How it works

It starts because it knows the car.

Most mileage apps guess from motion alone, so they log your bus ride, your passenger seat and the walk to lunch. TripSnap keys on a connection your phone already has — CarPlay, or the Bluetooth stereo in a car you saved. If it isn't your car, it isn't a trip. And if a car it can't see starts moving, the drive is still recorded — marked provisional, worth nothing until you confirm it.

Recognizes your car

CarPlay is proof on its own. A factory head unit is matched by the Bluetooth audio route you saved — the only handle iOS gives an app on a Classic Bluetooth stereo. Nothing scans, nothing connects.

Tracking Health

Permissions reset on an iOS update and you find out six weeks later. A dashboard card watches Precise Location, Motion, Bluetooth power, Background App Refresh and Low Power Mode, and says so the moment one degrades. A detection log in Settings records what the pipeline saw and decided, so "some trips aren't tracking" is diagnosable rather than a guess.

The report, not the raw logPro

A formatted PDF expense report with the period total on top, per-row purposes, and odometer lines in the header — the piece of TripSnap Pro that gets you paid. CSV, JSON and GeoJSON are on every plan when something downstream wants the data instead.

Pay periods, not just months

Weekly, every two weeks, twice a month or monthly, anchored to your actual payday. With Pro, one tap opens a mail composer to a saved manager address with the PDF and CSV attached.

A clock on unclaimed milesPro

Trips you haven't submitted age visibly — "$187 unclaimed, oldest 24 days" — and TripSnap Pro warns you before the 60-day substantiation window closes, 30 days in Illinois.

Proof it's recording

A Live Activity on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island shows the miles climbing while you drive, and a home-screen widget carries tracking health and today's total. Missed-trip anxiety, answered by glancing.

Two kinds of driver

The same miles. Opposite paperwork.

A W-2 employee and a delivery driver record identical drives and then do completely different things with them — and telling either one the other's rule costs them real money. TripSnap asks once, during setup, and every screen that mentions money follows the answer.

Employee reimbursement

Your employer pays you back.

You use your own car for work and submit an expense report. TripSnap builds that report and watches the submission clock.

Money path: Employer reimbursement under an accountable plan
Deadline that matters: Your employer's substantiation window — 30 days in Illinois
What you send: A PDF expense report, per pay period, to a manager

Gig & self-employed

You deduct them yourself.

Rideshare, delivery, contract work. Clock on and TripSnap groups the drives into that shift and works out what the hours really paid after fuel and tolls. Shift tracking is part of TripSnap Pro; the Shifts CSV exports every shift you have recorded, on any plan.

Money path: Schedule C deduction at the standard mileage rate
Deadline that matters: Quarterly estimated tax
What you get: A year-to-date mileage total, plus $/hour, $/mile and take-home per shift (Pro)

Why the split exists. Since 2018 — made permanent in 2025 — a W-2 employee cannot deduct unreimbursed business mileage on a federal return, so for that driver the standard rate is the tax-free reimbursement benchmark rather than a deduction. A self-employed driver deducts those very same miles on Schedule C. A handful of states, and a few specific professions, are exceptions to the federal rule. TripSnap is a mileage log, not a tax advisor; check your own situation with one.

Privacy

Your employer gets the report. Never your location.

There is no manager dashboard, because there is no TripSnap server for one to run on. TripSnap has no account and no analytics; the only services it talks to are Apple's — geocoding for street addresses, Maps tiles, and the App Store for Pro — and a trip becomes a report only when you export or email it yourself. Exactly what Apple receives ↗

Every trip, route point, vehicle and setting is stored on the device, in the app's own database.
No account, no sign-in, no cloud sync, no TripSnap server to sync to.
No analytics, no advertising SDKs, no third-party trackers.
Location is used to record where you drove and how far — and for nothing else.
Bluetooth is read only to check whether it's powered on and which car audio route is connected. It never scans for or connects to devices.
Street addresses come from Apple's geocoder — two endpoint coordinates per finished trip — and there's a switch to turn that off.
Your report leaves only when you send it: a share sheet, or a mail composer you send yourself.

