Trail Tracker

Trail Tracker GPS is an app geared toward helping you keep track of where you've been. It's a great app for anyone who likes to jog, run, bike, hike, drive, ski, or do anything outside! It will track your entire trip, as well as its statistics. After, you can go back and look at exactly how long, how hard, and how far you went.

Things you can do with Trail Tracker GPS:
- Track your trips and look at them afterwards
- View detailed statistics and visualizations of your maps' data
- Trace your old trails; repeat a trip without getting lost!
- Find linear distance to anywhere on the globe with the GPS rangefinder
- Share your maps through e-mail, Facebook (iOS 6 only), and Twitter (iOS 6 only)
- Overlay multiple trails on one map to compare them
- Hear your statistics spoken aloud to you while tracking with iSpeech Text-to-Speech
- Fine-tune tracking with easy-to-use calibration settings
- Send location texts with your latitude and longitude in case of emergency

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get started?

- Starting a new trail is easy as tapping the "Start New Trail" button on Trail Tracker's main screen.

Can my device track trails with Trail Tracker?

- Even if your device can install Trail Tracker GPS, you might not be able to use the app's GPS features, depending on your device's hardware.

- iPod Touches (any generation) have no GPS, so they can only be used to import and view maps created on other devices.
- iPhones (3GS or later) can run Trail Tracker and use all of its GPS features.
- iPads are a bit more tricky. Some have GPS units in them, while some do not. iPads with cellular data connections (3G, 4G, LTE) have GPS units, while WIFI-only iPads do not.

- Make sure you check your device's hardware before downloading Trail Tracker!

Trail Tracker is telling me that I'm not moving, but I am! What gives?

- This can happen if Trail Tracker's stop sensitivity is set too high. If you are engaging in slow-moving activities (walking, hiking), you might want to set Trail Tracker's stop sensitivity (you can find it in the Settings tab) lower. On the other hand, if you are driving or biking or doing something else where you are moving more quickly, you might want to raise Trail Tracker's stop sensitivity so that it doesn't miss your stops! Feel free to experiment with different settings to find the best balance for your activities.

Trail Tracker says I'm moving, but I'm not! Why?

- The GPS in your device is only accurate to a certain degree. In best case scenarios, it can find your location with only a few meters of inaccuracy. In other cases, the position returned by the GPS can be off by a hundred meters or more. This inaccuracy is a product of the GPS' signal strength. If you are inside a building or even if the weather is bad, the GPS might receive inaccurate information, causing it to indicate that you are moving when you really are not. Over the course of an entire trip, though, this inaccuracy is relatively small. You can see information about the accuracy of the GPS during your trip in the Statistics page for any map.

I'm going to be tracking in an area with bad cellular reception. Will Trail Tracker still work?

- Trail Tracker uses a GPS signal and a cellular signal together to get the most accurate data regarding your location. While it is best to have both signals, Trail Tracker will most definitely still work with no cellular signal at all!

Tutorials

Sharing your maps in Trail Tracker is really easy! With a few easy steps, you can email your maps to anyone with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod so they can see your adventure! This tutorial will show you how to send maps through an email.

Step 1 Step 2 (iOS 6)Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

Step 1
Select the 'Sharing' tab on the bottom bar. You can do this from anywhere in the app.

Step 2 (iOS 6 only)
If you have a device running iOS 6.0 or higher, you will have to complete this step in order to continue. If you have iOS 6.0 or higher on your device, Trail Tracker will display a menu listing the options: 'Email Maps,' 'Share via Facebook,' and 'Share via Twitter.' Tap the table cell titled 'Email Maps.'

Step 3
Just tap on the maps that you would like to share. You can share more than one map at a time! You can also use the 'Select All' and 'Deselect All' buttons at the top of the table to help you select the maps you'd like to send.

Step 4

Press 'Send' and Trail Tracker will compile the maps

Once you've selected the maps you'd like to send, tap the 'Send' button in the top right corner of the screen. Trail Tracker will now get to work compiling your maps into one file to be attached to an email.

If you get an alert saying 'Too Many Maps!' just deselect some of the maps you've chosen - this just means that the map files you selected are too big to be sent together. If you want to send all of those maps, you'll need to break them up into two or more emails.

Step 5
Once Trail Tracker has created the file, you will be presented with a mail controller. You can fill out the email as you would any other email. Tap the send button when you're ready to send the email. You're done! Note that the recipient of the email might not see the email in their inbox for a few minutes after sending if you've selected multiple maps.

