A walk didn’t record
Open Settings › Recording first (or tap the pill at the top of the Map). If iOS is holding Waymark back, a card there says what and how to fix it: Location Services, Location access, Always, Precise Location, Low Power Mode, Background App Refresh, then Motion & Fitness.
If it looks fine:
- Was Waymark swiped away in the app switcher? That can stop recording until you next open it. Leave it in the switcher.
- Did your iPhone restart? Nothing runs until the first unlock after a restart.
- Did the walk start or end at home? Nothing is recorded inside a hidden place, on purpose.
- Was it a Places only day? That quality notes countries, regions and cities, and never draws routes.
- Did you hide it? A hidden journey is off the map and out of your numbers. Settings › Hidden journeys lists them, each with Show again.
When Waymark knows it wasn’t running, it says so once, the next time you open it, with the times it missed.
The start of a walk is missing
Where you’ve already explored, Waymark sleeps between outings and iOS wakes it a few hundred meters after you leave, so the first stretch isn’t recorded. It’s usually ground you already have. Allowing Motion & Fitness helps most where you haven’t been yet: there, the first step brings GPS back within seconds.
A journey has a spike or a stray strip of cleared fog
Positions less accurate than 50 m never draw a route, and obvious GPS spikes are dropped, but tall buildings and tunnels can still fool GPS. Open the journey and use Erase glitches or Erase stretch on the part that’s wrong. For narrow streets, try Precise in Recording quality.
There’s a blue pill in the status bar
That’s Waymark resting somewhere new, on cell-tower location instead of GPS, so it can pick up the next walk from the first step. By our estimate it costs a fraction of a percent of battery an hour. Where you’ve been before, it sleeps instead and the pill goes away, and anywhere else it sleeps after 15 minutes in one spot.
The battery went down faster than I expected
Check the Settings app › Battery on your iPhone. The % next to each app is its share of what the iPhone used in that period, not of a full charge. The screen usually costs far more than recording: keeping the Map open uses about 10–20 % an hour (an estimate). If recording itself is the cost, choose Battery saver, or Places only for trips where routes don’t matter. Recording without pressing record has the estimates for each.
“Updating your atlas” after an update
The first time you open Waymark after some updates, it rebuilds your atlas once. The launch screen says Updating your atlas, then a small pill on the Map says so until it’s saved, and edits wait for it. Keep Waymark open: your journeys and numbers don’t change.
The map is blank somewhere new
The base map needs a connection the first time you look at a new place. Your routes are recorded either way. Terrain is kept on your iPhone once it has been downloaded.
An import brought in nothing
- Photos: only photos with a location count. Waymark says how many it checked and how many had one. If you gave it access to selected photos only, change that in the Settings app › Waymark › Photos.
- Google Maps Timeline: Records.json from Takeout is usually over the 50 MB limit. Use the export from your phone, or the Semantic Location History folders instead.
- FootPrint (一生足迹): Waymark reads its GPX export, not its CSV. GPX export needs FootPrint 2.0 or later.
- Everything was already there: Waymark doesn’t add a place or a journey twice, and says so.
A day didn’t count toward my streak
The streak counts days when a journey uncovered new ground: a bit of street or path you’d never covered. A day spent on familiar streets, or a day with only photos, doesn’t add to it.
Fog of World paths have no dates
Fog of World doesn’t keep times, so its paths arrive as one map in your journal and stay out of streaks and charts. That’s expected.
Plus disappeared after a new phone or a reinstall
Open Settings › About and choose Restore purchase, signed in with the Apple Account you bought it with. Waymark Plus has more.
A friend can’t join from a link
A new group can be joined by anyone with its link. A group started with an earlier version of Waymark, or one you limited, lets in only the people you invited: in the invite sheet, tap the line under the group’s name (“Only participants can make changes”) and choose Anyone with the link, then copy the link again. Your friend needs Waymark and iCloud on their iPhone; the link opens Waymark on the City tab with the group.
The card says “Town of …” near a city
In New York and some other states, a town is its own place around a city or village of the same name: the Town of Ithaca surrounds the city of Ithaca. With the middle of the map inside the city limits, the card names the city; just outside them, the town. Zooming out goes from the city to its county.
Waymark said “Something went wrong”
Waymark kept going, and noted what happened in a short log on your iPhone. If you’d like us to look, tap Share details on the message or share it from Settings › About › Diagnostics: it has the app version and the error, never your locations or places. If a screen says “This screen hit a snag”, Try Again opens it afresh; the rest of the app keeps working.
Still stuck
Write to the address below with your iPhone model, iOS version and what you expected to happen, and, if you can, the log from Settings › About › Diagnostics. Please don’t attach a backup file: it holds your routes.