School Run Timer: Routes
A stopwatch that remembers which way you went. Add the two, three or four ways you already know, press Start as you pull away and Arrived as you pull up, and after a handful of runs down each road the app tells you which one is actually quicker.
Setting it up
- A new phone starts with one journey called School run and no routes, because only you know your own roads.
- New route on the home page, or Add a route inside a journey, asks for a name. A name is already in the box, so you can add one with a single tap, or type what you would call it in the car: Main road, Village lanes, Past the retail park.
- Two routes is enough to begin. Three or four is better.
Timing a run
- Start, then tap the route you are taking. The clock begins at once.
- The clock is worked out from the time of day, not counted up by a timer, so locking the phone, closing the app, taking a call or running the battery down changes nothing. Home, at the top right, leaves the clock running.
- Arrived keeps the run. It is on the clock screen, and also in the bar at the foot of every page, so you can finish a run from anywhere in one tap.
- Pressing Arrived within twenty seconds of Start is taken as a mis-tap and nothing is saved.
- If a run has been going more than two hours the app asks whether you forgot to press Arrived, and you can keep it or throw it away.
- Forget this run, under the Arrived button, throws a run away without saving it: a detour, a stop for petrol, a road closed.
Which route is quickest
- Quickest shows the verdict for the journey, then every route as a bar, quickest at the top, with its usual, best and worst times.
- A route needs at least three timed runs before it is compared at all.
- The app only names a quickest route when the gap between two routes is bigger than the way those routes vary from one day to the next. Until then it says Too close to call and asks for more runs. That is deliberate: two lucky mornings should not crown a winner.
- If you have been setting off on one route at eight o'clock and on another at twenty past, the app says so, because the time of day can matter more than the road does.
- Share the times sends the figures as plain words, for whoever else does the run.
Journeys
- A journey is one trip made over and over. Routes are only ever compared against the others in the same journey.
- Add a second journey for the run home again, or for a second school. Journeys on the home page adds, renames and deletes them.
Putting a run right
- Runs lists every run, newest first. Tap one to correct how long it took, if you pressed Arrived late, or to delete it. The averages are worked out again without it.
What the app does not do
It never asks for your location, it draws no maps and it suggests no roads. It is a stopwatch: every figure in it came from you pressing Start and Arrived. It does not guess journey times and does not know anything about traffic.
What it costs
It is bought once on the App Store. Every feature works from the first launch. There is nothing to unlock inside, no subscription and no advertising.
Backup
- The app backs up automatically to your own iCloud, free, as each run is saved. It is a backup, not a sync, and it never comes to us.
- On a new phone, or after the app is put back, it offers your routes and runs back as soon as it finds the copy. Backup, Restore does the same at any time.
- You can switch the backup off on the Backup page.
Contact
Questions, problems or ideas: conor@conorhannah.com. Please say which iPhone and iOS version you have.