Importing maps in Trail Tracker is even easier than exporting them! You can import maps from anyone so you can see their adventures and compare them to your own!

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Notes

Step 1
On the device to which you'd like to import the maps, open the e-mail containing the maps attachment. Note that the device must already have Trail Tracker GPS installed in order to import maps.

Step 2
Once you've opened the email, just tap on the maps attachment (it should have the extension .msdf). You should be presented with options as to how the attachment should be opened, and one of those options should be "Open in Trail Tracker." Choose that option!

Step 3
Once you've chosen "Open in Trail Tracker," you're done! Trail Tracker will handle the rest for you. It might take a few seconds to a minute to complete the importation process, depending on how many maps are being imported, but all you have to do is wait!

Step 4
In order to view imported maps, you will have to tap the "View Imported Maps" cell under the "Results" tab. You can view them just as you would view any map you created yourself! Happy trails!

Notes
Trail Tracker does not re-save duplicate maps. For example, if you email a map to someone, and they try to import it twice, it will only be saved the first time. Also, if you email yourself a map that you created yourself and try to import it, as long as you have the map in your "Saved Maps," Trail Tracker won't import it again, which saves you disk space!

Renaming maps can become an important organizational task once several maps are acquired. By default, trails in Trail Tracker are named simply by the date and time they were created. Follow this tutorial to make your maps easier to find.

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Notes

Step 1
Tap on the 'Results' tab on the bottom tab bar.

Step 2
Select 'Saved Maps,' 'Imported Maps,' or 'All Maps'; whichever one contains the map you want to rename!

Step 3
Scroll through your maps until you find the map that you'd like to give a new name. Once you've found it, tap on its 'View Statistics' button.

Step 4
Next, just tap on the first cell, named 'Map Title.'

Step 5
You can now change the map title to whatever you want!

Notes
There is a 25 character limit on the map title. If you are editing the title of a map but decide you want to keep the original name of the map, just erase all of the text in the text field and tap 'Done.' The title will remain the same as it was before.

Leave a Comment!
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Teo:

12/2/2012

Does the program work woth no cell service?

Dennis Puckett dlpuck@live.com:

12/9/2012

The app can't get my Location/address correct. 360 Paradise Drive. There is other paradises.

Taylor:

12/9/2012

Why won't the app display my running speed?

Ryan:

12/9/2012

Hi. I was just wondering how we import maps by email?

Admin Eric:

12/9/2012

@Teo - Yes, Trail Tracker works without cell service! You won't be able to see any map image data without 3G/4G/wifi, but all of the trail data will be recorded for future viewing.

Admin Eric:

12/9/2012

@Dennis - Not sure exactly what the issue might be. If you contact us at support@taptools.net, we can continue this conversation in more detail!

Admin Eric:

12/9/2012

@Taylor - Let's continue this discussion through email - send us one at support@taptools.net!

Admin Eric:

12/9/2012

@Ryan - To send maps, simply select the ones you'd like to send, and hit send. Once you've sent the maps, you can open the email containing the maps on any device, and tap on the attachment. You should be asked to open the attachment in Trail Tracker, and whatever maps are in the attachment will be downloaded onto whatever device opened the attachment! Note that you need to have Trail Tracker already installed on the receiving device to import the maps.

Admin Eric:

12/9/2012

If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@taptools.net! Thanks for your interest in Trail Tracker!

Sávio:

12/10/2012

How do I import maps to my TrailTracker?

Sávio:

12/10/2012

Also,how do I save maps? In case the steps are different,somehow

Jim:

12/10/2012

Will it work on an iPod Touch?

Admin Eric:

12/10/2012

@Savio - To import maps, you need to export them through email. Once the email is sent, open it up on whatever device you'd like to import the maps on. Just tap on the email attachment, and select 'Open in Trail Tracker.' Trail Tracker will take care of the rest!

Admin Eric:

12/10/2012

@Jim - The app will run on the iPod Touch, but GPS functionality will not work unless you have an external GPS unit. You *can* use Trail Tracker as a map viewer on your iPod (importing maps from other devices through email), but in order to actually record maps, you need a device with a GPS unit inside it.

Chad:

12/10/2012

When you save a track is there any way to rename that track instead of it being the date it was saved if so how?

Admin Eric:

12/10/2012

@Chad - There sure is! Tap on the statistics button in the map selector. In the statistics list, just tap on the map title cell. You can rename the map to anything you want!

