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A sign marks one fixed point, which may not be where you are. Barometric altitude also drifts with weather until GPS re-anchors it, and cabin pressure changes from closed windows or the HVAC cause brief transients that Low Pass filters out. Tens of feet is normal.

Low Pass reads the barometer first. Without one (every iPhone since the 6 has it), or when its reading isn't trustworthy, it falls back to GPS altitude and labels it degraded.

Low Pass reads your phone's motion activity, which iOS reports as walking, cycling or in a vehicle, along with your speed, to label how you are moving. On foot the cockpit puts altitude and climb first and hides the speed tape. A flight is recognized from sustained speed and altitude, never while CarPlay is connected. In an airliner, GPS altitude is the main reading and the barometer's cabin altitude appears beside it, labelled CABIN. This is only a label for the instruments: it uses no Apple Health data, records no workouts, and Low Pass is not a navigation or flight-safety instrument. The motion data stays on your phone.

Nothing is climbing or descending, so it shows a neutral state.

Yes. Larger windows show an expanded cockpit with a compass rose, altitude history, terrain detail and trip totals; narrow windows use the compact layout. Readings depend on your iPad’s sensors and location support.

Wi-Fi-only iPads have no GPS, so ground speed, speed limits, grade and terrain ahead aren’t shown; altitude, climb rate and the compass still work from the iPad’s own sensors and Wi-Fi location. Joining your iPhone’s Personal Hotspot can help the iPad find its position.

It is set up through your paired iPhone. The Watch app reads altitude, speed and heading from the Watch’s own sensors. Start Live Instruments on the Watch to keep readings going beyond the app. Complications mark saved readings that are no longer current; watchOS controls refresh timing. The Watch doesn’t record trips.

The Elevation here card can be suggested in the Smart Stack near a pass or outdoor place. It uses saved Watch readings, marks an old elevation with LAST and a time, and gives the nearest named pass as a straight-line distance. watchOS decides when to suggest and refresh it. The separate mirrored iPhone Live Activity still gives basic altitude and trend in the Smart Stack.

Altitude, speed, heading and trip recording work without signal. Game Center, iCloud sync, place-name lookups and region-pack downloads need a connection. Retry Game Center sharing with Update shared progress when you’re back online. Sending a journey as a link needs a connection; without one, Low Pass sends a file instead.

1. Open Low Pass on your iPhone and start Live Instruments. Trip recording is not required.
2. Connect to CarPlay as usual.
3. Switch your car's display to the Dashboard view, not the full-screen app grid.
4. If the tile still doesn't appear, open iOS Settings and confirm Live Activities are enabled for Low Pass.

A connected iPhone. It shows your instruments, available terrain detail, trip controls and nearby passes; select a pass to open directions in Apple Maps. The Dashboard tile works in any CarPlay car.

Ask “What’s my altitude in Low Pass?” for altitude and accuracy. Start, resume or stop a journey (stopping saves it) with Siri or Shortcuts. Siri can also “Find my journeys” and answer “Ask Low Pass about my Passport”. Low Pass may ask you to open the app for permissions or a current reading.

Offline downloads that power terrain ahead: next named pass, grade ahead and climb to the crest. Published regions are Colorado Rockies, Sierra Nevada, Cascades and Northern Rockies. Settings shows the coverage available to download. Packs download over Wi-Fi by default; allow cellular in Settings. Once installed, lookups happen on your device, offline too. Road data is from OpenStreetMap (ODbL), elevation from USGS 3DEP.

A base road pack holds one state’s major roads, from motorways to secondary roads, with their speed limits and road names where OpenStreetMap has them. It can also supply terrain where its roads carry elevation. Coarse or missing elevation limits the readings; regional packs add finer mountain detail.

Base road packs are available for 49 states plus the District of Columbia, including Hawaii; Alaska is not covered. Hawaii’s base road pack is available; a separate Hawaii mountain-region pack is not.

Settings > Region packs lists the current downloads. Download all of the US downloads the available US packs over Wi-Fi, and Remove deletes an installed pack.

When a published pack is available for your state, the first good location fix can download it automatically if it is under 25 MB, over cellular if needed, unless Low Data Mode is on. Larger ones ask first and use Wi-Fi.

The server sees your IP address and the state you asked for, never a coordinate.

Basic altitude, ascent rate, grade, speed and heading work without a pack, as do recording and the supported Live Activity and Watch readings. Terrain ahead, mapped speed limits and road names need installed road-pack coverage. Regional packs add finer mountain detail; missing or unmapped values stay unavailable. Nearby named passes come from the bundled pass index, and Passport crossings need a recorded journey. Available regions are offered in Settings.

Download the available road packs before your drive. Announcements need a confident match to the road you’re on, so Low Pass can stop predicting at an ambiguous fork or where terrain data is thin. It follows the road ahead, not another app’s route.

