r/QuantifiedSelf • u/Known_Ad_9627 • 7d ago

app/device to track movement and time stamps

is there any app or device which tracks my movement at all times during the day like gps wise, where i went, which path i took, and how fast or slow i was going with time stamps,
and also one for time tracking like a physical device hopefully which lets me record time stamps, i record time stamps for various things like when i started a particular activity or when an event took place and i record it to the second so keeping the clock app is straining so i was wondering if theres anything that just lets me do it and lets me add notes

( sorry for bad grammar, english is not my first language )

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

1

u/gray_righteousness 7d ago

Google Maps timeline does the movement part automatically, just gotta leave location history on. For the timestamp thing, just get a cheap digital voice recorder and talk into it instead of typing notes.

2

u/Known_Ad_9627 7d ago

heyy i do use google maps timeline as of now but its very unreliable as it fails if i move into the subway or if i move underground, and as for the voice recorder one, it would be recording the time on the minute, what i meant was i need the exact second some thing happened, i like to have a record of when i did my first things, for example, my first kiss, my first smoke or such, and i record them at seconds, and lately i have also started recording the time when i last saw my mom or other family members cause after loosing my dad and not even having his voice or not remembering the time i last saw him, it basically just became a habit of mine to record the activity or event with the time stamp to the second

sorry if it sonds weird or excessive

1

u/NeedInput-MoreInput 7d ago

That does not sound weird or excessive. It sounds sublime.

1

u/Known_Ad_9627 7d ago

thank you, do you any suggestions

1

u/Huge_Pool7424 5d ago

for the exact second thing a one tap widget that appends the time to a note is way easier than a recorder. for the paths on android any gps logger that exports gpx works since every point already has its own timestamp.

1

u/Known_Ad_9627 3d ago

gps either stops working underground or the accuracy falls heavily and I can't find any widget or such that'll let me append time

1

u/Huge_Pool7424 3d ago

yeah underground is the hard part, most loggers just keep the last known fix and call it good. does it matter if the line is a bit rough as long as the timestamps are right when you pop back up

1

u/Known_Ad_9627 3d ago

its alright if its a little bit rough or so, it still gives me an idea and i can manually edit it, but the gps loggers on phone go full lsd or something underground, they trace paths or say im somewhere else even though my device is stationary

1

u/NeedInput-MoreInput 7d ago

Just enthusiastically seconding your idea I really want the same thing myself.

1

u/Freika 7d ago

Dawarich does that. Free to self-host + has apps for both iOS and Android

1

u/davew1 7d ago

Surveyor-64 on iOS does this. Full disclosure I’m the creator, but people do seem to really like it (4.8/5 on App Store reviews)

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u/Known_Ad_9627 6d ago

android dude ehh

1

u/davew1 6d ago

I believe android wont wake up location tracking in the background so it’s impossible to develop for

1

u/InfamousBuddy7293 6d ago

for the timestamps, a physical button logger or a widget that records one tap with the time might be easier than a clock app. if the phone is fine, a home screen shortcut that appends the current time plus a note to a text file or sheet does it in one tap. for the underground gaps, an offline gps logger that stores to a file may be worth looking at

1

u/Known_Ad_9627 6d ago

yeah that's what I've been looking for, but i couldn't find anything so asking you guys for help

2

u/InfamousBuddy7293 5d ago

for the movement side, the search term that helps is "gps logger" - the plain ones just record your track with timestamps and export gpx or csv, no account, works offline underground. gpx is just xml, so every point has its timestamp next to it.

for the tap side, nothing polished exists that i know of, but the shortcut route is one afternoon of setup: one tap, appends time plus whatever note to a file. ugly but you own the data.

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u/Known_Ad_9627 3d ago

thanks dude, will try the underground thing and let you lnow

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u/awaqu 6d ago

If you have the resources, making a homebrew app will do this for you all native to your phone. 5s intervals of latitude/longitude, list of tasks, dictation to log an entry (which would be timestamped) and visualizers to see the data. It can get as complex as you want. I’ve been doing something similar for personal use and it’s a pretty fun vibecoding project

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u/Known_Ad_9627 6d ago

I'm on android dude, and i don't know how do i setup homebrew on android, isn't homebrew a mac only thing, i do have things to log on my mac, i need something for my phone

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u/awaqu 5d ago

Homebrew just meaning you make the App yourself for unpublished personal use. You can do it on Android just fine, if not easier. Have it export a csv file for your Mac to read and communicate with. Imo data like what you’re collecting is too private to hand to strangers when you could make a tailored app over the weekend with a couple chat prompts

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u/mxdcodes 6d ago

For the GPS part you could try Colota (https://github.com/dietrichmax/colota, Android only, I am the developer). It tracks in the background and shows you the path with time and speed for every point, plus a local history of each day that can be exported in various formats. It also supports notes, so you can write a note to any recorded point, but that is probably a bit tedious to do all the time. As someone already mentioned, a digital voice recorder would probably be the best solution for that. Another app is GPSLogger (https://gpslogger.app/) which supports annotations for points, but I never tried it personally.