By the numbers

The specs.

Trip capture	Automatic via CarPlay or a saved Bluetooth car stereo; provisional motion-started capture as a safety net; manual entry. No monthly drive limit on any plan.
Free plan	Recording that never stops, your 10 most recent drives, classification, per-car fuel cost, CSV / JSON / GeoJSON export, widget and Live Activity. Older drives are locked, never deleted.
TripSnap Pro	$39.99 / year, 1 month free for new subscribers. Opens every drive you've recorded, the PDF report and send-to-manager, shift tracking, Insights and deadline alerts.
Trip purposes	Business · Personal · Commute · Medical · Charity · Unclassified
2026 IRS rates	From 1 July: 76¢ business · 23.5¢ medical · 14¢ charitable, per mile (Announcement 2026-11). 1 Jan – 30 June: 72.5¢ · 20.5¢ · 14¢ (Notice 2026-10)
Rate handling	Priced at the rate in force on the day you drove, so a rate change — even mid-year — never reprices the drives you already logged. Custom employer rates supported.
Exports	CSV · Shifts CSV · JSON · GeoJSON on every plan · PDF expense report with Pro
Pay periods	Weekly · Every 2 weeks · Twice a month · Monthly, anchored to your payday
Vehicles	Multiple cars with per-car fuel or energy profiles — gasoline, diesel, hybrid, electric
Pre-export audit	Flags unclassified trips, overlaps, very short trips, business trips with no route, and business trips with no stated purpose
Shift trackingPro	Clock on/off with platform tags and earnings; $/hour, $/mile and take-home after fuel and tolls; a Live Activity while a shift is open
Glanceable	Live Activity during a trip, plus a home-screen widget
Units	Miles or kilometres, with a selectable currency
Platforms	iPhone
iOS minimum	18.0
Accounts	None. No sign-in, ever.

The fine print. Automatic capture depends on iOS permissions and background execution that the system, not the app, ultimately controls — TripSnap's job is to tell you loudly when one of them has been turned off. Distances are measured from GPS and will differ slightly from your odometer. Provisional drives count for nothing — and are excluded from exports and shift pay — until you confirm them. Fuel and energy costs are estimates from the economy figures you enter.

Pricing

Recording is free. Never stops. Never deletes.

Most mileage apps meter what they will record — 15, 30 or 40 drives a month, then they stop counting. TripSnap never stops recording, however long you stay on the free plan. Free opens your ten most recent drives; the older ones are locked, never deleted, and subscribing opens every one of them again exactly as driven.

Free

$0forever

No account, no ads, no monthly drive limit. Every drive is captured and kept.

✓Automatic tracking that recognizes your car
✓Your 10 most recent drives, open and classifiable
✓Per-car fuel and energy cost
✓CSV, JSON and GeoJSON export — and the Shifts CSV, always
✓Widget and Live Activity while it records
—Older drives are locked, never deleted

No purchase needed

1 month free

TripSnap Pro

$39.99/ year

Billed yearly, renews until you cancel. New subscribers get a 1-month free trial.

✓Your whole mileage log — every drive you've ever recorded
✓The formatted PDF report, emailed to your manager in one tap
✓Shift tracking with take-home per hour after fuel
✓Insights: month-by-month distance, cost and business-use share
✓Deadline alerts before the 60-day window closes (30 in Illinois)

Auto-renewing

Nothing deleted

Drives past the free ten stay on your iPhone, locked rather than lost, and come back the moment you subscribe. Capture, retention and CSV export never depend on your plan — a drive the app failed to record is money you can never claim.

TripSnap Pro is an auto-renewable annual subscription, $39.99 per year in the U.S. storefront (prices vary by country and are shown in the App Store and on the in-app subscription screen before you confirm). New subscribers get 1 month free; the subscription renews unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends, and you can cancel any time in your Apple ID settings. No account required. Requires iOS 18.0 or later. See the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Never misses a drive. Never logs your bus ride.