subscription screen, which shows the exact price for your country, the trial terms, and Restore Purchases. Manage or cancel it any time from your Apple ID's Subscriptions settings. See the pricing details and the FAQ below.
Classifying trips and stating a purpose
Every trip gets a purpose: Business, Personal, Commute, Medical, Charity, or Unclassified until you say. Swipe a row in Trips to classify it, use the notification that arrives after a drive ends, or bulk-classify the backlog from the Dashboard nudge.
Commute is separated automatically once you've saved a Home and an Office in Places — a drive between the two is your commute, which no employer reimburses and no tax authority allows.
A business trip should also carry a purpose — "Client visit, Riverside", not just "Business". This is the element expense reports get rejected over most often, so TripSnap nudges for it on classify and flags purpose-less business trips in the pre-export audit.
Reports, pay periods and sending to a manager
The Get Paid tab (called Totals if you chose gig work only) builds the expense report and shows year-to-date figures.
Set your pay period in Settings — weekly, every two weeks, twice a month, or monthly — and, for the two cadences that need it, an anchor payday so TripSnap knows where periods start. Reports then offers your real periods instead of calendar months.
The PDF puts the period total at the top, because payroll usually keys one number, then lists each trip with its date, start and end, distance, purpose, rate and amount, plus tolls and parking. Rows are badged GPS-verified or manual so a reviewer can see which is which, and the header carries your name and odometer readings if you've entered them.
Before it exports, TripSnap runs a log-health audit and warns about unclassified trips, overlapping trips, very short trips, business trips with no recorded route and business trips with no stated purpose. You can export anyway; the point is that you know first.
Tap Send to manager and TripSnap opens a mail composer addressed to the manager email you saved, with the PDF and CSV attached. You send it. TripSnap has no ability to send mail on its own. The PDF report and the send-to-manager flow are part of TripSnap Pro; CSV, JSON and GeoJSON exports are on every plan.
Trips included in a report you've sent are marked submitted, which is what makes the unclaimed-mileage figure on the Dashboard mean something.
Shifts, earnings and the self-employed view
If your worker mode includes gig work, a Shifts tab appears. Clock on when you start, tag the platforms you're working, enter what they paid you, and clock off. A Live Activity shows the shift while it's open. Shift tracking is part of TripSnap Pro; the Shifts CSV exports every shift you have recorded on any plan, so the earnings you typed are never trapped.
Trips are adopted by a shift by time — any trip that starts inside the shift's window belongs to it. Nothing is stored linking the two, so correcting a shift's start or end time simply re-adopts the right trips instead of stranding them.
Each finished shift reports $/hour, $/mile, and take-home after fuel or electricity and tolls. Very short shifts show no rates at all: dividing by four minutes produces a number that is arithmetically true and completely useless.
TripSnap deliberately never adds your net earnings to your mileage deduction. Net earnings are cash after what the driving actually cost you; the deduction is those same miles at the standard rate, which already includes fuel and depreciation. Adding them counts the drive twice.
Mileage rates and custom employer rates
TripSnap ships the IRS standard mileage rates as dated periods, along with prior years. For 2026 there are two: 1 January – 30 June at 72.5¢ business, 20.5¢ medical and 14¢ charitable per mile (Notice 2026-10), and 1 July onward at 76¢ business, 23.5¢ medical and 14¢ charitable (Announcement 2026-11), the mid-year revision the IRS made in response to fuel prices.
Every trip is priced at the rate in force on the day it was driven. When the IRS publishes new rates — each December, or mid-year as in 2026 — the drives you already logged keep their numbers instead of quietly repricing.
If your employer reimburses at their own rate, turn off "Follow the IRS rate" in Settings and enter theirs. The custom rate applies to business trips in every year, since it reflects your employer's policy rather than the IRS table. Medical and charitable trips always use the statutory rate for their year.
Commute and personal trips are priced at zero — they're recorded so your log is complete, not because anyone pays for them.
Where your data lives, and backing it up
Trips, route points, vehicles, places, schedules, shifts and settings are stored in TripSnap's own database on your device. There is no account, no cloud sync and no TripSnap server. Your subscription status is separate: it lives with your Apple ID, and Restore Purchases brings it to a new phone.
That is the privacy guarantee and also the risk: if the phone is gone and you have no backup, the log is gone. Two ways to protect it:
- Export regularly. Get Paid → Export a CSV or JSON archive and keep it in whatever storage you already trust. JSON round-trips the most detail, and both are on every plan.
- Keep encrypted device backups. An iCloud Backup, or an encrypted backup made through the Finder, includes TripSnap's database and restores it to a new phone.
