- Each phone on a trip records its own trail of location points.
- Your distance is added up from the points your phone recorded, not from anyone else's.
- The GPS score compares stored readings with their phone-reported uncertainty; it does not prove a measured position error.
When trip tracking has accepted readings, each phone records its own trail of location points. Different phones can record at different times and have different gaps. A participant distance and a whole-journey distance can also cover different time windows. Check which person, period, and distance field a summary describes before comparing totals.
Where this summary is available, the percentage counts locally stored location readings whose phone-reported horizontal uncertainty is 50 meters or less, about 165 feet, divided by the stored readings available to that summary, and rounds down to a whole percent. An 80 percent score means 4 in 5 of those stored readings met the threshold. It does not mean 80 percent of the route was independently verified, or that every reading was within 50 meters of the true position. Fields and behavior vary by release and trip type.
Not by itself. The score describes reported uncertainty for the stored readings. It is not a measurement against the true route. A high percentage does not prove a correct route or exact distance, and a low percentage does not by itself establish how far a distance total is wrong.
The displayed percentage is a data-quality indicator. Its display calculation does not adjust your distance or itself establish reward eligibility. Rewards depend on an active program and its verification rules; location quality, missing evidence, and other checks may still affect whether an action qualifies.
In the inspected trip-reporting path, the trip total uses one participant's trail: the host's when available, otherwise the longest recorded participant trail. It is never everyone's trails added together. Individual details use your own attributable uploaded trail when available; older records without an uploader can fall back to the trip total. Different joining times and missing readings can therefore produce different numbers.
A missing percentage can mean the summary has no local readings available to score. Missing data is not a measured zero and is not evidence of perfect accuracy. Availability also depends on the release and summary type.
Buildings, tunnels, covered locations, device placement, and limited location information can affect a phone's estimate. Permissions, background limits, battery state, pauses, and app or device state can also affect which readings are recorded. Location permission does not guarantee a complete trail.
The app can queue accepted location readings and attempt to upload them when a connection returns. That does not guarantee every mile was recorded or that all pending readings reach the server when a trip ends. Recording and recovery depend on permissions, device and app state, storage, connectivity, and server acceptance.
Review the app's location permissions if you choose to record a trip, keep the phone where it can receive a useful location signal, and let the trip finish in the app. Background access may help supported tracking flows, but the permission choice does not guarantee complete recording or upload. Contact support if the recorded trip still looks wrong.
Still looks wrong?
Send us the date and time of the trip and we will take a look.
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