When a named pass is ahead, the cockpit shows four readings:

• TO SUMMIT is the pass's road elevation minus your altitude: how much higher you still have to go.
• UPHILL is the total climbing left to the summit. It appears only when dips along the way make it more than TO SUMMIT by more than about 50 ft.
• SUMMIT, in magenta, is the target: the pass's elevation.
• BEYOND is the steepest grade on the far side. It turns amber at 8 % and red at 12 %, each with its own shape. It reads --- until the road past the top is on the map.

Descending is shown in green, and the arrow shows direction. --- means no data. Low Pass never guesses.

Before a crest (a high point that isn't a named pass) it shows TO CREST, CREST and BEYOND, which work like the summit readings. With no crest in view it shows GRADE AHEAD (average grade over the next 0.6 mi) and STEEPEST (the steepest 200 m stretch within 1.9 mi (3 km), and how far ahead it starts). A NEXT PASS line appears under the card when a crest sits in front of a farther named pass.

Settings > Reading the instruments explains every reading in plain language. When you're stopped, you can also tap the terrain card.

Open Settings → Spoken briefings and choose Enable Mountain tour, or enable categories one by one: passes ahead and reached, crests, long climbs and descents, sustained grades, altitude and climbing milestones. Lead distances, thresholds, reminders, voice and number style are adjustable there. Terrain, altitude and weather announcements need an active recording, movement and fresh readings; turning them on does not start a recording. Stamps and badges is a separate switch: a short award announcement can also play at a standstill or while the current journey is paused, until that journey ends. Award lines wait behind other announcements and may be skipped; a new pass stamp can share its pass-arrival announcement.

Low Pass shows official National Weather Service warnings anywhere in the United States. These kinds are covered:

• Tornado
• Severe thunderstorm
• Flood and flash flood
• Snow squall
• Dust storm
• Extreme heat
• Blizzard
• Ice storm
• Winter storm

A warning appears as a red WARNING or amber CAUTION light at the top of the cockpit; tap to acknowledge. Warning and caution speech plays when enabled. To hear an alert once per drive, turn on Speak alerts in Settings → Road and weather alerts. Alerts refresh every few minutes, and the cockpit shows data age when it falls behind.

Where no alert source covers you, such as outside the United States, the cockpit says "No alert source here" instead of staying quiet, and Settings shows what Low Pass can see where you are right now. It does not yet show road closures or chain and traction law. No forecasts, radar or watches. Check your state's official road conditions before you drive.

Open a completed journey you recorded, then More → Journey type. Choose Drive, Walk, Ride or Flight; Automatic clears your correction and returns to the recorded type, or the fallback for an older journey. It changes the label, icon and automatic title without changing its route or readings. Your correction syncs with the journey when iCloud sync is on. A journey sent by someone else keeps their type. Older journeys are no longer labeled flights from distance divided by moving time alone, since pauses and combined parts can make that estimate misleading.

After your first completed trip, Low Pass offers “Detect drives automatically”. The switch is called Automatic recording, under Settings > Recording and storage, and it appears only after that first trip. It lets Low Pass use your location in the background so a trip can start without a tap. Turn it off there, or revoke location in iOS Settings.

Continue journeys can also start a recording for up to 30 minutes after you stop; see the Continue journeys question below.

A recording you started yourself pauses after 5 minutes parked, so a fuel or photo stop stays one journey. The parked time is not counted in your time or distance. It resumes by itself when you drive again (a few seconds at driving speed, or when CarPlay connects). The cockpit says "Paused while parked" until it does. If you do not drive for 90 minutes it ends, with the end time set to when you parked, and you can tap Stop at any time. A recording you paused with the Pause button waits for you to tap Resume. A recording Low Pass started on its own for a detected drive still ends after 5 minutes parked. On a hike or bike ride, tap Resume yourself: automatic resume is tuned for driving.

When a drive starts near where your last journey ended on the same day, Low Pass offers to continue it, and, when Low Pass started the recording itself (a detected drive, CarPlay or the watch), joins the two when the drive ends if you don't choose and your last journey ended within 90 minutes. A recording you started by hand stays separate unless you tap Continue. After you tap Stop, Low Pass can also keep watching for up to 30 minutes and, if you drive off from where you stopped, start recording on its own and tell you with a notification titled "Continue your journey?" Choose Keep separate to keep two journeys. While it is watching, the location arrow stays in the status bar and uses some battery; the cockpit has a Stop watching button. Turn it all off with Continue journeys in Settings > Recording and storage. With Continue journeys and Automatic recording both off, Low Pass uses location only while the app is open, Live Instruments is on, CarPlay is connected, you ask for it through Siri or Shortcuts, or a recording is running or paused. Low Pass does not show the offer or the notification on CarPlay.

