Record your first flight in under a minute
Recording a flight in Skyty takes one tap. The first time I tried it, I forgot — booted Skyty an hour into a Frankfurt–Singapore, watched the route I’d already flown not get recorded, swore quietly. Don’t be me. Here’s the full walkthrough so you don’t have to make my mistake.
Before take-off
- Open Skyty. Confirm the GPS dot is roughly where you are. A rough fix is normal indoors; once you’re at the gate it’ll snap to within a few meters.
- Plug in to power if you have it. GPS recording uses ~10–15% battery per hour. On a long-haul flight, a power bank or seat USB makes the difference between a complete recording and a half one.
- Tap Record. The button turns red and the Live Activity appears in the Dynamic Island and on the Lock Screen.
During the flight
Once the recording is on, you can:
- Lock your phone — recording continues in the background, sampling roughly every 30 seconds.
- Switch to other apps — same thing.
- Watch the route draw itself live on the map. Your current position is the bright dot at the head of the line.
- Tap the altitude profile chart at the bottom of the screen to see your climb-out and the cruise plateau forming.
You don’t have to babysit it. Skyty will quietly add points to the track for the entire flight, even if your phone goes to sleep.
Auto-detect (Premium)
If you turn on Auto-Recording in Settings, you don’t even need to tap. Skyty watches your speed and altitude, and:
- Starts a recording automatically when you cross 3 000 m and 200 km/h.
- Stops automatically when you drop below 500 m and 100 km/h for more than a few seconds.
This is great for the half of long-haul flights where you forgot, fell asleep, or just couldn’t be bothered to tap.
After landing
Skyty asks if you want to save the flight. Tap save and you get:
- A summary card: duration, distance, max altitude, max speed, average speed, departure city, arrival city.
- The full route polyline on the map, replayable.
- The altitude profile chart, showing every climb, descent and step climb.
- A share menu with GPX export.
What “GPX export” actually means
GPX is the universal format for GPS tracks. Drop the file into Google Earth, Strava, Garmin Connect, FlightAware’s IGC tools, RunKeeper, or any number of mapping apps — they’ll all read it.
To export: open the flight in your archive, tap Share → GPX. iOS gives you the standard share sheet. AirDrop it to a Mac, save it to Files, email it, whatever you like.
iCloud sync
If you have iCloud Drive enabled and you’ve turned on Skyty’s iCloud option in settings, every flight you save automatically syncs to your iCloud container. New device? Sign in and your archive is there. Apple can’t read your flights and neither can we — it’s stored in your private container, not a shared one.
Common questions
Will it eat my battery? Continuous GPS for 12 hours costs roughly 100% of an iPhone battery. With a charging cable connected, no problem.
Can I record on the Watch instead? Yes — Skyty’s Watch app has its own GPS for when the phone is asleep. We’re working on Watch-initiated recordings for v1.4.
What if I forget to stop? No problem. The Auto-Recording stop conditions trigger after landing. If you have manual recording on, you can stop it any time after — the timestamps are based on the GPS samples, not when you tap.
Try it on a short flight first
Best way to get comfortable: record a 90-minute domestic hop before your next long-haul. You’ll see the full lifecycle in one sitting, and you’ll have your first GPX file to play with.