AlcoLog can start and end your sessions based on where you are. Save your local pub, switch on Start session on arrival, and the timer kicks off the next time you walk through the door. This tutorial covers the whole Locations Manager: drink tagging, saved locations, the session triggers, and the separate rules for your home.
The location system is a Premium feature. If you used location features before they became Premium, you keep them at no charge. Location data is never sent to AlcoLog or any third party. Place names are looked up with Apple Maps, and iCloud backup (if on) saves your locations to your own iCloud.
# Step 1. Open the Locations Manager
Tap the Settings tab, then Locations Manager under Locations. The screen has three sections: Drink Location Tagging, Location Triggers and My Saved Locations.
At the top, the How locations work card explains the basics. Tap it to collapse it once you’ve read it.
On the free tier, the toggles on this screen carry a PREMIUM badge, and tapping one offers Premium.
100m radius✕
# Step 2. Turn on drink tagging
Switch on Tag drinks with location. From then on, each drink you log is tagged with where you are. If you’re inside one of your saved locations or your home, that name is used instead of the street address. Drinks logged on your Apple Watch are tagged with your iPhone’s location when they sync across.
iOS asks for location access the first time. If you declined, the screen says so and Open Settings takes you to the switch.
Tagging is what fills in your session map. You can change or clear the place on any single drink under When & where? on the Add Drink screen.
# Step 3. Save a location
Under My Saved Locations, tap Add Location. The picker has three ways to find a place: Search for a venue or address, Current for where you are standing now, and Map to drop a pin by hand.
Once you’ve picked one, set:
- FRIENDLY NAME: what AlcoLog calls it. The name from Apple Maps often includes a chain or an address, so this is where you shorten it to “The Local”.
- DETECTION RADIUS: 50m, 100m, 250m or 500m (shown in feet in the US). Bigger is more forgiving in a large venue or with weak GPS.
- Set as Home: see Step 5.
Tap Save Location. The count beside My Saved Locations shows how many you have saved out of the 50 that Premium holds.
To rename a place, change its radius or delete it later, tap its row to open Edit Location, make the change and tap Save Changes. The IN USE BY section shows which features rely on it. Deleting a place also removes any session trigger, medication reminder or home rule that uses it.
# Step 4. Switch on the session triggers
Under Location Triggers, turn on either or both:
- Start session on arrival starts a session when you arrive at one of your trigger locations. If a session is already running, nothing happens.
- End session on departure ends your session when you leave. Without it, your session carries on if you move between saved locations.
The two are independent, so you can have arrivals start a session and still end it yourself.
If you have no trigger locations yet, the Add Location picker opens as soon as you switch one on. It works like Step 3, with a Saved tab added so you can reuse a place you already saved (your home is never offered there). The places you add appear under the toggles; tap + Add Location for more. The ✕ beside a place only removes it from the triggers; it stays in My Saved Locations. If location access is missing, you’ll see Location permission required. Tap to open Settings. The 50-location limit covers all your saved locations, so when the list is full a new place is not saved: the picker says Location not saved, and you can pick a saved place instead or remove one in My Saved Locations.
Triggers run in the background with about 100m accuracy, so the app does not need to be open. For that, iOS location access must be set to Always. If it is set to While Using, the top of the Locations Manager shows Allow Always so location triggers work; tap it to open iOS Settings. There are no day or time limits on these venue triggers; those belong to the home rules in the next step.
# Step 5. Set your home and its rules
Home works differently, because walking out of your front door in the morning should never start a session. Your home is left out of the two triggers above completely (making a trigger location your home takes it out of the triggers), and gets its own optional rules instead.
To set it, tap a saved location to open Edit Location and switch on Use as home in the HOME section (or switch on Set as Home while adding a place). Only one place can be home; choosing a new one asks Replace current home? first.
Then open Advanced rules. There are two rows, When I leave home and When I arrive home. Tap one and set:
- ACTION: Do nothing, Start a session or End the session.
- ACTIVE DAYS: tap single days, or use Weekdays, Weekends or All.
- TIME WINDOW: From and Until. A window can run past midnight, for example 21:00 until 04:00.
Tap Save Changes. A rule only fires when you cross your home’s boundary on an active day inside its window. Leaving home waits three minutes before it fires, so a quick trip to the bins does not count.
For example, set When I leave home to Start a session on Weekends from 18:00 until 23:00, and When I arrive home to End the session on All days from 21:00 until 04:00.
# Step 6. Let your currency follow you (optional)
If you travel, AlcoLog can switch the currency your drinks are priced in to match the country you’re in. Go to Settings > Display & Haptics and, under Currency, switch on Auto-switch by location (Premium). The screen then shows what it detected, for example Detected: FR → € EUR. Your manual currency is used whenever the country is unknown. More on currencies is in changing language and currency.
# What’s next
Once your common venues are saved, building your favorite drinks list makes logging a drink at one of them two taps. The places you tag show up on your session map, and alerts and notifications cover the reminders that can run alongside your sessions.