Izet:

12/20/2012

When I import the map from the mail attachment, the title of the map will change to the date of track day.

Admin Eric:

12/20/2012

@Izet- I have answered your question on the main page.

Jack E.:

1/12/2013

So the map should work while I talk on my 4S iPhone? I have 3G service not 4G. Thanks

josh:

1/12/2013

any way to view a track on a regular PC or Mac, or export a track in other formats besides .msdf?

Admin Eric:

1/12/2013

@Jack E - When talking on the phone, depending on your phone service provider, you may or may not be able to get map data. Some providers allow 3G connections while talking (AT&T does), and some do not (for example, Verizon). You'll have to speak with your carrier about whether or not they provide data connections while talking. You might be able to find out with a quick Google search.

Admin Eric:

1/12/2013

@Josh - At the moment, there is not a desktop version of Trail Tracker, but it's being considered as a future project! Exporting as other data formats (.gpx, .xml) is high on our list of features for coming updates, so keep your eye out!

Alan:

2/2/2013

I use your app while backpacking. I offer two suggestions. 1) I wish I could pause the recording. Without that ability, stopping for a long water break or snack seriously skews my results, and wastes my battery. Having to "finish" the tracking and start a new trail is cumbersome, and it becomes difficult to manage so many trails. 2) Many hikes have a common start and end, thus elevation change between those points is not helpful. It would be useful to calculate and graph elevation also on distance axis and time axis, similar to how you now graph speed. I recognize that it is not practical to get smooth curve elevation data, but perhaps you could use data every tenth of mile or every ten minutes (maybe a setting). Thanks for a neat app!

Admin Eric:

2/12/2013

@Alan - Those are both great suggestions. We are currently investigating a couple different possibilities for creating elevation graphs. As to your first suggestion, one of our new features to be released in a coming update is the ability to combine two maps into one. Thanks for using Trail Tracker!

cornelb@free.fr:

2/17/2013

Gobe possibility to make photo in differents points of track!

April:

2/23/2013

I really love your app and find it to be extremely accurate! I had been using another that had a lot of functionality, but it kept dropping signal in more remote areas. I greatly look forward to being about to share my files in other ways, like web links that can be opened on a pc or exported to common file formats. I love being able to open several maps on my ipad and being able to save those combinations would be really helpful too.

Admin Eric:

3/1/2013

@April - Thanks for the comment! Those are all great suggestions, new file formats for sharing is top on our list for new features. While you cannot currently save multiple maps together, you can open multiple maps at once by pressing 'Options' and 'Add Another Map' while viewing one map.

Maria:

3/2/2013

Very disappointed in this proprietary file format. I'd like to import existing standard format GPS tracks into Trail Tracker and I can't seem to make the conversion -- even with GPSBabelFE. Can you give me some hints on how to make this work with my existing tracks?

Admin Eric:

3/3/2013

@Maria - We are currently preparing compatibility with Google's map file format for the next update to Trail Tracker so you can work with your maps with other mapping software.

Greg:

4/28/2013

Love the app but need a file type exportable to my Macbook! Would pay another $0.99 gladly!

Steve:

4/29/2013

Love the app so far. But would like to see an elevation graph. Looking forward to exported files. Can you do CSV or some similar neutral format too?

Mihai:

5/3/2013

Great APP!!!! Just bought it today for my iPad, but: I would like to export the maps to a google friendly file type, to see them on google earth. At least an image of the path ... to overlay it on google earth maps. It would be nice to have the sattelite map on the live tracking ...because, some of the streets appear on the satellite map, but don't on the simple one. Thanks

Admin Eric:

5/9/2013

@Greg - We are currently working on incorporating the ability to export maps as .kml files, which is the native file format for Google Maps and Google Earth, as well as a host of other mapping applications for desktop computers and other devices!

Admin Eric:

5/9/2013

@Steve - You can look forward to elevation graphs in the next version of Trail Tracker. We've totally revamped graphing in Trail Tracker. Also, like I answered for Greg's question, we will be adding .kml exporting for visualization of your maps in other mapping applications.

Admin Eric:

5/9/2013

@Mihai - The next version of Trail Tracker will include .kml exporting for Google Earth. Also, you will be able to change the map type on the iPad while tracking. It should be ready in the next few weeks!

Kay :

5/19/2013

Would like to total my mileage for week ,day month etc.

Admin Eric:

5/19/2013

@Kay - That's a very nice suggestion, that'll definitely go on the list for a future update. We've had multiple requests for features such as weekly totals.