Automatic mileage tracking for iPhone
Your car’s trips,
logged by themselves.
Odie starts when you drive your car and only your car. Tap Work or Personal when it ends. At tax time, hand your accountant one PDF. Everything stays on your phone.
- No account
- No third-party trackers
- CRA and IRS rates built in
- English and French
How a trip starts
It listens for your car, not for movement.
Most trackers guess from speed and motion, which is why they log bus rides and split a drive every time you stop for coffee. Odie waits for your car’s own Bluetooth. No beacon to buy, no button to press.
Your car shows up
Odie recognises the hands-free Bluetooth name of your car, not just any motion.
Motion confirms it
The iPhone’s motion sensor confirms you are driving before recording starts.
The trip records itself
Distance and route are saved on the phone. When the car disappears, the trip ends.
One decision per trip
Work or Personal, from the lock screen.
When the trip ends, a notification asks which it was. Tap once and you are done. In the list, swipe right for Work and left for Personal.
After you have classified the same route twice, Odie suggests the answer. It never applies a suggestion by itself, so your log is always yours.
Or decide before you park: the Recording card on Home, the Live Activity and the “Recording trip” notification open the trip in progress, where you can mark it Work or Personal and add a receipt while you drive.
How suggestions work
Tax time
The report your accountant already expects.
A year PDF in the shape of a CRA logbook: summary, monthly totals, per-client totals, business expenses, the trip log and your opening and closing odometer readings. CSV for people who want to rework the numbers.
Rates
CRA tiers and IRS, built in
A dated rate table for 2024 to 2026, from canada.ca and irs.gov. The CRA’s two tiers (first 5,000 km, then the rest) are applied in date order across all your cars, with a switch for the territories, giving an employer allowance estimate. Switch to IRS for miles, override this year’s rate if your employer pays another, or set your own. The self-employed use the business-use method instead.
Current CRA ratesExpenses
Gas, charging, parking, tolls
Log a fill-up in litres or a charge in kWh, snap the receipt, and see cost per litre or per kWh over time. Self-employed? Odie can apply your business-use share to the total.
Expenses and business useOdometer
Know what share you logged
Enter a reading now and then. Odie compares the odometer to the kilometres it recorded and tells you what percentage of your driving is in the log.
Why the CRA wants odometer readingsPrivacy
No account. No trackers. Nothing to leak.
- No sign-up. Open the app, pick your car, drive.
- No third-party code. Odie is built with Apple’s frameworks only. No analytics, no ads, no crash reporters from anyone else.
- No servers of ours. The app has no network code of its own. Sync, if you leave it on, goes through your private iCloud database.
- Your data, your files. Export everything as CSV or a JSON backup whenever you like.
From the app’s privacy manifest
NSPrivacyTracking false
NSPrivacyTrackingDomains [ ]
NSPrivacyCollectedDataTypes [ ]The file Apple requires every app to ship. Odie’s declares no tracking and no collected data. Yours to inspect in the app bundle.
Why Odie exists
I wanted a logbook that did not need me.
I drive to client sites around Montréal, and for years my mileage log was a notes file I filled in from memory at the end of the month. My accountant was polite about it. The CRA would not have been.
The apps I tried wanted an account, a subscription and permission to track me all the time, and they still logged the metro and split a drive every time I stopped for gas. I did not want a dashboard. I wanted the trip to be there when I got out of the car, a way to say Work or Personal with one tap, and a PDF in March.
So Odie watches for my car’s Bluetooth, records the trip on the phone, and asks one question when it ends. It has no server because it does not need one. It is in English and French because Québec is home.
If that is the logbook you wanted too, I hope you will try it.
Taylor Brown
Montréal
Calm by design
Built to be forgotten until it matters.
One question
Work or Personal. That is the whole interaction for most trips.
Reminders you choose
Ten kinds, all optional: a nudge for undecided trips, a weekly summary, a monthly odometer check-in.
A widget and a Live Activity
This month’s kilometres on the home screen, and the running trip in the Dynamic Island. Tap it to open the trip in progress.
No streaks, no badges
It is a logbook. It does not need you to come back every day.
Canada first
Made for CRA logbooks, in both languages.
Kilometres by default, the CRA’s two-tier allowance, and a report in the shape the CRA describes. The whole app is in French, including the report. Revenu Québec’s registre des déplacements rules are covered on the Canada page.
Questions people ask
Does Odie need an account?
No. There is nothing to sign up for. Your trips live on your iPhone, and if you leave iCloud sync on they are also copied to your own private iCloud database, which we cannot read.
How does it know I am in my car and not on the bus?
Odie watches for the hands-free Bluetooth name of the car you picked during setup. When that car shows up and the motion sensor agrees you are driving, a trip starts. Buses, bikes and a friend’s car do not match, so they do not start a trip.
If your car does not pair over Bluetooth, there is a motion-only mode. It asks you to confirm each trip, because motion alone cannot tell your car from a taxi.
What does the accountant get?
A year PDF with a summary, a monthly table, a per-client table, business expenses, the business trip log and the opening and closing odometer readings. The same data exports as CSV for Excel or Numbers.
Does it drain the battery?
Odie wakes on significant location changes and only turns on GPS while your car is connected and you are moving. Settings shows how many minutes of GPS it used and an estimate of the cost, so you can check instead of taking our word for it.
What about Android?
Odie is iPhone only (iOS 17 and later). There is no Android or web version planned right now.
Is it free?
Pricing is not announced yet. Whatever it ends up being, it will be stated on this site before the app is available, with no surprises in the app.
Your next work trip can log itself.
Odie is in the final stretch before launch. Leave your email on the support page and you will hear when it ships, nothing else.