Frequently asked questions

DashLog is a drive logbook that records the roads you drive. It saves the route, distance, time, and speed of each drive, so you can look back at it later on a map and in your stats.

No. There is no sign-up or login. Open the app and start recording.

Yes. DashLog is currently free to download and use, with no subscription.

DashLog is not designed for that. You can export your drives as CSV, but it does not provide tax-ready formats or automatic categories.

• Manually: on the Home tab, tap Start Drive, and tap the stop button when you are done.
• Automatically: set DashLog to start when your phone connects to your car's Bluetooth (or CarPlay on iPhone) and stop when it disconnects. See Automatic recording.
• From a home screen widget: use the start and end buttons. See Widgets and notifications.

Allow location access when the app asks. DashLog cannot record while location access is blocked. Drives you start yourself only need the permission to be allowed. Automatic recording starts while the app is closed, so it needs Always access.

Android (Android 12 or later)

1. Open Settings › Automation › Auto-record on car connect.
2. Choose your car's Bluetooth once. From then on, a drive starts when your phone connects to the car and ends when it disconnects.

iPhone

1. Open Settings › Automation › Auto-record setup guide.
2. In the Shortcuts app, create two automations: one that starts a drive when your phone connects, and one that stops it when it disconnects. The in-app guide shows every step and takes about a minute. You only do it once.
3. For the trigger, choose CarPlay or your car's Bluetooth.

Apple does not let apps create automations for you. After you set it up once, you never have to tap anything to record a drive.

Automatic recording starts in the background while the app is closed. If location access is only allowed while using the app, DashLog cannot record at that moment. The auto-record screen (Auto Drive Logging) shows the current permission and lets you change it right there.

A drive ends about 12 seconds after the connection drops. If the phone reconnects within that time, the same drive continues, and if the car is still moving, the drive ends after it stops. This keeps a brief disconnect from splitting one drive into two.

Automatic recording only reacts to the device you picked. Connecting earbuds or other Bluetooth devices does not start a drive.

• Android: you can register one car. To switch cars, open the auto-record screen and tap Change car.
• iPhone: create a Shortcuts automation for each car.

Automation › Skip short auto drives is probably on. By default, automatic drives shorter than 30 seconds are not saved. You can set it anywhere from 0 to 300 seconds, and 0 saves every automatic drive. Drives you start yourself are always saved, however short.

Android may be putting the app to sleep when the screen turns off.

1. Open Settings › Automation › Auto-record on car connect. In the Background recording card, tap Allow background use.
2. In the app info screen, set the battery option to Unrestricted.
3. Some manufacturers, including Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo, also need an autostart or background-run setting turned on. The same screen lists the path for each brand.

You can leave battery saver on. DashLog only uses GPS while a drive is recording.

Yes. Recording continues in the background. You can check that it is running in the notification (Android) or in the Live Activity on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island (iPhone).

Android requires an app to show a notification while it records location in the background. It is visible only while a drive is recording and disappears when the drive ends. The notification has a button to end the drive.

If there is no movement for 15 minutes, DashLog sends you a notification. It never ends a drive on its own. You can turn this off in Settings › Recording helper › Remind me if I forget. Automatic recording ends when the car disconnects.

DashLog saves a snapshot every few seconds while recording. The next time you open the app, it restores the drive up to the last saved point.

Not at the moment. Time spent stopped counts toward the drive's duration. If you want to split a trip, end the drive and start a new one.

1. If location access is blocked, the app shows “Location access is blocked. To record drives, please enable location permission in your device settings.” Tap Open Settings and allow location.
2. If location services are off, the app shows “Location services are turned off. Please enable them in your device settings to record drives.” Turn them on.
3. GPS can be slow or unavailable indoors and underground. Try again in the open.

DashLog calculates from GPS, so it can differ a little from the dashboard or odometer. To keep GPS drift while stopped from adding distance, movement below 3.6 km/h (about 2.2 mph) is not counted.

It means no speed data is available. If a GPX file imported from another app has no speed values, DashLog shows “—” instead of guessing speeds from coordinates.

Addresses are looked up when the phone is online. A drive that ended offline keeps its coordinates, and DashLog tries again when you open that drive's detail screen while connected.

When no GPS signal arrives for more than 5 seconds, the map joins the two sides with a dotted line. It happens in tunnels and underground garages, or when the device or app was briefly suspended.

Version 1.4.4 and later: a blue dot marks a drive you have not opened yet. It helps you find drives that were recorded automatically or imported from GPX, and it disappears once you open the drive's detail screen. When there are unviewed drives, a Unviewed drives · N pill appears under the filters on the Logbook tab. Tap it to see only those drives.

• Rename: open the drive and tap Edit title.
• Delete: on the Logbook tab, swipe a drive card to the left, or delete it from its detail screen. A deleted drive is gone for good and cannot be restored.

