JourneyDeck v2

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  JourneyDeck app icon — original 1024 × 1024 artwork.

Inspiration

Some drives stay with you: a weekend detour, a familiar road, or the song that brings an entire afternoon back. Photos capture the stops, but the route and soundtrack often disappear. JourneyDeck brings those pieces together in a private driving journal that helps you remember the life happening between destinations.

What it does

JourneyDeck turns a drive into a personal record of where you went, when you traveled, and what you heard along the way.

• Record the journey: manually start, pause, resume, and finish a drive, with background GPS capture that continues when the phone is locked.
• Keep the soundtrack: connect optional Apple Music listening history to an active journey, or recognize an individual song with ShazamKit.
• Build your memories: revisit mapped journeys, add personal context, and organize meaningful trips into Memories and Collections.
• Discover your patterns: explore distance, time, favorite places, recurring routes, and deeper Atlas insights.
• Keep control of your archive: journeys save locally, recording works offline, and optional private iCloud sync provides continuity across devices. Share cards protect saved sensitive locations.

The free experience includes manual recording and access to the latest 45 days. An optional membership unlocks Atlas and complete history. An expired membership does not delete the journeys stored on the device.

What's new in v2

The current V2 preview adds a warm ivory light theme alongside the cinematic dark theme, native iOS tabs and detail navigation, native editing sheets and menus, and card-to-detail zoom transitions. An iPad-specific Home dashboard gives maps, memories, and statistics room to breathe on a larger screen.

These improvements build on the existing recording, soundtrack, archive, and Atlas foundation. V2 is currently in preview; broader real-device acceptance and the remaining roadmap are still in progress.

How we built it

The mobile app uses React Native, Expo, and TypeScript, with Swift native modules for Apple platform capabilities. SQLite keeps the journey archive on the device, and CloudKit supports optional private iCloud sync. MapLibre renders interactive route maps, while Apple location and mapping services support recording and place context. Apple Music and ShazamKit connect sound to the journey.

Expo Router provides native tabs and stacks while a shared app shell maintains a single recorder and preserves screen state. The current membership implementation uses StoreKit 2 verified transactions. RevenueCat integration remains a requirement to complete for this Shipaton entry.

Development combines automated checks with physical iPhone and iPad testing. V2 previews use their own app identity, local archive, iCloud container, and update channel so experiments stay isolated from the existing release candidate.

Challenges we ran into

A finished drive must stay finished. Mobile apps can lose network access, move into the background, or close during enrichment. Recording and completion therefore persist locally, with retryable follow-up work that cannot reopen or lose a completed journey.

Native polish must preserve state. Replacing custom navigation with native tabs, sheets, and gestures required keeping the recorder alive, retaining scroll and filter choices, and returning users to the same journey or memory.

Privacy has to shape the architecture. A driving journal contains sensitive places and routines. Local storage, optional private sync, and location masking in share cards are core product decisions.

Tablet layouts need device testing. iPad sidebar safe areas, portrait tab labels, and window resizing exposed issues that automated component checks alone could not settle.

Accomplishments we're proud of

JourneyDeck connects routes, music, and personal memories in one coherent experience. The current V2 preview brings that experience into native navigation and two carefully developed visual themes while preserving the local-first recording foundation. The dedicated iPad Home extends the design to a larger canvas, and preview isolation lets the app evolve without disturbing the existing release candidate.

What we learned

A personal journal earns trust through dependable saves and clear data ownership. Background recovery and offline behavior deserve as much care as the screen a user sees. Native navigation improves the feel of the app, but physical-device feedback remains essential for gestures, spacing, and adaptive layouts. Clear separation between working features and future plans makes each release easier to test and explain.

What's next for JourneyDeck v2

Finish real-device acceptance across iPhone and iPad, complete the RevenueCat integration required for Shipaton, and prepare the store release and demonstration materials. The V2 roadmap also includes richer place enrichment, optional Tessie vehicle intelligence, dependable automatic recording, broader soundtrack support subject to provider permission, and revocable interactive journey sharing. These are planned features, not claims about the current public app.

Built With

• cloudkit
• expo.io
• maplibre
• react-native
• sqlite
• storekit
• swift
• typescript