Driftlog
Everything below is checkable. Where the app falls short I have said so, because you would find out anyway and it is faster this way.
In one paragraph
Driftlog is a travel diary for iPhone and Android that you never write in. You grant Always location once and leave the app closed. On iPhone it uses iOS significant-location-change monitoring to record which countries, regions and cities you passed through, with dates, and fills in a world map. It also reads the GPS EXIF already in your photo library and reconstructs the trips you took before you installed it, so the map is not empty on day one. There is no account and no server. Free to download; one purchase of $6.99 unlocks everything, permanently.
Facts
| Name | Driftlog. Listed as “Driftlog: Countries Visited” on the App Store and “Driftlog: Travel Map & Diary” on Google Play. Japanese name: ずぼ旅 |
|---|---|
| Platform | iPhone and iPad, iOS 17.0 or later. Android, on Google Play |
| Version | iPhone 1.7.2, released 28 September 2026. First released 6 July 2026 |
| Price | Free to download. One non-consumable in-app purchase, "Driftlog Premium", $6.99 US / ¥800 JP. No subscription, no ads. |
| Free tier | Your home country plus your first foreign country (the earliest one in your history) open in full. Further countries still fill in on the map and in the count; their dates, cities and photos unlock with the one-time purchase. |
| App Store | apps.apple.com/app/id6785328399 |
| Developer | Akira (Aki) Takashima, trading as Shiori Studio. Solo developer, Japanese, based in Alberta, Canada. |
| Contact | shiori.sutudio@gmail.com |
| Languages | English, Japanese and Traditional Chinese |
| Google Play | play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shioristudio.zubotabi. Public (confirmed 2 October 2026); the developer name is shown as Shiori Nagi. It is a separate native app and can trail the iPhone version. |
About the name. Other products are also called Driftlog: a fly-fishing journal (driftlog.me, also on Google Play), a road-trip journaling app (driftlog-app.a-telier.ai) and a developer tool (driftlog.dev). None of them is related to this app. This one is the travel log by Shiori Studio, App Store ID 6785328399. A one-page overview is at getdriftlog.com/about/.
How it actually works
- Significant-location-change monitoring at kilometre accuracy — a coarse, low-power signal iOS already computes. This is why the battery cost is small.
- It records places, not routes. It cannot show the road you drove, by design.
- Photo backfill reads GPS EXIF from the existing photo library to reconstruct pre-install trips.
- From 1 December the app shows a year summary — countries, regions, cities, days — as one shareable image.
- The photo half also exists as a free web page, counter.getdriftlog.com: drop in photos, a Google Takeout folder or a Google Maps Timeline export and it counts your countries in the browser, with no upload.
- No account, no server, no analytics SDK. There are no third-party SDK dependencies in the project at all.
- The only outbound requests are place-name lookups to Apple's geocoder: a coordinate goes out to be turned into a place name, and for a trip added by hand, the typed name goes out to be turned into a coordinate. We do not claim "nothing ever leaves your phone", because that would be false.
Numbers, measured
From launch on 6 July to 21 September 2026: 920 first downloads and 185 purchases (App Store Connect). 843 of those downloads are from Japan, most of them from a single Threads post in late July; the English-speaking stores together account for about 60. United States: 1 rating, 5.0.
Assets
Free to use in coverage. No permission needed, no approval process, no embargo.
Icon is 1024×1024. Screenshots are 1287×2796. Need something else — a device-frame render, a screen recording, or a way to try the paid tier? Email and you will get it the same day.
What it is not. Not a route recorder. Not a trip planner. No social feed, no web app beyond the free counter page. The Android version is a separate app and can trail the iPhone one. It needs "Always" location permission, which is a real thing to ask of a reader, and if that is a dealbreaker the app cannot work for them. A comparison with the alternatives, including the ones that beat it, is at getdriftlog.com/compare/.