Troubleshooting
Trips stopped being recorded and I didn't notice
Open the Dashboard and read the Tracking Health card — it names the specific precondition that's degraded and where to fix it. The usual culprit is an iOS update resetting Location from Always back to While Using, which produces no error and no visible symptom until you go looking for the miles.
A trip started in the wrong car, or in someone else's car
Open the trip and reassign the vehicle, or delete it. To stop it happening again, set that vehicle's tracking mode to Don't track in Settings → Vehicles.
A trip didn't end when I parked
Bluetooth audio drops out of the phone's route whenever audio simply stops flowing — a paused podcast, an ended call — even though the car is still connected. TripSnap waits out a short grace period before treating that as a disconnection, so a trip can run a couple of minutes past your arrival. Edit the end time on the trip if it matters.
A trip is marked "Confirm?" and shows no money
It's a provisional drive, recorded from motion because no saved car was recognized. Classify it — Business, Personal, whichever it was — and it becomes a normal trip; delete it if it wasn't yours. Until you do, it counts for nothing and is left out of exports and shift pay, and it is deleted on its own after seven days.
Older trips show as locked
The free plan opens your ten most recent drives; anything older is locked, not deleted. Subscribing to TripSnap Pro opens every trip you have ever recorded, exactly as driven. If you already subscribed and still see the lock, tap Restore Purchases in Settings → Subscription.
One long drive was split into two trips
A long stop, or a spell with no GPS fix, can end one trip and start another. Delete the shorter fragment and edit the distance on the one you keep, or delete both and add a single manual trip.
The Live Activity or widget shows stale numbers
Both update on a schedule iOS controls and can lag by a few minutes, especially in Low Power Mode. Open the app to see current figures.
How do I check my TripSnap version?
Settings → About, at the bottom of the Settings tab. Include the version and build when you email support.
Frequently asked questions
The questions we are asked most often, answered in short. The sections above go into more detail on each.
Why didn't TripSnap record my drive?
Almost always one of five things: Location isn't set to Always with Precise Location on, Background App Refresh is off, Low Power Mode was on, Bluetooth was off so your car couldn't be recognized, or the car you drove isn't saved in TripSnap yet. The Tracking Health card on the Dashboard names whichever one applies, and the detection log in Settings shows what the pipeline saw and decided on each drive. If the drive already happened, add it by hand from Trips with the + button — a manually added trip is marked as manual on the report rather than GPS-verified.
How do I pair my car with TripSnap?
Get in the car, connect to it the way you normally do — CarPlay, or the stereo's Bluetooth — then open TripSnap and go to Settings, Vehicles, Add vehicle. The car you're connected to right now appears in the list; tap it and give it a name. TripSnap only offers cars the phone is actually connected to, so there is no list of unknown Bluetooth devices to guess from. TripSnap can only see a Bluetooth car while the phone is sending audio to it, so start some music or a podcast if the car doesn't appear.
Is TripSnap free?
Recording is free and never stops: automatic tracking with no monthly drive limit, classification, per-car fuel cost, and CSV export, with no account and no ads. The free plan opens your ten most recent drives. TripSnap Pro, an annual subscription with a month free first, opens your whole log and adds the formatted PDF report and send-to-manager flow, shift tracking with take-home per hour, Insights, and reimbursement deadline alerts.
What happens to my older trips on the free plan?
Nothing you record is ever deleted. Once you have more than ten trips, the older ones are locked rather than lost — they stay on your iPhone, and they come back exactly as driven the moment you subscribe. Capture and retention never depend on your plan, because a drive the app failed to record is money you can never claim.
What does TripSnap Pro cost, and how do I cancel?
TripSnap Pro is an auto-renewing annual subscription — $39.99 per year in the U.S. storefront, with one month free for new subscribers; the App Store and the in-app subscription screen show the exact price for your country before you confirm. It renews unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the year ends. To cancel, open Settings on your iPhone, tap your name, then Subscriptions, and choose TripSnap. Cancelling keeps Pro until the end of the period you paid for; after that, your log stays intact and the free plan opens your ten most recent drives again.
How do I restore TripSnap Pro on a new phone?
Open Settings in TripSnap, go to the Subscription section, and tap Restore Purchases — it is also on the TripSnap Pro screen. Pro is tied to your Apple ID, not to the phone, so signing in with the same Apple ID is all it takes. Restoring the purchase does not restore your trips: those live in TripSnap's database on the device, and travel to a new phone through an iPhone backup or a JSON export.
