Record a hike with your phone: what the recording needs

Recording a hike takes one tap. Whether the whole hike is in the track when you get home depends on a handful of things that have to be right before that tap, and most of them are in your phone's settings, not in the app.

This article goes through them and shows how to try everything on a short walk, so that you find a wrong setting near home and not halfway up a mountain. It also says what to do with the track afterwards. It works with any app that records, whether you record a walk on Android round the park or a whole day in the mountains. walker, the walk, hike and ride tracker I make for Android, gets one section near the end, as an example of how an app can handle it.

What a recording needs

A phone has what a GPS tracker for hiking has: a receiver that listens to satellites, a clock, and storage for hours of positions. Five things decide whether it uses them for the whole hike.

Location, precise, while the app is in use

The first time an app wants your position, Android asks. For a recording, allow it while you use the app, and leave precise location on. On the app's location page in Android's settings, that is "Allow only while using the app", with "Use precise location" switched on. Without precise location, Google's help explains, an app only learns that the phone is somewhere in an area of about 3 square kilometres. That is enough for the weather, and useless for a track.

"While using the app" also covers the screen being off, so you don't have to give an app your location all the time just to record with the phone in your pocket. An app that shows its recording notification counts as in use, and Android's documentation says it keeps access to the location when you press Home or turn the screen off. "Allow all the time" matters only for an app that offers to carry on a recording after Android has closed it.

The app kept alive

Android closes apps in the background to save battery, and some phone makers close them much more readily. The remedy is in the phone's settings: set the app's battery use to Unrestricted, check the maker's own battery saver, and don't swipe the app away while it records. When Android stops your tracker has the steps for each, and how to tell when it happened.

Battery

The German Alpine Club (DAV) says the display uses most of a phone's power, about 80 per cent. So a recording is cheapest with the screen off and the phone in a pocket. Look at it when you need the map, and turn it off again. Each minute with the screen dark leaves charge for the map on the way down, and for a call if you need one. The DAV's other advice for a tour: charge the phone fully, carry it close to your body where it stays warm, and on longer or colder tours take a power bank.

A map that works without signal

GPS needs no mobile data, and the recording goes on without signal. A map that loads over the internet doesn't: in a valley without coverage it shows grey squares around your position. Download the map for your area at home, and it shows your way there too, without using any mobile data. Hiking with offline maps on Android says how much to download and how to test it in flight mode.

Space on the phone

A good app writes the track to the phone as you walk. The maps take far more room than the tracks, so a phone that is nearly full runs out when you download them. Check the free space before the map, not on the trail.

None of this needs an account or a connection. The positions come from satellites, and the track is written to the phone. An app may ask you to sign up for its own reasons, such as keeping your walks on its servers, but the recording doesn't need it. What an app with an account learns about you is in what your walking app knows about you.

Test it on a short walk

The DAV says that anyone who wants to use a navigation app has to get to know it first. A walk of half an hour near home is enough, and it tests every setting above at once.

1. At home, set the location permission and the battery use, and download the map.
2. Turn on flight mode and check that the map still shows your area.
3. Outside, start the recording and wait until the app has a fix. Under an open sky this takes a few seconds, indoors much longer.
4. Turn the screen off, put the phone in your pocket, and walk.
5. Halfway, stand still for a few minutes, as you would at a view. If the app pauses by itself, check that it carries on when you walk again.
6. Look at the lock screen now and then. The recording notification should be there.
7. Stop, save, and look at the track at home.

If the track is whole, the settings hold. If it isn't, you found out a kilometre from home.

After the hike

Check the track

Look at the line on the map, and at the times.

• A straight line across the map, where the path winds, means the app recorded nothing there: Android probably closed it. Set its battery use to Unrestricted before the next hike.
• A distance a little longer than the signpost said is normal. Every fix is off by a few metres, and the errors add up: why your GPS track is longer than the walk.
• A climb that differs from a friend's app usually comes from a different source of heights: why every app shows a different elevation gain.

Keep a copy

A track that lives only in one app on one phone can go with the app or the phone. Export the hike as a GPX file, an open format that most mapping apps read, and keep a backup of everything somewhere other than the phone. Own your walks explains the difference and how to get your walks out of other apps.

How walker records a hike

walker needs no sign-up: there is no account, and the recording stays on the phone. You start the first recording without handing over an email address, and your walks stay with you. Setup has a Location page with Allow precise location.

Tap the round record button at the bottom of the map. Until a fix is better than the GPS accuracy threshold, 20 m unless you change it, walker shows Waiting for GPS. The time runs from the tap, and the distance counts from the first good fix, so poor fixes at the start don't add metres you never walked. While you record, the map draws the track, with time, distance and pace below it, and on a hike how fast you are climbing. Stopping takes a press and hold, Hold to stop, so a tap in your pocket can't end the hike.

With the screen off, the notification shows time and distance, with Pause, Resume and Stop. Its Stop opens walker and asks first. Every point is written to the phone as it arrives, so if Android closes walker, the hike so far is kept.

Auto-pause is on unless you turn it off in Settings → Recording. When you have stood still for 15 seconds, walker pauses, and it carries on by itself when you walk on. A rest at the summit then doesn't count as moving time. The help page's recording section has the steps in brief.

You buy walker once: there is no subscription, no in-app purchase and no advertising, so there is nothing to renew before a trip.

Before your first hike

• Location: "Allow only while using the app", with precise location on.
• Battery use: Unrestricted, and your phone maker's battery saver checked.
• Map: downloaded at home, and tested in flight mode.
• Space: enough free for the map.
• Phone: charged, and a power bank for a long or cold day.
• Test: one short walk, with the screen off and a stop on the way.

A phone is a good GPS tracker for a hike once it has been set up for one, and the short walk is how you know that it has. After that, the recording is the one part of the day you don't have to think about.