In Journeys, swipe a journey or press and hold it and choose Combine with previous journey, or open a journey, tap More and choose Combine with. The confirmation shows the result and the gap between them, and you can undo for a minute. Your Passport counts it as one journey and every badge you already earned stays. Open a combined journey to see its Parts and tap Split to separate them again. A journey someone sent you can't be combined or split, and a journey can have up to 12 parts.

Open a journey you recorded and tap Send to a passenger. Edit the title, which starts as your journey's name and can include your start and end towns. Add the name you want shown, then choose where to send it.

With a connection, Low Pass uploads the journey to lowpass.fyi, draws a preview picture on your phone and gives you a link. Messages shows the preview, and the other person taps the link to see the journey and add it to Low Pass. Without a connection, or if the upload can't happen, Low Pass sends the journey as a file instead, and the sheet says why.

You can also choose Send as a file yourself and use AirDrop, Messages or Files. The file itself never touches our service. Opening the send sheet with a signal does register a random key with the service first (see the Privacy Policy).

You can add a note, up to 280 characters. It goes in your own message beside the link or file, never in the journey and never to Low Pass. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence the sheet can draft one for you to edit; Draft again never replaces a note you changed unless you tap it.

The upload and the file hold the title and name you chose, the route, the passes crossed and summary readings. They never contain raw samples or your Passport.

The preview picture shows the route, the title and three readings. It has no Passport details, badges or records, and no place names beyond any in the title.

By default the whole route is included, so your exact start and end, which may be your home, are in it.

A journey you have already sent can't be changed. If you send a new version, the other person's phone keeps the first one.

Yes. Turn on Trim the start and end to leave out up to 500 meters at each end of every part, so your start and end addresses are usually not included.

On a part shorter than 2.5 kilometers the cut is a fifth of its length at each end, and a part under 200 meters sends no route.

Tap the link in Messages. If Low Pass is installed on your iPhone or iPad (iOS 26 or later), it opens, checks the journey and shows what it holds. Nothing is added until you tap Add to my Journeys.

If Low Pass isn't installed, the link opens a page on lowpass.fyi that shows the title, readings and route, and says Low Pass is coming soon to the App Store.

A file works too: open it from AirDrop, Messages or Files, or use Open a journey file in the Journeys menu.

A journey appears in Journeys as “Recorded by” the sender's name, which Low Pass can't verify. It counts fully in your Explorer Passport like a journey you recorded, so your lifetime totals can include journeys other people recorded.

If you recorded the same drive yourself, Low Pass lists both, says “You also recorded this” and counts only your own. A passenger who recorded only part of the drive, or someone in another car, gets both counted.

A journey you already have, or one you deleted, isn't added again, so a re-sent or updated journey is not taken.

A received journey can be renamed and deleted. It can't be sent on, combined or split, and it has no GPX.

Anyone who has the link. It holds a long random number, so it can't be guessed or listed, and the page asks search engines not to index it. But anyone you send it to can forward it, and a messaging service may open it to make a preview. Don't send a journey you wouldn't hand to a stranger.

A link works for 30 days from upload, then stops. See the Privacy Policy for what the service holds.

Open the journey in Low Pass and tap Stop sharing. Deleting a recording stops its links too. Both take the copy down when your phone has a signal; with none, Low Pass keeps trying each time you open it.

If you delete the app first, a copy already stored stays up until it expires, so use Stop sharing first or email us. You can also email support@lowpass.fyi with the link and we will delete it. Deleting can't recall a preview that Messages already saved.

Low Pass sends the journey as a file instead of a link, and the sheet says it couldn't reach Low Pass. Messages keeps the file and delivers it when your phone has signal. A phone that can't verify itself to the service, such as the Simulator or unsupported hardware, sends a file too, as does a journey too long to upload. To open a link someone sent you, you need a connection to load the journey.

When someone taps a Low Pass journey link and doesn't have the app, iOS can show an App Clip, a small preview of Low Pass that opens without installing the app, so they can see the journey right away. It reads the journey from lowpass.fyi by its link, shows the title, route and readings, and offers Get Low Pass. It sends no analytics and adds nothing to your Journeys. It keeps only the link. After you install Low Pass, the app offers the journey when you open it, and nothing is added until you tap Add to my Journeys. If you had no signal when Low Pass first opened, tap the link again when you do.

Open the journey, tap More, then Export route (GPX). The original route samples must be on the device that recorded the trip. A combined journey exports one track segment per part, and a part recorded on another device is left out, with a note. A journey someone sent you has no GPX, because the sender's raw samples never travel with it. For a portrait image of the profile and Passport highlights, choose Share journey.

Trip summaries and a simplified track sync through your own iCloud account. Check that iCloud is signed in on both devices and sync hasn't failed in Low Pass Settings. Without iCloud, trips stay on the recording device.

