I wanted to take some time to thoroughly test version 9.4.x before sharing this feedback. The mode I’ve tested the most is the Highest Accuracy mode, so I’ll start with that.
Highest Accuracy Mode
✅ The Good
This mode is a welcome improvement over the 7.x version. GPS is now only activated when movement is detected, which significantly reduces battery usage especially useful for users who keep Traccar set to Highest Accuracy while mostly remaining stationary. It manages to do this without sacrificing the quality of location data when movement is detected.
⚠️ The Bad
Inconsistent Movement Detection on Trains
- While movement detection works well for walking, cycling, and driving, it's much less consistent on trains. The app often fails to recognize train movement as actual movement. I tried manually enabling "Active Movement" mode while on a train, and although it initially worked, the toggle switched off automatically about 10 minutes later even though the app wasn’t killed in RAM. This seems like a bug.
- The phone keeps the GPS used as long as there is movement but the stop detection seem to take much longer to detect being stationary, in some cases 10 minutes in my testing which seems to be abit too long for a device that has the GPS being turned on. I think the time it takes traccar to detect being stationary should be be reduced to maybe 2 or 3 minutes instead to further reduce the battery usage without sacrificing the tracking quality
UI Confusion
Settings like Fastest Interval and Heartbeat still appear even though they don’t apply to Highest Accuracy mode. It would be better if options that are irrelevant to the currently selected mode were hidden or disabled to reduce confusion.
Other Accuracy Modes
There are times when I know I’ll be out for most of the day without access to a power source. In such cases, I’d prefer to switch to Medium Accuracy mode to conserve battery—accepting less frequent and less precise location updates. This worked well in version 7.x, relying mostly on network-based location updates instead of constant GPS usage. Of course made sure that location is far more accurate when acquiring location without the use of GPS like for example on web apps that accesses the location with navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(x,x,{enableHighAccuracy : false}) which doesn't use GPS so the same location showing up with the previous line of code should match the location traccar sends, but it doesn't the traccar one is waaaay less accurate
However, in 9.4.x, anything other than Highest Accuracy mode simply doesn’t work reliably. It detects movement (e.g. walking), but rarely acquires location updates. When it does, the data is often inaccurate—for example, reporting a location 1.5 km away from the actual position, even when the update distance is set to just 100 meters and I had moved away from that reported location 40+ minutes earlier.
Fixing this would make a significant difference for users prioritizing battery savings without completely sacrificing tracking accuracy.
General Suggestions
While the logs are helpful, it’s difficult to quickly check current movement state, the last HTTP transmission time, or the last known location. Adding an option to view these key diagnostics at a glance perhaps at the top of the logs pagewould be very useful for debugging purposes.
Now that Traccar is mostly working well aside from these non-critical issues, I’ll start sharing some feature requests in separate threads. If time permits, I may even contribute to the project on GitHub.
I wanted to take some time to thoroughly test version 9.4.x before sharing this feedback. The mode I’ve tested the most is the Highest Accuracy mode, so I’ll start with that.
Highest Accuracy Mode
✅ The Good
This mode is a welcome improvement over the 7.x version. GPS is now only activated when movement is detected, which significantly reduces battery usage especially useful for users who keep Traccar set to Highest Accuracy while mostly remaining stationary. It manages to do this without sacrificing the quality of location data when movement is detected.
⚠️ The Bad
Inconsistent Movement Detection on Trains
UI Confusion
Settings like Fastest Interval and Heartbeat still appear even though they don’t apply to Highest Accuracy mode. It would be better if options that are irrelevant to the currently selected mode were hidden or disabled to reduce confusion.
Other Accuracy Modes
There are times when I know I’ll be out for most of the day without access to a power source. In such cases, I’d prefer to switch to Medium Accuracy mode to conserve battery—accepting less frequent and less precise location updates. This worked well in version 7.x, relying mostly on network-based location updates instead of constant GPS usage. Of course made sure that location is far more accurate when acquiring location without the use of GPS like for example on web apps that accesses the location with navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(x,x,{enableHighAccuracy : false}) which doesn't use GPS so the same location showing up with the previous line of code should match the location traccar sends, but it doesn't the traccar one is waaaay less accurate
However, in 9.4.x, anything other than Highest Accuracy mode simply doesn’t work reliably. It detects movement (e.g. walking), but rarely acquires location updates. When it does, the data is often inaccurate—for example, reporting a location 1.5 km away from the actual position, even when the update distance is set to just 100 meters and I had moved away from that reported location 40+ minutes earlier.
Fixing this would make a significant difference for users prioritizing battery savings without completely sacrificing tracking accuracy.
General Suggestions
While the logs are helpful, it’s difficult to quickly check current movement state, the last HTTP transmission time, or the last known location. Adding an option to view these key diagnostics at a glance perhaps at the top of the logs pagewould be very useful for debugging purposes.
Now that Traccar is mostly working well aside from these non-critical issues, I’ll start sharing some feature requests in separate threads. If time permits, I may even contribute to the project on GitHub.