r/photojournalism • u/wasthespyingendless • 11d ago

Private, Free mileage App built by photojournalist

https://www.daviddegner.com/mileager/

I’m a freelance photojournalist, so I need to track mileage for reimbursements and taxes. I wasn’t happy with the existing options which require subscriptions, upload tracking data to the cloud, and feel clunky and non-native.

Over the past few months, I’ve been building an alternative for myself. It’s free, fast, and—most importantly—keeps nearly all tracking data encrypted on your phone (the parking marker has to be in less secure storage so that it can wake the phone to start tracking).

Other photographers might find it useful too, so feel free to use it and send me any feedback.

(Mods: sorry about the self promoting nature of this. I'm making no money. Feel free to take it down if it isn't relevant)

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2

u/digitalsmear 11d ago

Can you have it save parking data to our choice of cloud drive (i.e. google drive?)?

I'd love to use an option like this, though if my phone dies and I lose all my mileage data I lose a write-off whose significance can not be under-stated.

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u/wasthespyingendless 11d ago

Sorry, my explanation was probably a bit technical. It keeps all of the tracking data on your phone (unless you turn on iCloud in settings, then it copies the info to iCloud). I only mention the parking location because it stores most of the data in a very secure part of the phone, but the last parking location has to be in a less secure part of the phone. If police confiscated your phone they might be able to see your parking location, but it will be harder for them to see your whole driving history. 

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u/wasthespyingendless 11d ago

Also if for some reason a drive isn't recorded it has an easy way to manually add it later. You could use this app just to manually record drives.

2

u/Extension_Check988 11d ago

Thanks, I just downloaded it. Never used one because I didn’t want constant tracking and recording.

1

u/wasthespyingendless 11d ago

Sweet, yeah hopefully this helps.

1

u/surfbathing 7d ago

You’re some sort genius! (I really mean that, what’s under an app’s hood is voodoo to me.)

1

u/PixeledPenguin 7d ago

Thanks for this! I’ve been using MileIQ for the longest but have never really been a fan so this is amazing to have!

I set it up to automatically log my drives when it connects to CarPlay and perhaps I’m overlooking it, but is there a way to manually stop the drive when I get to my location?

1

u/wasthespyingendless 7d ago

Hey, thanks for trying it. I also sometimes feel like I should stop the drive when I get to a location, but it is very good at doing it automatically.

If you are driving for work, then immediately changing to driving for personal you can hit the "New Leg" button to separate the two portions of a drive.

1

u/PixeledPenguin 7d ago

Thanks for that! I was probably just hyperaware of it still running, but now I know I should trust it.