Open the Journeys tab (or the cockpit's book button) and choose Passport. Completed recorded trips, including saved recordings already on your device, add named-pass stamps, climate discoveries, four personal records (highest altitude, longest journey, biggest climb, steepest sustained grade) and 64 badges. Revisiting a pass adds a visit to its stamp. During a recording, newly earned stamps, eligible badges and records can appear briefly in the cockpit, Hazards and other screens can defer or skip that celebration; the completed journey still adds its discoveries to Passport. Optional award speech needs the Stamps and badges switch in Spoken briefings.

It describes typical climate, not today’s weather. Low Pass matches your location on-device to a Köppen–Geiger map (the standard climate classification) of 1991–2020 patterns at roughly 1 km, which works offline. Passport climate discoveries need a sustained stretch of your recorded route. Data: Beck et al. (2023), CC BY 4.0.

Saved Passport entries stay after you delete the source recording. Low Pass adds the journey to Passport first, and asks you to retry if it can't. The journey moves out of your main list to Deleted recordings, a row at the bottom of Journeys that appears only when you have one. There you can still read its summary: date, distance, climbing, the name you gave it and the highest pass it crossed. The route, samples and place names are gone from this phone and your iCloud, and there is no restore. The summary stays in your iCloud. Passport doesn't sync through iCloud on its own: another device rebuilds the summary of a deleted journey but not its stamps or climate zones, and a trip deleted before that device imports it can't be rebuilt from Game Center scores. Pull to refresh Passport after synced trips arrive.

Game Center is optional; local Passport works without it. To share, go to Journeys → Passport → Game Center and choose Connect Game Center. Connecting alone publishes nothing.

Share and enable updates sends achievement progress to Apple, along with lifetime totals for unique passes, climate types and recorded distance. It also sends the biggest climb, highest altitude and steepest sustained grade of each of your own, uncombined journeys finished in the last 72 hours. Scores may appear in global rankings and among friends. Those per-journey scores are what Game Center challenges with friends compare; nothing ranks speed. Routes, coordinates and trip names are never submitted.

After the first successful share, later progress updates automatically for the same authenticated player while Low Pass is running. Turn Automatic progress updates off in that screen to stop future automatic submissions.

Update shared progress remains a manual retry and does not re-enable the switch. Existing manual sharing stays manual until you choose Share and enable updates.

Finish your trip and disconnect CarPlay before using these controls. Sharing waits until CarPlay is disconnected, so it never happens while you drive, and automatic updates show no driving prompt.

Your Passport stays on this device. Automatic updates retry on later app, sign-in or Passport changes, with failed unchanged progress attempted at most once per five minutes. You can also reconnect and choose Update shared progress to retry; some scores may already have reached Apple. The first share links this device’s Passport to that Game Center player, so publishing under another player is blocked; return to the original account. Deleting a recording or the app doesn’t withdraw progress already sent.

Every journey has a story built from the trip's own readings: distance, climbing, passes and places. It sits under the title on the Journey screen and on the 9:16 share card. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, Retell can write it as Captain's log, Trail journal, Postcard or Radio call, and Original brings the first version back. It never adds a number or place, and if anything doesn't match, Low Pass keeps the original. On iOS 27, retelling can use Private Cloud Compute (Apple’s private cloud service); see “What goes to Apple on iOS 27?” below. It is never offered while CarPlay is connected.

On an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, Low Pass uses it to retell stories, suggest titles, answer typed questions in journey search, write season recaps, draft a send note and caption photos you add. On iOS 26 it runs on your device. Nothing runs while CarPlay is connected.

Your saved journeys and passes can also be found in Spotlight and through Siri, using only titles, dates, place and pass names and summary readings, never a route.

Photos you add stay on your phone, saved without their location. A photo you choose can appear on the share card image you make yourself, and is never in a journey file or hosted link.

Turn it all off under Settings > Apple Intelligence. See the privacy policy for the details.

On iOS 27, Private Cloud Compute (Apple’s private cloud service) starts on. It handles story retelling, titles, season recaps and send notes first, and a photo caption or search only when the on-device model cannot. These requests go to Apple, never to Low Pass.

Apple says: “Private Cloud Compute is designed with end-to-end privacy in mind, ensuring that user data is never stored. The data is only used for requests. And all of this has been independently verified by researchers.”

Each person has a daily limit tied to their iCloud account (iCloud+ raises it); after that Low Pass uses the on-device model. Turn off Private Cloud Compute under Settings > Apple Intelligence to keep everything on your device.

No. iCloud (trip sync through your own private database) and Game Center are optional and use your Apple account. Sending a journey as a link needs no account or sign-in either. Product analytics are on by default; turn them off with Share usage analytics in Settings. They never include your location, routes or trip names.