I want to talk about one feature in particular, because it's the reason I'm posting here and the part I'm most happy with: fully automatic trip tracking.
The idea is simple. You get in the car, your phone connects, and the app starts logging the drive on its own. No button to tap, no widget to open, and nothing to set up first. You just drive, and it takes care of the rest. The trip begins when your phone connects and ends when you park and disconnect.
The moment a drive starts, a Live Activity appears on its own, the live widget on your Lock Screen, Dynamic Island and most importantly here on your CarPlay Screen, and it keeps the trip updated in real time as you go. You never have to open the app while driving.
On how it works under the hood, I'll be honest and a little coy: I can only say it's a combination of native Apple APIs working together across a few layers, and I'd rather not get more specific than that for obvious reasons. What I can tell you is that leaning on the proper native stack rather than a workaround is what makes it reliable, and it's a nice combination once the pieces click together.
A few things that matter in daily use:
- Trip detection kicks in within about 500m of setting off, in case you set up shortcuts it's 0m, so you don't lose the start of a drive.
- Very light on the battery. It reacts to your phone connecting rather than running GPS in the background all day, so it barely shows up in my battery stats.
- I've been using it on my own daily commute for weeks and it has caught every trip, nothing missed, both with automatic mode no setup and shortcuts.
- It works the same on a motorcycle, so rides get logged just like drives.
Everything else in the app takes a back seat to this for me: maintenance reminders by date or mileage, fuel and EV charge logging with real cost and economy, cost charts, CarPlay support, Home and Lock Screen widgets, on-device receipt scanning, iCloud sync. It's all there, but the automatic trip tracking is what I wanted to share.
Free to download, with a Pro tier (monthly, yearly, or a one-time lifetime unlock) for unlimited vehicles and the full feature set. Free trial included.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wrenchtime-car-maintenance/id6749767537
(Disclosure: I'm the developer.)