MushMate records your track even with the screen off or while you switch apps — that's what lets it capture a multi-hour outing in full, phone in a pocket or under a glove. With "While Using the App" only, the system stops recording the moment the screen turns off: the outing cuts out partway through.
On Android, the dialog offering to switch to "Always Allow" only appears once per install — if you dismissed it by mistake, you'll need to turn it on by hand in the app's location settings.
At the start of an outing, recording always begins immediately, from the very first second: the app forces tracking on without waiting to confirm movement, regardless of the "Physical activity" (Android) or "Motion & Fitness" (iOS) permission.
An ordinary pause — the app simply detecting that the team has stopped — never puts the GPS to sleep: the receiver keeps recording positions without interruption, and the pause ends by itself the moment you set off again, no button required. Only a declared rest stop (étape) puts the GPS to sleep to save battery — and it does not wake itself back up, even once the team is moving again. Ending the étape is what restarts recording — the button is called "Resume" on the resume prompt and the long-distance course screen, or "End of stage" on the training screen — and that action takes effect immediately, independent of that permission. If a resume seems missing or delayed after a declared rest stop, check first that you actually ended the étape before setting off.
On Android, your phone can stop background GPS recording to save battery — the exemption lets a multi-day race keep recording with the screen off. Settings › My device shows this exemption's status and a button to grant it.
Some manufacturers (notably Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei) run their own battery manager on top of Android's, which can still cut tracking even once the exemption is granted — that's the phone's behaviour, not the app's, and the only known fix is to also whitelist MushMate in that manufacturer's own tool, usually under the phone's battery settings.
Android requires a background location service to show a persistent notification, so you always know an app is recording your position — this notification cannot be hidden, for any app. It goes away as soon as recording ends.
A small indicator stays visible while recording:
A "± X m" figure next to the indicator shows the current position accuracy.
"GPS imprecise" means fixes are still arriving, but less accurate than the usual threshold — under dense tree cover or between steep terrain, that's normal and temporary. "GPS lost" means no fix has arrived for over 90 seconds: check that location is still enabled on the phone and that the app still has permission to use your position (App settings, reachable from the recording screen if an error message is shown).
The system is set to only give a position rounded to one or two kilometres — no track can be recorded in that state. Open the app's location settings and turn on "Precise location" (exact wording varies by phone).
No usable position was captured during the whole outing — often a location permission turned off, or the system's GPS disabled the entire time. The session can't be recovered: the fix is to check location settings before your next outing.
This choice changes nothing about GPS accuracy or behaviour: it only picks the layout of the screen shown while recording (what's useful when the phone is tucked away is not the same as on a handlebar mount, visible at all times).
A pause is only recognised when the team hasn't moved 10 metres within a given window, rather than from speed alone — a stationary GPS receiver can report a residual speed above 2 km/h, indistinguishable from genuinely moving at a walking pace. The full story is in the blog post "A stop isn't measured in km/h, it's measured in metres".