Every setting, what it does, and why it's there

Shows whether Android currently has Precise or Approximate location for TrackMile — this isn't a toggle TrackMile controls itself. Android deliberately keeps that switch in its own Settings app for privacy reasons, so this section just shows the current status and links straight there.

Approximate location is only accurate to roughly 1–3km, which makes distance tracking and journey detection unreliable — if trips are coming out with obviously wrong mileage or not being detected at all, this is the first thing to check.

The largest section, and the one worth spending a minute on. TrackMile uses Android's low-power motion sensor to notice "in a vehicle" first, and only switches on GPS to confirm and track once that fires — GPS isn't running continuously in the background.

Auto-detect journeys — the master on/off switch. Notify when a trip is detected and Notify when a journey ends control whether you get a notification for each, independent of each other.

Detection method — four genuinely different strategies:

• PassiveDefault — works with zero effort using the motion sensor plus a periodic low-power safety-net check. Can occasionally lag a short trip's very first few seconds; connecting to Android Auto (if your car has it) still detects instantly regardless of this setting.
• Android Auto only — detects the instant your phone connects to Android Auto. The fastest and most battery-efficient automatic option, since there's no background checking at all otherwise — but only catches drives where you actually connect.
• Manual (no GPS) — no background location activity at all, ever, and no live GPS during the trip either. The only way a trip gets logged is tapping "Start journey" yourself, with distance coming purely from the start/end odometer readings you type in. The most battery-efficient option there is — the map for these trips shows a straight line between start and end, not the actual road driven.
• Manual + GPS route — the same manual "Start journey" tap to begin, and nothing runs in the background before that, but live GPS switches on for the duration of the trip — giving you both a real recorded route on the map and a GPS-tracked distance, rather than a straight line and a typed-in figure. An end odometer reading is optional here: distance always comes from GPS either way, but typing one in also back-fills the start reading for you (end odometer minus the GPS distance), so you still end up with a full odometer trail without noting the start figure yourself when you set off.

In Passive mode, Detection responsiveness controls how often the safety-net check runs while waiting for a trip to start: Fastest (15s), Fast (30s), Balanced (60s), or Battery saver (3min). Faster catches short drives more reliably but checks location more often in the background. Takes effect from your next trip, not mid-drive.

Also in Passive mode, a Do not track schedule can switch detection off entirely during set times — two independent rules: full days off (e.g. weekends), and a separate active-hours window on the days not marked off (e.g. weekdays 7am–7pm only). Android Auto still works during quiet times regardless, in case of a genuinely unexpected trip. Re-arms itself within about 15 minutes of a quiet period ending.

Further down: Minimum speed to trigger detection (5–25mph, default 10) sets how fast you need to be moving before a trip is confirmed. Auto-end journeys when stationary ends a trip itself once you've been stopped for a set number of minutes (2–15, default 5) — no need to remember to tap End. Remind me if no trips logged for a week nudges you to check detection is still working if it goes quiet.

Drives detected within a set Mon–Fri time window are automatically logged as Business, with no manual classification needed afterward — useful if your working hours are consistent and most of what you drive during them genuinely is business mileage.

Switch it on, then set a start and end time. Anything detected outside that window still goes through the normal classification flow (live from Track, or the review queue in History).

By default, TrackMile values every business mile using HMRC's official UK rates: 55p/mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a tax year, 25p/mile after, resetting each 6 April. This is what the Statistics tab's HMRC reimbursement figure is built on.

Use a custom rate instead of HMRC switches to your own flat rate — every business mile is valued the same, with no 10,000-mile tier and no UK tax-year reset. This is the setting to use outside the UK, or if your employer simply pays a different rate than HMRC's.

Once switched on, two fields appear: Currency symbol (type anything — £, $, €, or otherwise) and Rate per mile (a plain decimal figure). For example, someone using the US IRS standard mileage rate would enter $ and the current published rate; someone on a flat employer rate in euros would enter € and their own figure.

Statistics, exports, and email reports all switch over to your custom currency and rate immediately — nothing else needs reconfiguring separately.

Controls what the map thumbnail on a journey's detail screen actually shows. This only affects trips recorded from now on — it can't add detail to trips already saved.

• OffDefault — the map draws a straight suggested route between your start and end points only. Quick and lightweight, but won't show any detour or stop made along the way.
• On ("Record the actual driven path") — the map shows the real route you drove, including stops or detours. Stores extra GPS points per trip (a few hundred at most — still tiny compared to a photo).

Either way, your mileage total is unaffected — that's always calculated from live GPS distance, regardless of this setting. This only changes what the picture looks like.

Adds trips to a calendar already on your device (Google, Outlook, or whatever's syncing there), so you can look up where you were on a given date. This doesn't connect to Google or Outlook directly — it just writes to whichever calendar you pick, using the account that's already set up and syncing on your phone.

Enable calendar sync requests calendar permission the first time you turn it on. Once granted, pick a Calendar from the dropdown — every calendar TrackMile has write access to on the device.

Automatically add trips to calendar has four options: Off (add trips one at a time from a journey's detail screen instead), All trips, Business only, or Private only — handy if you only want work trips cluttering a work calendar, or vice versa.

Everything lives only on this device — there's no cloud account or sync. This section is the safety net.

Export full backup zips every vehicle, journey, favourite route and receipt (including the photos) into one file you can save via the share sheet — to Google Drive, email it to yourself, wherever. Restore from backup wipes current data and replaces it wholesale with the backup's contents; a confirmation dialog spells this out before it happens.

Choose backup folder sets up automatic weekly backups — pick a folder once (a real folder inside Google Drive works, since Drive shows up as a location in the picker) and TrackMile writes a fresh full backup into it weekly, overwriting the previous one. No Google sign-in needed; it just writes into whichever folder you grant access to, the same way any app can save a file into your Drive from the share sheet.