Does TripSnap track me when I'm not driving?
No. Automatic capture starts when your phone connects to a car you saved. Walking, cycling, riding a bus and sitting still are not trips. If iOS reports sustained automotive motion with no recognized car — a rental, a friend's car with no Bluetooth — TripSnap records a provisional drive marked Confirm?, which counts for nothing until you classify it and is deleted after seven days if you never do. You can also mark a whole vehicle as Don't track, and TripSnap will ignore it entirely.
What is a provisional trip marked "Confirm?"
A drive TripSnap recorded from motion alone, without recognizing a car. It is unclassified, worth nothing, and excluded from exports and shift pay until you confirm it — classifying it is the confirmation. If your saved car appears mid-drive, the trip is upgraded in place; if you never answer, it is deleted after seven days. Provisional capture is on by default and can be switched off in Settings, Tracking.
Can my employer see my location in TripSnap?
No. There is no employer dashboard and no TripSnap server, so there is nothing for an employer to log into. The only thing they ever receive is the report you choose to send them, which contains dates, distances, start and end addresses and the business purpose you wrote — not a route or a live position.
Can I deduct my work mileage as a W-2 employee?
Not on a federal return. Unreimbursed employee business expenses stopped being deductible in 2018 and that change was made permanent in 2025, so for a W-2 employee the IRS standard rate is the benchmark for tax-free reimbursement from an employer rather than a deduction. A handful of states still allow a version of the deduction, and a few professions are federal exceptions. If you are self-employed, those same miles do go on Schedule C. TripSnap is a mileage log, not tax advice — check your own situation with a tax professional.
How do I send my mileage report to my manager?
Open Get Paid, pick the pay period you want, review the trips it includes, and tap Send to manager. TripSnap opens a mail composer addressed to the manager email you saved in Settings, with the PDF expense report and a CSV attached and the period total in the body. You send it from your own mail account — TripSnap never sends anything on its own. The PDF report and the send-to-manager flow are part of TripSnap Pro; CSV export is on every plan.
Which IRS mileage rate does TripSnap use for 2026?
The rate in force on the day you drove. The IRS raised the business rate mid-year in 2026: drives from 1 January to 30 June are priced at 72.5¢ a mile, and drives from 1 July onward at 76¢ (medical 20.5¢ then 23.5¢; charitable 14¢ all year). Because every trip carries the rate for its own date, a rate change never silently reprices the drives you already logged. If your employer pays its own rate, enter it in Settings and it applies to business trips instead.
Why is my TripSnap distance different from my odometer?
TripSnap measures distance from GPS positions sampled along the route, and your car measures it from wheel rotations, so the two will always differ slightly. Tunnels, parking garages and urban canyons cost GPS accuracy, and a trip that starts before your phone gets a good fix can lose the first few tenths of a mile. Differences of one to three percent are normal; anything larger usually means Precise Location is off.
Does TripSnap work with an electric car?
Yes. Set the vehicle's fuel type to Electric in Settings, Vehicles, and enter its efficiency in miles per kWh along with your electricity price per kWh. Running costs are then estimated in the same way as a gasoline car, and appear in Insights and in the exports.
Where is my TripSnap data stored, and what happens if I lose my phone?
Everything is stored in TripSnap's own database on the device — there is no account and no cloud copy, which is also why no one else can read it. The flip side is that the data lives and dies with the phone, so export a CSV or JSON archive periodically and keep it somewhere you control. An encrypted iPhone backup made through iCloud Backup or the Finder also restores TripSnap's data to a new phone.
A note on tax and reimbursement
TripSnap records miles and prices them. It is not a tax preparer, an accountant or a lawyer, and nothing in the app or on this page is tax advice.
The rules it reflects are the general federal ones: a W-2 employee's unreimbursed business mileage has not been federally deductible since 2018 and that change was made permanent in 2025, which is why TripSnap frames the standard rate as a reimbursement benchmark for employees; a self-employed driver deducts business miles on Schedule C; medical and charitable mileage have their own, much lower, statutory rates; and commuting is never claimable. Several states diverge from the federal treatment, and a few professions are explicit exceptions. Your own situation is yours to confirm with a professional.
Contact
Twisted Data Studios
Email: support@twisteddatastudios.com
When emailing, please include:
- Your iOS version (Settings → General → About → iOS Version),
- Your iPhone model,
- The TripSnap version and build (Settings → About in the app),
- How the car connects — CarPlay or Bluetooth stereo — and the shared detection log from Settings, if your question is about a missed trip,
- A short description of what happened and what you expected.
We do our best to respond within a few business days.