# Trace Journal — Private location history

> Private location history (iPhone/iPad app by Scott Lincke.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/trace-journal/id6801656763 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Scott Lincke](https://appshunter.io/developer/1291006174)
- Category: Lifestyle, Travel
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 17.0 · 2 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-10-10
- Data updated: 2026-10-24

## What is Trace Journal?

Trace Journal is a quiet, private log of your day.

Running in the background on your iPhone, Trace Journal records your route and automatically detects the places you stopped — home, work, the coffee shop, wherever your day took you. Open the app any time to see today's path on the map, or scroll back through your history with a calendar heatmap of every day you've recorded.

Every place Trace detects becomes an editable entry: rename it, rate it, or correct it if Trace got it wrong. If a stop gets attributed to the wrong place, you can reassign just that one visit — or mark it as not a real stop at all — without disturbing anything else in your history.

Privacy is the whole point. Trace has no servers, no account, no ads, and no analytics. Your location data is written directly to your own iCloud Drive, in the open GPX format, inside a private container only your own devices can read. Nobody — including us — can see where you've been.

FEATURES
• Automatic background location recording
• Auto-detected "places" from your stops, editable and correctable
• Full route map for any day, with a timeline of stops and trips
• Calendar heatmap of your recorded history
• Optional proximity alerts for places you save from Apple Maps
• Your data stays in your own iCloud — never uploaded anywhere else

## Is Trace Journal safe?

Not enough ratings yet to assess Trace Journal.

## Is Trace Journal legit?

Trace Journal has limited verification signals. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Trace Journal is 58 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.


## Version history (last 4 releases)

### 1.0.3 — 2026-10-20

Important fix: if Trace stayed running for several days, it could keep treating the day it started as "today", saving later travel under that earlier day and leaving today unselectable in the calendar. Trace now starts each new day correctly, and on first launch it moves any misplaced points back to the day they belong to (keeping a backup copy in the Trace folder in Files).

Also: a brighter route line and other fixes in Dark Mode, and tidier Settings rows.

### 1.0.2 — 2026-10-16

Fixed a bug where the first few days of a month could show up blank in the History calendar.

### 1.0.1 — 2026-10-15

Small improvements and polish.

### 1.0 — 2026-10-09

No release notes.

---

*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-10-24.*