Does GPS recording work when the phone is locked?

Only with background location permission, which is a separate request and a real App Store review item — you must show the recording feature that justifies it. A ride tracker is one of the few app types where reviewers expect to see it, so this is a legitimate use rather than a rejection risk. Budget an extra day for the background task setup and a development build.

How accurate is phone GPS for distance?

Within roughly 2–5% of a bike computer over a normal ride, which is fine for personal tracking and not fine for racing. Sampling every 10 metres rather than every second smooths out the jitter that otherwise inflates your distance when you stop at lights.

How to Build a Cycling Tracker App with AI (2026)

What a cycling tracker app needs

Record a ride with live distance, duration, and average speed
Route drawn on a map as you go
Elevation gain from GPS altitude
Ride history with personal bests
Export a ride as GPX

The screens

Screen	What it does
Home	Big Start Ride button, this week and this month totals
Recording	Live stats, route polyline, pause and resume, lock screen to avoid pocket taps
Ride Summary	Map of the route, distance, moving time, average and max speed, elevation
History	Past rides by month with totals and personal bests
Settings	Units, GPS accuracy, whether to keep recording in the background

The data model

Ride: startedAt, endedAt, distanceMeters, movingSeconds, elevationGain
TrackPoint: rideId, lat, lng, altitude, speed, recordedAt
Bike: name, type, odometerMeters

The build prompt (copy this)

Paste this into ShipNative and it becomes a working React Native app with these screens, navigable in a live preview, in about two minutes:

“A cycling tracker. Users tap Start Ride and the app records their GPS route while riding, showing live distance, duration, and average speed with the route drawn on a map. Pause and resume, then save with a summary: route map, distance, moving time, average and max speed, and elevation gain. Screens: Home (Start Ride plus weekly and monthly totals), Recording, Ride Summary, History by month with personal bests, Settings for units and GPS accuracy. Store rides locally so a ride is never lost if the app closes mid-ride.”

Then iterate with small, screen-specific prompts (“make the primary button bigger”, “add an empty state”), preview on your own phone, and export the full Expo project whenever you want. The full method: how to build an app with AI.

How it makes money

Free ride recording, subscription ($4–7/mo) for history beyond 30 days, GPX export, and multi-bike odometers. Be realistic: Strava owns this category outright, so a general tracker will not win. A specific one — gravel routes, indoor training, bike commuting with a CO2 and money-saved counter — can.

Implementation and the revenue math for every model: how to make money from an app. When you’re ready to ship: App Store and Google Play publishing guides.

Build it now

The prompt above is free to run at shipnative.dev — working cycling tracker app on your phone today, full code export, no credit card.

How to Build a Cycling Tracker App with AI