Travel Diary is your personal travel companion — an Android app that helps you record, organise and relive every journey, whether it happened yesterday, years ago, or is still being planned.
Adding locations
Travel Diary gives you three ways to add a location. First, tap the + button to instantly save your current GPS position. Second, long-press any spot on the map to place a location there. Third, add one manually via the list screen. For each location you can record a name, address, city, country, notes, date of visit, a star rating (1–5) and one or more categories. Everything except the name is optional and can be edited later. Coordinates and address data fill in automatically based on your GPS position or the spot you tapped.
Notes and speech to text
Every location has a notes field where you can write observations, descriptions or anything you want to remember. In edit mode, a microphone button appears next to the notes field. Tap it to start speaking — your words convert automatically to text. Tap stop when you are done. The spoken audio is not saved. Both Dutch and English are recognised automatically.
Voice-first operation
Travel Diary supports hands-free use via two voice features. On the map, a microphone button appears next to the locate button. Speak the name of a location and the app saves it instantly at your current GPS position, fills in the address automatically via reverse geocoding, and confirms out loud. A second microphone in the search bar lets you speak your search query — results appear when you stop speaking. Both features recognise Dutch and English.
Photos, video and audio
Every location supports an unlimited number of photos, videos and audio recordings. You can take a new photo or video directly from within the app, pick existing files from your gallery, or record audio on the spot. Photos open full screen with pinch-to-zoom. In the collection gallery, all media can be browsed in one viewer — swipe left or right to navigate, swipe down to close. All media is stored permanently within the app. Optionally, photos and videos also save to a dedicated Travel Diary album in your Android gallery, which you control in Settings.
Weather
When you save a location, Travel Diary automatically records the weather at that moment. In the detail screen you always see the weather as it was when you saved the location. Additionally, a 16-day forecast appears so you know what to expect on an upcoming trip. For locations with a date beyond 16 days, the latest available forecast is shown instead.
Categories
Create your own categories — each with a custom icon and colour. Think of labels like Restaurant, Hotel, Nature, Camping or Museum. Assign one or more categories to a location to stay organised. Both the map and the list can be filtered by category, so finding the right location is always quick.
Map
The map shows all your manually added locations as coloured pins. GPS route points are hidden by default to keep the view clean, but you can show them via the filter panel. Several map tile layers are available: standard OpenStreetMap, satellite, topographic and more. The search bar uses autocomplete and recognises over 70 POI categories in Dutch and English. Results sort by distance to the current map centre. Nearby pins cluster automatically into a badge — zoom in to see individual pins. The current elevation appears in the bottom left corner.
List and timeline
The Locations tab shows all your saved locations in a list. Sort by date, name, rating or category, and filter by category or minimum rating. A timeline view groups locations by month and year. Each location in the list shows a badge with the number of collections it belongs to. Select multiple locations to bulk-export as PDF, add to a collection, assign a category, hide or delete them all at once. Locations with a future date appear with a light blue background, so planned visits are easy to distinguish from past ones.
Collections and groups
Collections let you group locations into trips or themes — for example a city trip, a holiday or a list of favourite restaurants. Collections are organised in groups such as Holidays, Day trips and Restaurants. Each collection shows statistics: number of locations, countries visited, total distance, travel time and media counts. You can add a cover photo and emoji to each collection.
Moreover, collections can be exported as a detailed PDF travel book or as a GPX file for use in navigation apps like Komoot or Google Earth. The PDF export is guided by a wizard: choose which locations to include, select photos per location, and toggle options like a table of contents, statistics page, chapter grouping by country and weather information.
GPS route recording
Start a GPS recording at the beginning of a trip. Travel Diary records your route using an Android Foreground Service, which means the recording continues reliably even when the screen is off or other apps are open. A permanent notification in the status bar confirms the recording is active. While recording, you can add locations along the way via the Map tab — these link automatically to the active collection.
When you stop, choose to save or discard the route. The saved route becomes a GPS collection with start and end pins, the full track, distance, duration and average speed. During a walk (average speed under 10 km/h), the app announces each completed kilometre out loud. Furthermore, if the app closes unexpectedly during a recording, a crash recovery prompt appears on the next launch so no data is lost.
Picture in picture
When a GPS recording is active and you switch to another app, Travel Diary automatically switches to Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode. A small floating window shows the current recording time, distance and speed in real time. As a result, you can monitor your trip without returning to the app. PiP activates automatically on Android 8 and higher.
GPX and KML import
Import an existing GPX file — for example a route from Komoot, Garmin or Google Earth. The track points are read, simplified, and saved as a GPS collection with start and end pins. You can give the collection a custom name, or the app uses the name from the GPX file.
Additionally, you can import saved places from Google Maps via a KML file. Export your saved places from Google Takeout, then import the file in the Record tab. All places import as individual locations with name and coordinates, ready to add to a collection.
Explore area and nearby services
Every saved location has an Explore area button that lets you discover what is around it, even if you are not physically there. Select the categories you are interested in — attractions, restaurants, nature, museums, cafes, shops and more — and choose a search radius. Tap Explore to fetch results from Geoapify. Each result shows its name, distance and city. Tap a result to show it on the app map, open it in Google Maps, or view it in Street View.
Similarly, the Nearby button on any location detail screen shows practical services within 1.5 km — restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, hotels, ATMs, toilets, pharmacies and more. In Settings you configure exactly which categories to show. Both features require a free Geoapify API key, which you add once in Settings.
Street View and route planning
Every location has a Street View button in the detail screen. Tap it to open Google Maps Street View at the exact coordinates — no API key required. In the Route screen, accessible from any collection, you can plan a driving route between the locations in that collection. The route calculates via OSRM and shows distance and estimated drive time. You can reorder stops, deselect stops, and open the route directly in Google Maps for turn-by-turn navigation.
Trip preparation
Travel Diary includes a trip preparation module for planning everything you need before departure. Open it via the Collections tab by tapping the Trip Prep button. Create a checklist per trip, give it a name and emoji, and set a departure date as the anchor for all your tasks. Optionally, link a checklist to a collection — a Prep button then appears directly in that collection’s detail screen.
Within each checklist, create your own categories with a custom emoji and name, tailored to the type of trip. Each task has a name, an optional note, a priority (low, normal or high), a category and a deadline. The status cycles from To do to In progress to Done with a single tap. Tasks sort automatically by priority and deadline. Set a reminder per task — choose how many days before the deadline the notification arrives, and at what time.
More features
Travel Diary also includes several additional tools. The Statistics screen gives a complete overview of your data: total locations, countries visited, photos, videos, rating distribution, top categories and a full timeline. Surveillance mode sends a push notification when your device has moved more than a set distance, even when the app is closed. The Quick Add shortcut lets you save a location in seconds directly from your home screen. Finally, the Backup and Restore feature exports all your data as a single ZIP file, which you can share via WhatsApp, email or save to Google Drive.