Record a track

Walk a route and let the app drop vertices as you go, then save it as a Path / Track line. Includes recovering a walk cut short.

On this page

Track recording turns a walk into a line. Start it, walk the route, and the app adds a vertex every few metres. When you stop, you save it as a Path / Track asset in the active project. Use it for trails, desire lines, a route you drove on foot, or anything where the shape matters more than any single point.

For lines where each vertex needs to be a deliberate, accurate shot, such as a boundary or a fence, walk the line vertex by vertex instead. See Collect lines and areas.

Before you start

  • An active project. If you don't have one, Record track opens the project chooser first.
  • A position. The phone's GPS works, but a connected receiver gives a much cleaner line. See Phone GPS vs. a receiver.

Record a track

  1. Go to Tools → Record track (in the Field section).

  2. The app switches to the Survey map and starts recording. The row in Tools now reads Recording track… and stays greyed out until you stop.

  3. Walk the route. A chip above the map controls shows the progress:

    Chip Meaning
    REC (red dot) Recording is on.
    Length Distance walked so far, measured along the recorded vertices.
    Clock Time since you started, as mm:ss (h:mm:ss after an hour).
    … pts Vertices recorded so far.

  4. When you're done, tap Stop on the chip. The Track sheet opens.

  5. Check the summary under Recorded track: Vertices, Length and Duration.

  6. Under Save as Path / Track, type a Name or leave it blank to use the suggested one (for example Path / Track 3), and add Notes if you want.

  7. Tap Save track. The line appears on the map and in the asset list.

To throw the recording away, tap Discard instead. You can't swipe the sheet away; you have to choose one or the other.

How vertices are chosen

The app doesn't save every fix. It adds a new vertex only when all three of these are true:

  • You're at least 5 metres (about 16 ft) from the last vertex.
  • At least 2 seconds have passed since the last vertex.
  • The fix isn't an accuracy spike. Once a few fixes have come in, the app skips any fix whose horizontal accuracy is more than three times the recent typical value (and worse than 3 m).

The result is a line with roughly even spacing that ignores the jumps GPS makes when you walk under trees or past buildings. Standing still adds nothing, so a pause mid-route doesn't leave a knot of points.

If the recording is interrupted

While you record, the app saves a draft to the phone at regular intervals. If the app is closed mid-walk (it crashes, you force-quit it, or the phone restarts), the next time you open the Survey tab the Track sheet appears with the header Interrupted recording and the note "The app was closed while recording. Save what was captured or discard it."

  • Tap Save track to keep what was recorded, as a normal Path / Track line.
  • Tap Discard to delete the draft.

A draft with fewer than two vertices is deleted without asking, since it can't make a line.

What the app records

The saved track is an ordinary line asset of type Path / Track (code PT, layer V-PATH). Each vertex keeps its own position, height, accuracy and time, like any other collected vertex. From the asset's details you can see its length, open its elevation profile, edit a vertex or export it with the rest of the project.

A project's accuracy gate doesn't apply to recorded tracks. A walking line is made of moving fixes, and gating each one wouldn't make sense.