What Determines a Drive in MileIQ?
MileIQ uses a smart combination of technology to automatically detect and record your drives—without draining your phone’s battery.
Here’s how it works:
📍 How MileIQ Detects a Drive
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Start and End Points:
MileIQ considers the end of one trip as the starting point for the next. To detect a new drive, we look for a change in location of at least 0.5 miles (0.8 km). -
Data Sources:
Location data can come from sources like cell towers or Wi-Fi hotspots. Depending on the source, MileIQ may need up to 1 mile (1.6 km) of movement to confidently detect a new drive. -
Short Drives:
Drives under 1 mile (1.6 km) may occasionally be missed due to natural variation in location reporting. -
Speed Detection:
Our algorithms also consider your speed—filtering out slow movements like walking and ignoring unusually fast ones, like airplane travel.
🕒 When Your Drive is Logged
After you stop moving, MileIQ waits about 15 minutes to confirm you’ve reached a rest point before logging the drive and displaying it as a Drive Card in your app.
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On iOS, this process can be faster if you start walking after your trip ends.
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If you make a brief stop, MileIQ may group that into the same drive.
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If you're stopped for 15 minutes or more, the next movement is likely to be logged as a new, separate drive.
📶 Why Wi-Fi Matters
Turning on Wi-Fi (even if you're not connected to a network) helps MileIQ access nearby hotspots, improving drive detection—especially for:
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Short trips
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Stop-and-go traffic
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Urban driving
Wi-Fi is also more battery-efficient than GPS.
Tip: Keeping Wi-Fi enabled helps ensure drives aren't missed or unintentionally split. Just make sure your phone can detect available networks—it doesn’t need to be connected.
❗ Missed a Drive?
No worries! You can manually add drives from the MileIQ web dashboard:
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Log in with the same email as your app account
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Click "Add+" in the bottom menu
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Enter your start and end points, date, and time
✅ Get the Best Results
To ensure MileIQ works seamlessly, check out our Drive Detection Best Practices guide and make sure your device settings are fully optimized.
We’re always improving our algorithms to deliver even more accurate results—thanks for riding along with us!