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Three best travel journal apps for logging trips and sharing your adventures

If you miss writing a travel journal but have yet to make the move to digital, these apps replicate the feeling of putting pen to paper while adding geolocation and easy sharing

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The Polarsteps travel journal app maps your trip and lets you add photos and comments. Like other apps, you can order a physical album once your journey is over. Photo: Handout

Travellers used to keeping a journal when on the road are face a conundrum these days: in a digital world where every smartphone image is tagged with a GPS location, and where all experiences are constantly shared, is a paper diary worth persevering with?

Trawling through phones, SD cards and old social media posts is how most of us try to relive our favourite trips, but even that can be frustratingly fragmented. Luckily, a few apps have appeared in recent years that allow travellers to digitally collect, collate and connect their thoughts.

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Most use GPS to pinpoint where you were when you took a photo or video, or penned a diary entry, and make your adventures easy to share. Coping with the digital fallout of our ever more capable personal devices is never easy, but the more trips you take, the more useful these travel tracking apps become.

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1. Polarsteps

This free, user-friendly app for iOS and Android occasionally checks your phone’s GPS location and creates a travel log, plotting your location on an attractive and colourful map that can be easily shared.

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You agree to decisions the app makes itself about the steps you take on your trip, add photos and comments, then share via Instagram, Facebook, or via a link you can paste into an email, WhatsApp or SMS.

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