How-to · Updated 12 Sep 2026 · 6 min

Set up automatic tracking so nothing goes missing

Automatic mileage tracking is only as good as five iOS settings. Here they are in the order that matters, then how to prove it works before you trust it with a tax year.

Five minutes, once

If you only do one thing, set location to Always. With "While Using the App", iOS lets DriveHub use location only while it is on screen, so the first minutes of every drive — often the whole drive — are simply never recorded.

1. Give location "Always", and Precise

A drive starts with the phone in a pocket and the app closed, so the app has to be allowed to wake by itself. iOS asks for "While Using" first and only offers "Always" later — which is why most people end up on the wrong setting without choosing it. Change it in iOS Settings → DriveHub → Location → Always.

Turn on Precise Location in the same panel. Without it, distances can be inaccurate. DriveHub asks for precise location when a drive starts and flags a trip that did not get it.

2. Allow Motion & Fitness

This permission does two jobs. It is DriveHub's main way of noticing that you are driving at all, and it is what the daily completeness check reads: iOS keeps a motion history on the phone — walking, cycling, automotive — and DriveHub compares its own recordings against it to find drives that were never recorded. Turn it on in iOS Settings → DriveHub → Motion & Fitness.

Deny it and DriveHub loses both its main way of noticing that you are driving and the check that tells you a drive was missed. Automatic starts then depend on your car's Bluetooth or CarPlay, or on starting trips yourself.

3. Leave Background App Refresh on, and watch Low Power Mode

The daily completeness check runs as a background refresh, so with Background App Refresh off it waits until you open the app.

Low Power Mode is a common cause of a short or missing trip: iOS pauses background location while it is on, and no app can override that. DriveHub warns you when Low Power Mode is on, and the completeness check is there for the day it catches you out.

Settings → Tracking & detection → Tracking & permissions lists every permission and detection source with whether it is on — check it there rather than guessing from iOS Settings.

4. Set your working hours, if you want trips filed for you

Working hours decide whether a drive is business or personal, not whether it is recorded. Drives inside them are filed as business automatically, unless the place you drove to has its own rule; everything outside them is still recorded, so nothing is lost. Set them in Settings → Tracking & detection → Working hours.

If you want the app to stop recording altogether during your own time, that is a different switch: turn off Automatic Detection under Tracking & permissions and start trips yourself.

5. Prove it, on one real drive

Do not take a tracker's word for it in January and check in December. Put the phone in your pocket, drive somewhere ordinary, and look at three things afterwards: the trip exists, its start is where you actually set off, and the distance is close to what your odometer says.

Then leave it a day and open the app again. The completeness check runs about once a day in the background and each time the app starts; if it has something to tell you, it is at the top of the Trips tab.

When a drive is missing anyway

Every tracker misses a drive occasionally — iOS stops background processes, batteries go flat, phones get left on chargers. What matters is whether you find out. DriveHub re-reads the phone's motion history, finds stretches of driving that never became a trip, and shows them at the top of the Trips tab. Tap Recover and the route is rebuilt along the likely roads using Apple Maps, so this step needs a connection.

What it can rebuild: driving iOS itself logged — the phone was on, with you, and Motion & Fitness was allowed. What it cannot: a drive while the phone was off, flat or in Airplane Mode. There is no record to read, so add that trip yourself from the Trips tab with Add past; it counts exactly the same in reports.

Driving it cannot rebuild is listed as driving to add by hand rather than quietly dropped. Gaps stay on the list for two days, and older unmatched driving is still written to the app's Activity Log. That is deliberate: a list with an unresolved item on it is information, and an empty list that was tidied up is not.

If it keeps happening

Email andrei@zamiralov.fi with what happened and roughly when. We will tell you how to export the app's Activity Log — it records what the tracker did and when, without addresses — so we can see what the tracker actually saw instead of guessing from a description. You decide whether to send it.