Recording and sharing my trips

1. Choosing the recording mode

Settings → Recording mode:

• Detailed, the default for a new account: your movements are recorded automatically, and every sharing mode is available. This is the mode that builds your timeline.
• Simple: only your arrivals and departures at your favorite places are noted. No trip, minimal consumption. In this mode, sharing with a circle is limited to “Circle places”.

You can switch at any time. The only setting specific to the Detailed mode is the recording detail, described further down.

2. Recording a trip by hand

On the map, tap Start trip, pick the mode or leave Auto, then Start the trip. The trip screen shows distance, speed and duration; in Auto, the transport mode is detected by itself along the way. Stop records it. An account without a license, in spectator mode, cannot start a recording.

3. Letting Fenzly detect your trips

In Detailed mode there is nothing to set: Fenzly detects that you start moving and records without intervention, on foot, running, by bike or by car.

• The transport mode is recognised from the trip. If it gets it wrong, correct it from the trip’s page; bus and train are picked by hand.
• A brief stop, a red light or a traffic jam, does not cut the trip. A stop of about ten minutes splits it into two trips, with the stop between them.
• Trips that are too short, that do not get a hundred metres or so away from their starting point, are discarded.

Automatic recording uses more battery than the Simple mode. On Android, the physical-activity permission improves detection and saves battery; the app asks for it at first launch.

4. Setting the recording detail

Settings → Recording detail: Battery saver, Balanced or High. The higher the detail, the more faithful the trace, and the more the battery is used. The setting also applies to live sharing.

5. Reviewing and correcting

Your trips are in your timeline and in the History tab, Trips view: route on the map, duration, distance, average and maximum speed, elevation. A stop at the end of a trip shows without a name until you name it: name it once and it becomes a visited place, recognised on later visits (guide Naming the places in my timeline). “Use this place by default here” ties it to the next trips ending there. A trip can be corrected or deleted; if it had been shared, the corrected version replaces the old one for your people.

6. What your circles see of it

In each circle, your sharing mode decides:

• Circle places or Latest position: no trip is shared.
• Everything: each trip appears in the members’ feed in a plain form, “Trip 22 min · 9.4 km”, type, duration and distance, no route.
• Detailed trips, a switch in the circle’s Sharing tab: members can also open the trip and see the route, speeds and elevation. For a child member, a guardian can lock this choice.

The detail travels end-to-end encrypted, in a file each member downloads once and keeps; the server, which cannot read it, erases it after thirty days. The trips themselves never leave your phone other than towards the circles you chose.