Driftlog › Guides › How to keep a travel log automatically on iPhone
An iPhone can keep a record of where you travelled in five ways, without you writing a word. The Photos app maps every photo taken with location on. Significant Locations & Routes keeps the places you have recently been, for the phone's own use. Apple Maps Visited Places, on iOS 26 and later, lists the shops, restaurants and parks you stopped at, but only in the countries Apple lists. Google Maps Timeline saves your visits and routes on the phone once you turn it on. And automatic logging apps record trips in the background. The Journal app only suggests moments to write about.
Where I stand. I make Driftlog, one of the logging apps on this page. The built-in and free methods come first. My app is near the end, with the cases where it is the wrong tool.
The first four rows come from Apple's and Google's own pages, listed under Sources. The last row is my app.
| Method | What it keeps | What it loses | How long it keeps it | Where the data lives | Past trips? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Photos map | Where each photo and video was taken | Places you did not photograph. Photos with no location | No limit given. The location is part of the photo | Your photo library | Yes, if the photos carry a location |
| Significant Locations & Routes | Recent places, how often and when, and routes | Older history. No browsing or export in the guide pages I read | Apple gives no period | Your devices, end-to-end encrypted. Apple cannot read it | No |
| Apple Maps Visited Places | Places you stopped at, such as restaurants and shops | Everything before you turned it on. Offered in 32 countries and regions only | 3 months, 1 year or Forever. You choose | Your synced devices, end-to-end encrypted. Apple cannot read it | No |
| Google Maps Timeline | Visits and routes | Everything before you turned it on. The copy on a phone that is reset, unless backed up | Until you delete it, or 3, 18 or 36 months with auto-delete | Each signed-in device. Optional encrypted backup on Google's servers | Only what it saved while on |
| Logging app (Driftlog) | Country, region, city and dates | Routes. Anything while the phone is off | Kept on the phone. Not in device backups unless you turn that on | The phone. No account, no developer server | Yes, from photos that carry a location |
Turn it on: the Camera must be allowed to use your location. Check that Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera is not set to Never.
Look at it: in Photos, tap Library, tap the Sort and Filter button, then tap Show Map. For trips, tap Collections and scroll down to Trips.
The limit: only photos and videos with embedded location are included. To add a location, open the photo, tap the More button, then Adjust Info and Adjust Location.
The map is pins, not a list of countries. For the list, see how to get your countries out of your photos.
Where it is: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations & Routes. The iOS 18 guide calls it Significant Locations.
What it keeps: the “places you have recently been”, how often and when, and the routes, according to Apple's privacy notice. The phone uses it for things like Memories in Photos and route suggestions. It is end-to-end encrypted, and Apple cannot read it.
The limit: Apple gives no period. The guide pages I read show how to switch it on and how to erase it with Clear History, not how to browse or export it.
Check first: Apple lists 32 countries and regions for this feature. The list is on my Visited Places page.
Turn it on: go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services, tap Maps, and turn on Precise Location and Visited Places. Then go back, tap System Services, and turn on Significant Locations & Routes.
Look at it: in Maps, tap Places, then Visited Places. You can filter by date, category or city.
The limit: nothing appears until it is on and you have visited a place. At the bottom of the list, Keep Visits sets how long visits are kept: 3 months, 1 year or Forever. Choose Forever if you want the list in five years.
Turn it on: in Google Maps, tap your profile picture or initial, then Your Timeline. Tap More, then Location & privacy settings. If it does not say Location Services is on, set Location to Always. Then tap Timeline is off and Turn on. It needs app version 6.93 or later.
Look at it: Your Timeline, on the phone only. Google's help mentions tabs such as Places, Cities and World.
The limit: each device keeps its own copy, and deleting Google Maps or resetting the phone deletes it. Backup is optional and needs auto-delete to be off. Auto-delete can be 3, 18 or 36 months. Google's December 2023 announcement said it would start at three months for people turning Timeline on for the first time, so check it.
For a list of countries, see the countries in your Google Maps Timeline.
The Journal app is not a logger. Journaling Suggestions group outings, photos and workouts into things you might write about, and nothing becomes an entry until you pick it.
Read strictly from the help pages: Photos reaches into the past, but only to places you photographed, and Apple describes a map, not a list or count of countries. Significant Locations has no export. Visited Places and Google Maps Timeline start on the day you switch them on. Timeline comes closest, with its Cities and World tabs, but each device keeps its own copy.
So a record of countries and cities with dates, one you can still open in twenty years, has to be set up on purpose. Keep taking photos with location on. Then set Keep Visits to Forever, or turn off auto-delete and turn on backup in Google Maps.
These record in the background once you allow it. What I say about other people's apps comes from each app's own US App Store description.
Prices are on my comparison page.
Where Driftlog fits, and where it does not. I make Driftlog. It uses the significant-change service and records only when you move to a new country, region or city, with the app closed. It also reads the date and location saved in your photos, never the picture, to rebuild earlier trips. Records stay on the phone and there is no account; a coordinate is sent to Apple's geocoder to get a place name. Free to download; a one-time purchase of US$6.99 opens the details of every country after your first foreign one. iPhone and iPad (iOS 17 or later), and Android.
It is the wrong tool for routes, trip planning, a social feed or a web version. It needs Location set to Always with Precise Location on, and records nothing while the phone is off. The photo import needs access to your whole photo library, and trips with no location-tagged photos cannot be rebuilt. Records are left out of device backups unless you turn on Include in device backup. It is a keepsake, not a legal record.
Or see it on Google Play. The Android version can differ.
Yes. The Photos app maps every photo taken with location on. Apple Maps Visited Places, on iOS 26 and later, lists places you stopped at, in the countries where Apple offers it. Google Maps Timeline saves visits and routes once you turn it on. Logging apps record trips in the background.
Not as a list of countries. The Photos app shows your located photos on a map and groups them into trips, and Visited Places lists places such as restaurants and shops. A list of countries has to come from your photos or from an app that records countries.
Apple does not publish a period. Its privacy notice only says the iPhone keeps track of places you have recently been, how often and when you visited them, and the routes you took. You can erase it under Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations & Routes.
Apple lists 32 countries and regions for Visited Places on its iOS and iPadOS 27 feature availability page, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. No European Union member state is on it. If yours is missing, Apple does not offer the feature there.
Only from records that already exist. Photos taken with location on still hold where they were taken, however old they are. Google Maps Timeline holds what it saved while it was on. A trip with no photos and no recording cannot be rebuilt.
It depends on how the app gets your location. Apple's developer documentation says the standard location service uses more power, while the significant-change service is a low-power option that reports only larger moves. Settings > Battery shows what each app uses.
Driftlog, the app I make, records countries, regions, cities and dates in the background and has no account. The App Store descriptions of Fog of World and Arc Timeline 4 also say they have no account, and both record tracks and trips. For other apps, read the App Privacy section of the App Store page.
The Photos map, Significant Locations and Visited Places are iPhone features. Google Maps Timeline works on Android too, in the Google Maps app. Driftlog is also on Google Play, and its Android version can differ from the iPhone version.
How this page was made. I read the pages above on 4 October 2026 and wrote the steps from them. Apple and Google rename menus often. If a step no longer matches your phone, email me at shiori.sutudio@gmail.com and I will fix the page and change the date.