Yes. Open Settings › Units and choose Automatic, Kilometers (km), or Miles (mi). The default is automatic, which follows your device's region.

Yes, in two places.

• One drive: on its detail screen, tap Export Route and choose GPX (for other map and navigation apps) or CSV (for spreadsheets).
• A period: on the Logbook tab, tap the export button, choose today, this week, this month, last month, this year, or a custom range, and export it as CSV or GPX.

Yes. You can import GPX files exported from GPS watches, cycling computers, dashcams, and other tracking or map apps.

• On the Logbook tab, tap the import button and choose Choose GPX file. You can also open a GPX file from the Files app or another app with DashLog.
• The file needs locations with time data. Without time, DashLog cannot calculate duration or speed.

• Format: GPX 1.0 and 1.1.
• Required: a track whose points each have latitude, longitude, and time, with at least two points. Files that contain only routes (rte) or waypoints (wpt) cannot be imported.
• Speed: used only when the file has per-point speeds, either the speed element of GPX 1.0 or the speed value of the TrackPointExtension v2 extension (in m/s). Without them, speed shows as “—”. Many files do not include speed.
• Altitude: saved when each point has an elevation (ele).
• Several tracks in one file: they are merged into a single drive.
• Distance and duration: calculated from the coordinates and times.
• Size: up to 256 MB. If a file has more than 100,000 points, DashLog stores a thinned set, but distance, duration, and max speed are still calculated from every point.

The file is standard GPX 1.1 with a location, time, and speed for each point, so apps that support GPX can open it. The distance, duration, and speed summary is stored in a DashLog-specific extension in the same file.

Yes. DashLog restores the summary stored in the file (distance, duration, average and max speed). If another program edited the route so that it no longer matches the summary, DashLog ignores the summary and recalculates from the points.

Check the message shown in the app.

• “The track points have no time data. DashLog needs timestamps to calculate duration and speed.” Export the file again from the other app with time data included.
• “The selected file could not be read. Download it to this device and try again.” Save the file to your device and try again.
• “This GPX file is too large to import. Split it into shorter tracks and try again.” Split it into shorter tracks.
• “This does not look like a valid GPX file.” Make sure it is a track file with the .gpx extension.
• “No track points were found in this GPX file.” The file may contain only routes or waypoints. Export it as a track.

DashLog has no account or cloud sync, so your drives live only on your device. To move them, export each drive as GPX from its detail screen with Export Route, then import each file on the new phone.

Do not use a period export for this. A period export puts every drive into one file as separate tracks, and importing that file merges them into a single drive. Export your drives before you delete the app.

Yes. There are two widgets, and each has just a start button and an end button. They do not show whether a drive is recording.

• DashLog: starts and ends a drive in the background without opening the app (recommended).
• DashLog · Open App: opens the app, then starts or ends the drive.

To add one, touch and hold an empty area of your home screen. On iPhone, tap + and search for DashLog. On Android, tap Widgets and find DashLog. The latest version of the app also has a guide at Settings › Recording helper › Home screen widgets, and on Android it can add a widget for you with Add to home screen.

They tell you when a drive starts and ends. You can turn them off in Settings › Recording helper › Start & end notifications. With them off, it is harder to tell whether an automatic drive started.

On iPhone, it shows the current distance and status of a drive on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. You can turn it off in Settings › Recording helper › Live Activity.

• Map: the places you arrived at during your drives, gathered on one map, with how many times you arrived at each.
• Stats: highlights for today, this week, this month, this year, and all time, plus Driving Pattern, which shows when you drive the most. Darker means more driving time.

Yes. Open a drive and tap Replay to watch it play back along the route. You can use Play and Pause, change the Speed, and switch between Driving view and Map view.

The app follows your device's language and has no language menu of its own. To set a language just for DashLog, open the Settings app on iPhone and choose DashLog, then Language. On Android 13 or later, use the system's per-app language setting.

Yes. Open Settings › Theme and choose System, Light, or Dark. The default follows your device.

No, DashLog is not an app for the car's display. On iPhone, though, a CarPlay connection can start and end automatic recording. See Automatic recording.

DashLog does not run a server that receives your drive records. Routes, distance, and speed stay on your device. DashLog uses Google Firebase for limited analytics and crash reports, and it is designed not to include precise GPS routes in them. Maps are provided by Google Maps. See the Privacy Policy for details.

It is stored only on your device. If you delete the app or its data, your drives are deleted too, and they cannot be restored unless you exported them first.

No. Updating the app does not delete your drives. They are removed only if you delete the app or its data, or delete a drive yourself.

Recording works offline. Looking up addresses and showing the map need a connection. The address of a drive that ended offline is filled in later when you are connected.

DashLog uses GPS continuously while a drive is recording, so that uses some battery. It does not use GPS when no drive is recording.