Auto trip detection is the feature people hear about and want, then hesitate to enable because of battery worries or vague “what does it do with my data” questions. Here is the honest answer.
What it does
When you start driving, Car Money quietly logs the trip — start point, route, distance, duration. A Live Activity appears on your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island so you can see it is happening. When you stop, you can categorize the trip as personal or business.
How it knows you are driving
Two things working together:
- Core Motion — your iPhone's motion classifier. It distinguishes driving from walking, cycling, or stationary, with very low power cost.
- Significant location changes — iOS wakes the app only when you have moved a meaningful distance. This is the same API navigation apps use; it does not track you continuously.
The combination means the app sleeps until you are actually driving, then wakes up and runs in the background only as long as needed.
The permissions you need
- Location: Always — required so iOS can wake the app when you start driving. “While Using” will not work for auto-detect.
- Motion & Fitness — used to confirm “this is driving” vs walking or cycling.
Both are off by default. Both can be revoked any time. If you turn them off, manual trip logging still works.
Battery
On a daily 30-mile commute, Car Money typically adds well under 2% to a normal day's battery use. The expensive part of GPS is continuous tracking; the app only records points while driving and goes silent the rest of the day.
Live Activity
The trip banner on your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island shows distance and duration in real time. You can tap to open the app, end the trip manually, or just let it auto-end when you stop.
When to manually log instead
- You drove someone else's car
- You started a trip with the app fully closed and Bluetooth off
- You want to log a route you have already driven (CarPlay history, gas receipts)
When auto-detection misses
Most often: your phone was in a metal case in the backseat, you had no GPS lock, or you started driving immediately after a power-on. The fix: tap Add Trip → Fetch Trips — Car Money will pull recent location history from iOS and reconstruct any missed runs.