Help center · Breadcrumb · Last updated: September 19, 2026
Welcome to the Breadcrumb support center. Here you'll find how-to guides, frequently asked questions, and a direct way to reach the team.
Email: [email protected]
We reply within 48 business hours, Monday through Friday (Mexico City time).
iOS asks twice: first for permission while you are using the App, then to upgrade to Always. Say yes to both. Always is what lets Breadcrumb keep recording when your phone is locked and in your pocket — which is where a phone lives while you walk. Set to "While Using", iOS suspends the App the moment the screen goes off and your trail simply stops there.
With Precise Location off, iOS hands the App an approximate area instead of a point — useful for a weather app, useless for finding a path back through trees. Check it in Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Breadcrumb, where Precise Location must be switched on.
You do not need to keep the App on screen or the phone unlocked. That is the whole point of the "Always" permission.
Hold the phone reasonably flat and stay walking for a moment if the arrow seems unsure: the compass needs a second or two to settle, and direction is easiest to confirm while you are moving.
The four types were chosen so a marker can be dropped with one tap, with gloves on and no typing. The type alone is a valid marker.
Trails are kept until you delete them yourself. Nothing expires and nothing is cleaned up automatically.
Deleting a trail permanently removes it along with all of its crumbs and markers. This cannot be undone.
Breadcrumb cannot record or retrace a trail without Location. To check or fix it:
Motion access is what lets the App keep estimating your trail when the GPS signal is blocked. To restore it:
Without it the App still records from GPS alone — it simply cannot bridge the stretches where the sky is blocked.
Breadcrumb is available in English, Español, and Português (Brasil). Change it from the App's settings. The change applies immediately and persists across sessions.
Yes — that is exactly what it is for. GPS is not the internet. The satellites broadcast and your phone only listens, so a position fix needs no cell coverage, no Wi-Fi, and no data plan. Breadcrumb records and retraces trails perfectly well in airplane mode. It makes no network requests at all, so there is nothing about it that needs a connection.
Because you are going to put the phone in your pocket. With "While Using", iOS suspends the App the moment the screen locks, and the trail stops being recorded right there — leaving you with a path that ends where you stopped looking at your phone, which is useless. "Always" plus the background location mode is what keeps the recording alive in your pocket. The App reads your location only while a trail is being recorded or retraced, never at any other time.
No. Lock the screen and pocket the phone — that is the intended way to use it. Recording continues in the background as long as Location is set to Always. Keeping the screen on would only burn battery, which is the one resource you actually need to protect.
No, it is physics, and the App tells you when it happens. A dense canopy blocks and scatters the satellite signal, so fixes get less accurate or stop arriving. The signal indicator changes to reflect it — searching, weak, estimating, or no signal at all — so you are never left guessing how much to trust what you see.
When the signal goes, Breadcrumb does not give up: it estimates your movement from your step count and the compass and keeps laying crumbs. Those crumbs are flagged as estimated and shown differently, because they drift the longer the signal is missing. Once GPS returns, the App pulls the estimated stretch back into place. A trail that is partly estimated will still lead you home, but treat those sections with a little more judgment.
No. Each crumb is written to the device as it is recorded, not held in memory until the end, so whatever was recorded before the interruption is safe. When you reopen Breadcrumb, it notices the trail was never finished and offers to resume it — carry on and new crumbs are appended to the same trail.
The one thing it cannot recover is the ground you covered while the App was not running: nothing was listening to the GPS, so that stretch was never recorded. If the trail jumps a meaningful distance at the resume point, the App marks it as a gap. That matters on the way back, because across a gap the arrow points straight over terrain you never walked, and any fork inside it is invisible to the App. Treat a gap as a stretch to navigate by eye.
More than an idle app, and you should plan for it. Recording keeps the GPS receiver and the motion sensors working continuously, including in the background — that is the cost of a trail that does not stop when you pocket the phone. Start a long walk with a full charge, and take a power bank if you will be out for hours. Breadcrumb notes the battery level at the start and end of each trail, so your own past walks become the best estimate of what the next one will cost. A phone with a dead battery cannot lead you anywhere.
Never. Your trails, crumbs, and markers stay on your iPhone. The App has no backend, no cloud sync, no iCloud, no account, no analytics, and no third-party SDKs — it contains no networking code at all, so there is literally nowhere for your location to go. See our Privacy Policy.
To count your steps, and only for that. When the satellite signal is blocked under tree cover, your step count plus the compass heading is what lets the App estimate how far and in which direction you have moved, so the trail keeps going instead of leaving a blank. Raw sensor readings are never stored and never leave the device.
No, and deliberately so. Breadcrumb draws your own recorded path, not a map of the area — it downloads nothing, which is why it works where there is no coverage at all. It does not know where the paths, roads, or rivers are; it only knows where you walked. For terrain, carry a real map.
No. Breadcrumb can only retrace a trail it recorded. It has no route planning and no knowledge of the area. If you did not walk it with the App running, it cannot lead you there.
It is built for open ground — forests, parks, trails. In dense urban canyons GPS bounces off buildings and accuracy suffers; indoors and underground there is usually no usable signal at all, and the App will fall back to estimating from your steps, which drifts. It will do its best, but it was designed for walking under sky and trees.
With a clear view of the sky, crumbs are as accurate as your iPhone's GPS — typically good enough to retrace a path comfortably. Under canopy, in valleys, or in bad weather, accuracy falls, and in estimated stretches it falls further and drifts the longer the signal stays blocked. Compass direction can also be disturbed by magnetic interference, including metal structures and magnets in some phone cases and accessories. Everything the App shows is an estimate for your own use, not a survey-grade measurement.
No. Breadcrumb is free, with no In-App Purchases, no subscription, no ads, and no paywall. If you enjoy the App and want to support the work, email [email protected] — that's enough.
Not yet in v1.0. Because Breadcrumb is local-only, exporting a trail as a standard track file is on the roadmap as a share-sheet option. If you need this sooner, please email the team.
Currently iPhone only. The App needs the phone's own GPS receiver, compass, and motion sensors on your body while you walk.
Any iPhone running iOS 26 or later that has GPS and a compass — that is, every current iPhone model. The App cannot record a real trail in the iOS Simulator, which has no GPS or motion hardware.
Email [email protected] and include:
Yes — we love hearing ideas. Email [email protected] with your proposal. We review every suggestion.
Estimated response time: 48 business hours (Monday through Friday, Mexico City time).