Questions & answers

What is A Long Journey?

A travel journal on a hand-inked globe. Add the places you have been, one trip at a time: where, when, how you got there and how you came back, with a few photos and a note. Every trip becomes a curved ink line, and the whole story plays back as a movie with your song.

Why are the lines curved?

They are geodesics: the shortest way between two places on a round Earth, the route planes really fly. On a globe they look like arcs; Madrid to New York bows up towards Ireland and Newfoundland.

How do I make the video?

Press "Play the movie", pick a format (vertical for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, square, or wide) and a length, then "Make the video". The video is drawn frame by frame on your device, so it is smooth even on a slow phone (it just takes a little longer). "Video" sets speed against sharpness: Quick (540 px, a fraction of the time, fine for a chat), Balanced (HD 720 px) or Sharpest (Full HD 1080 px, the slowest). Along the bottom, the trips, countries and distance count up as it plays; trophies stack up at the side with their names. Nothing is uploaded; you share the file yourself. If a long video is too big for the share sheet, it is saved to your device instead.

Where the browser allows it the video is an MP4 (H.264 with AAC sound), which Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp take. Some browsers can only make WebM, and very old ones can’t make video at all.

Can I note who came along?

Yes: Settings → People. Add yourself and whoever travels with you, each with a photo or a selfie if you like (framed before it is kept), and make groups such as "Family" or "The kids". A group can hold other groups ("The kids" inside "Family"), so whoever joins one is in every group around it. In each trip, tap who went: a group adds everyone in it in one tap, anyone can be taken off for the trips they missed, and in a trip with several stops each stop shows the faces of who was there: tap off whoever had not arrived yet or had already gone home.

Then show just one person’s trips, or the trips a whole group made together, on the globe and in the numbers, and play their own movie. Each trip can also be played on its own, from its "Movie" button. The photos of people stay on your device, encrypted like the others.

Can I make a movie of just this year?

Yes: tap Filters, over the globe, and pick a year, or "Dates…" for any two days. The globe, the list, the stamps and numbers and the movie show only the trips in between (a trip counts if any of it falls in those dates). Filters also pick whose trips (someone, or a group) and tags, all together: for a summary of one person’s year, or of your work trips.

Tags are your own labels for trips (work, family, beach…), added in each trip; the filter shows the trips with any of the tags you pick.

From mid-December to mid-January a banner offers the movie of the year that is ending, with all its trips, ready to save as a video.

What are the trophies in the movie?

Milestones your journal reaches as it goes: once around the Earth, around the world in 80 days, to the Moon (and back), as far as Mars or the Sun, catching up with Voyager 1 (which keeps flying away), every continent, both hemispheres, the date line, the Arctic, the other side of the world, a month on the road, and so many countries or trips. They appear in the movie of many trips as the trip that won each one plays, and stay in a small row at the bottom. A single trip’s movie has none.

Can I add music?

Yes: in the movie, tap "Add a song". Upload an MP3 or M4A from your device or find a free one, and choose where it starts. Every song you add stays on your shelf on this device, so the next video can use it again, or another one: the song picked plays until you choose another (or none). The movie fits itself to the song, or to 30, 60 or 90 seconds, or to a length of your own to the millisecond, to end on a beat. Songs stay private and on this device; they aren’t part of the journal’s backup or sync.

Social networks may mute copyrighted songs in uploaded videos. If that happens, make the video without music and add the track inside Instagram or TikTok, from their own music library. Or pick a free song with "Find a free song": Creative Commons music from Jamendo that can go in your video, with the artist credited at the bottom.

What happens to my photos?

They are shrunk on your device (2048 pixels on the long side, or 3072 with "Sharper photos") and stored encrypted in your browser. The copy is made from the pixels only, so the photo’s hidden data (camera, GPS position) is not kept. Before that, the app reads the photo’s date and position, on your device, to fill in the trip for you, and keeps the moment it was taken: in the movie, that photo lands in the margin when the trip reaches that moment (the movie slows down a little there, so there is time to see it).

Is my journal private?

Yes. There is no account and no server holding your data. Your trips, photos and song are stored encrypted on your device. Place search uses Photon, which only receives the text you type (or a photo’s position, to name the place). The privacy policy has the details.

How much space does it take?

A trip with four photos takes about 1.5 MB. A hundred trips like that and a song come to about 150–200 MB. Settings → Storage shows how much this device holds.

How do I keep my journal safe or move it to a new phone?

Settings → Backup saves one file with your journal, photos and song, locked with a passphrase you choose. On the new device, use "Restore from a backup" with the same passphrase. Save a backup now and then, especially on iPhone, where browsers can clear website data.

What if I moved house?

Add each home in Settings → Homes with the date you moved. Trips set off from, and come back to, the home of their time. A trip that didn’t come back (you went straight on to somewhere else) is drawn into the next one. A trip within the days of another (a weekend away during a long stay) sets off from where that one was, and goes back there, not home.

Does it use Google Maps?

No. The globe is drawn by the app from Natural Earth, a free public-domain map, so it works offline and looks like a journal. Place search uses OpenStreetMap data through Photon.

Is it free?

Yes. A Long Journey is free. It is supported by a few clearly labelled ads, never over the globe or the movie.