Track drives automatically

How it works

The phone’s motion sensors tell when you’re in a vehicle; the GPS then records the drive and stops a few minutes after you park, so a light or a drive-through stays in the same drive.

The sensors take half a minute to a minute and a half of driving to say you’re in a vehicle, so the drive is measured back to where you parked (up to 1.2 mi away, or on a fast road as far as the car went at its speed in three minutes, up to 3.1 mi) and starts when you left there; Driving now and its notification count from there too.

A drive shows, in Driving now and its notification, once the sensors say a vehicle and the phone moves faster than a walk, or at a car’s speed (11 mph). The sensors’ word alone, standing or walking, isn’t enough.

One that shows but never reaches a car’s speed in two minutes, while you’re on foot or within about 100 yards, goes back to waiting quietly, its notification gone. Driving now and Detected drives say how each drive started: the sensors, a car’s speed, your car’s connection or Start a drive.

Start on the walk to the car, on the Automatic tracking page (off unless you turn it on), turns location on once you’ve walked about 30 seconds (a few steps between rooms don’t count), so the drive is measured from right where the car was; the walk isn’t counted, and nothing shows until the car moves or the phone connects to it. It uses more battery: location runs on every walk, not only drives.

How drives start, on the same page: Automatic (on their own), Automatic + Start a drive (Start a drive on the Dash and in Detected drives starts one at once, from right where you are; End drive ends it, or it ends when you park), or Manual (only the drives you start, with location off between them).

Every drive under way has End drive, in Driving now and in Detected drives, however it started. With Automatic, a car that keeps moving starts a new drive.

Your car’s connection, on the same page (Android, from app build 1.0.9): choose the car’s Bluetooth (Android Auto connects through it) and a drive starts when the phone connects, right in the parking spot. Or pick Android Auto or car Bluetooth only: drives record only then, each ending when you park. A dropout of the connection while you drive never ends a drive; parked, MileWorks waits the time you choose (Ignore a dropout shorter than, 2 minutes unless you change it) before it stops watching.

End a drive once it’s stopped for, on the same page, is how long a stop ends a drive: 5 minutes unless you change it, from 1 to 10. Longer keeps a drive-through or a train crossing in one drive.

A drive under about 0.3 mi, a short hop under two minutes, a walk, or a plane’s taxi and takeoff isn’t kept. A drive you record with + → Record a trip isn’t found again, and starting one ends the drive under way.

A walk as long as your stop time in the middle of a drive (out of the car for a walk in a park) splits it into two drives. Right after a drive too short to keep, Detected drives says so for an hour.

While you drive

A quiet notification (no sound or buzz) shows the drive under way, with its distance so far and the time, about once a minute. Its buttons: Business, Personal, or More: with one car, Not a drive (a ride as a passenger, a bus), End drive and Back; with more than one, Next car, Not a drive and Back. Confirm after you park, or leave it: nothing goes into your log yet.

Opening the app mid-drive, or tapping the notification, opens Driving now: the distance so far, the time, the speed now, the average and the top speed, the car and the purpose for now, with the same picks. Minimize puts it in a bar above the tabs; a tap on the bar opens it again.

Driving now also has the time moving and stopped (to the second; opened, the share of each so far), the odometer at the start and the end (Add odometer), End drive, and the map with the flags of where the car is.

While the car stands, at a light or in a queue, a pill at the bottom right of the map counts this stop (“0:42”), so you can see how long you’ve been idling. It goes as soon as the car moves on.

At the top right of the map: the flags of where the car is, its town and state under them (tap to hide), and the time there with its time zone, “3:42 PM · CST · UTC−6”, which changes about 10 m past a time zone line. The way you’re going is at the left, under the map’s buttons.

The distance so far is measured as you go. When you park, the drive is measured again from every point, and that’s the one it’s saved with. A phone restarted on the way keeps the drive and what you picked.

After you park

A second notification has the drive’s distance and where it went. With a pick made while driving, it asks you to confirm it: Confirm, Change or Not a drive. With none, it asks Business or Personal. A tap sorts it without opening the app.

The Dash has the newest one to sort or confirm, and Detected drives has them all, with every purpose and each car; Sorted lately has Undo for Not a drive. A drive found late (the phone held the app back) says its day.

Not your car? Pick Not my car (on Driving now while you drive, on the Dash's drive and in Detected drives) for a ride as a passenger, or someone else's car you don't want logged: it's kept out of your log, as Not a drive is, and Sorted lately has Undo for it too.

Route and details, on the Dash’s drive and on each one in Detected drives, opens the drive’s own page: its path with Open the map, its speeds, the time moving and stopped, and the miles in each place. Sort it there too.

Drives start in the rental or borrowed car while one is out, else the car you pick on the Automatic tracking page (Drives start in), else the one new entries go on.

A business drive saves where it went as its where and why. Until you add why (who it was for and the purpose: Sorted lately → Open), the trip counts as missing why in Stats → Trips, the tax tools and the reports.

Sorted the wrong way? Detected drives → Sorted lately → Open, and change its purpose on the trip: Sorted lately then shows it as the trip now is.

The odometer, to check it

Both are optional: the odometer at the start, the end, or both. Type them on Driving now once you’ve parked (or let a passenger), on each drive in Detected drives, or, after you sort one on the lock screen, in the quiet notification that asks for it (turn that off on the Automatic tracking page: Ask for the odometer).

With both, the trip keeps the tracked distance too. Within 2 of each other in the car’s own odometer unit (2 mi, or 2 km on a car whose odometer reads km; 1 at each end), the tracked one counts: it’s finer than the odometer’s whole miles or kilometers. Further apart, the odometer’s counts. On the trip’s form, Distance from picks the other.

The path and the speeds

Each drive keeps its whole path on this phone: every GPS fix, about one each 5 m at a turn’s speed and one a second on the open road, so the line follows the roads and turns you took. While the car is stopped, at a light or in traffic, the fixes that wander are left out, so the line doesn’t jut off the road.

The line joins the fixes and isn’t fitted to the map’s roads: a fix is good to about 3 to 10 m, so the line can run a little beside the road. The distance is measured over the fixes 8 m or more apart, so close fixes’ jitter doesn’t add up.

The trip’s form has The drive: the path, Open the map (its streets, to drag and zoom), the average speed while moving, the top speed held a few seconds, and the time moving and stopped, to the second, each with its share of the drive.

Stats → Trips adds them up over the tracked drives in the range (Moving and stopped): how long you were moving and stopped, and the share of each. A drive ends where you parked, so the minutes after aren’t in it.

Tracking starts once the phone senses a car (unless Start on the walk to the car is on), so a drive’s first fix is some way from where you parked. When an earlier drive ended there, its road in, turned round, is the start (the trip’s form says which drive); else the stretch is a straight dashed line, as a tunnel is: no fixes, drawn straight. The first paths (Oct 27, 2026) kept a point about every 200 m; whenever the way paths are drawn improves, the app draws the last 3 days’ again from their fixes.

Started late? On the map, Fix the start: tap where the car was parked, then along the roads you took, at each turn, up to the ring where tracking began. The line follows your taps, and the drive’s distance, its first place’s miles and its average take what they add. Put back the measured start undoes it.

Deleting the trip deletes its path; a drive marked Not a drive loses its path the next time the app opens, and Erase everything deletes them all. Drives found before Oct 27, 2026 have no path.

Borders and state lines

A drive that crosses into another country or US state (Texas into Oklahoma, or into Mexico; Montana into Alberta) saves each crossing with it, as a border crossing, with how far into the drive it was (on its ticket). The automatic region, the welcomes and the Passbook take it as one you logged on the + menu.

The region maps tell a country, a US state, a UK nation, a German state, a Japanese prefecture and a Czech region; a province or another country’s state comes from your phone’s maps service, from a few spots along the way. A crossing has no odometer: add one on its form if you noted it.

At a border with customs and immigration, the stop there ends the drive. When the next drive in the same car starts in another country, state or province within the Border wait (2 hours unless you change it on the Automatic tracking page), its crossing goes at that drive’s start, unless you logged it yourself.

Each trip keeps its miles in each place, split where it crossed: the Passbook’s Highlights and Stats → Places add them up as Miles by place.

Each crossing keeps its kind, shown on its ticket: a border between two countries, a state or province line inside one, or a city’s limits (Oklahoma’s six, found on drives only). A one-tap recording saves its crossings the same way.

In Europe, Detected drives says when a crossing went into or out of the Schengen area (no checks inside it; Croatia → Bosnia and Herzegovina leaves it), and a crossing’s ticket says which side it went to.

What the phone needs

Location “All the time” with Use precise location on (approximate leaves every drive out), motion (physical activity) and notifications; the app explains first, then the phone asks. Without “All the time”, drives with the app closed aren’t recorded, and the page says so with Open location settings.

Some phones pause apps to save battery: the page says so, with Open MileWorks’s settings (Battery, then Unrestricted). A Samsung, and some other phones, also put apps to sleep with their own battery saver: the page offers Open the battery saver, where you let MileWorks run (on a Samsung, Never sleeping apps).

How it compares with the odometer

Detected drives → How it’s doing puts each car’s drives between two odometer readings (a fill-up’s, or a reading’s) against what the odometer says, for the first weeks of trying it.

Your location

The drives stay on this phone: nothing is sent anywhere but each drive’s start and end spots (and, for a drive across a border, a few spots along the way), to your phone’s own maps service for the addresses. While a drive is recorded, the phone shows Recording a drive. Turning it off stops it, and the drives found stay to sort; Erase everything deletes them and turns it off.