Help with Loopr

Using Loopr

From version 1.43, a new install of Loopr opens with a short tour of planning and driving a route. Skip closes it, and Settings → Help → How Loopr works shows it again.

Adding stops

• Search — type an address or place name into the search field in the panel at the bottom of the screen, and pick a result.
• Drop a pin — long-press anywhere on the map. Loopr looks up the address for that point; if it can't find one, the stop is added anyway as Dropped pin, with its coordinates.
• Start from where you are — tap the locate button, or set Start to Current location in Route settings.
• Pick a saved place — places you've saved appear in search as you type. To save one, tap the star beside a search result, or turn on Save for future use in a stop's details. The star button on the map opens Saved places.
• Scan a package (Pro) — tap the barcode button beside the search field, then choose Barcode / QR or Address. Each read is looked up and listed, and nothing is added until you tap a match. Scanning isn't available while a route is running.

Reordering and optimizing

Press and hold a stop for a moment, then drag it to move it by hand. Optimize, once you have at least three stops, finds the quickest order through all of them and renumbers the list; a banner tells you how much it saved and offers Undo, which puts your order back.

The optimizer never moves your starting point, and with Finish set to Fixed location it keeps your last stop last too. Nothing can be moved while a route is running.

Choosing where the route starts and ends

Tap the row above the search field — it reads something like Fixed start → Fixed end — to open Route settings:

• Current location or Fixed location for the start.
• Return to start for a loop, Fixed location to hold the last stop as the destination, or Open route to end anywhere — which is what makes a one-way trip shortest.
• Start time anchors every arrival estimate. Finish by is when you want to be done: Optimize plans the route to end by then, and if no order fits, it plans without it and tells you. The summary reports how much room you have, or how far over you are.

Set a finish time and no start time, and Loopr works backwards: it tells you what time to leave.

Running a route

Press Start and the list locks so nothing shifts under you; the stop you're heading for is marked NEXT. When you get there, tap Done — it reads Collected at a pickup — or Failed if it didn't work out, and the next stop becomes the current one. Directions hands the current stop to your navigation app. Once every stop is resolved, the route is finished and stays that way: the summary reads Route complete, every stop keeps its tick or cross, and the bookmark icon saves it. Start again asks before it makes a new route of the same stops, every one unmarked, and says what happens to each stop's notes and photos; press Start to drive it. From version 1.42, New route, beside it, asks before it empties the planner for a different route, and says the finished route's photos are deleted unless you save it first. To stop early, End route asks first, then clears your progress and unlocks the stops for editing again.

Saving and reusing routes

Tap the bookmark icon on the summary to save the current plan under a name. Saved routes live under the bookmark icon on the map — tap one to load it, the pencil to rename it, the bin to delete it. Saved routes are always plans: loading one resets any progress, and you can't open one while a route is running.

Troubleshooting

The map is blank or grey

Check your connection first — map tiles are downloaded. If the rest of the app works and only the map is empty, force-quit and reopen Loopr. If it persists, tell us your device and OS version.

Loopr with a weak signal, or none

Loopr has no offline mode. Address search, the address of a dropped pin, drawing the route, drive times, Optimize, map tiles, sign-in, sync and purchases all need a connection. What you already have stays on the phone and keeps working: the current plan and your progress through it, saved routes, saved places, notes and photos — you can still mark stops Done or Failed. The route line isn't stored, so it is fetched again after an edit or a relaunch.

Address search returns nothing, or the wrong city

By default Loopr limits search to the country your phone is in, because place names repeat across the world. If you're planning a trip in another country, turn off Settings → Address search → Search my country only. That row also names the country it's currently enforcing, so you can check what it thinks.

Search also needs a connection and at least three characters, and it deliberately waits a moment after you stop typing before it queries — so give it a second before assuming nothing matched.

Sign-in fails

You don't have to sign in to use Loopr: Continue without an account keeps everything on this phone, and signing in later brings it into your account. To sign in, make sure you're online and, for Sign in with Apple, signed into your Apple Account on the device. Sign in with Apple appears only on iPhone and iPad. If a sign-in loops or errors repeatedly, force-quit the app and try again; if it still fails, send us the exact message you see.

My routes didn't appear on my new phone

Routes reach a new phone through your account, so sign in on both — using the same method, Apple or Google, on each. Routes you made without an account are only on the phone that made them: sign in on that phone first and they move into the account. From then on, Loopr copies each change to your account as you make it, and catches up when you open the app and when you come back to it (at most every five minutes), sending anything it couldn't send while offline. So if the old phone was offline, open Loopr on it while it's online, then reopen Loopr on the new one. The route open in the planner comes across when Loopr starts or you sign in, and a run in progress is never replaced from another phone. Photos stay on the phone that took them; notes do sync.

A route I deleted came back

Loopr remembers what you delete — only which route or place, and when — so a phone that was offline at the time removes its copy too, instead of uploading it again. A deleted route comes back only if it was edited on another phone after you deleted it (an edit is work, and Loopr never throws work away), if a phone that hadn't synced for more than 90 days comes back online with a copy, or if a phone's clock is badly wrong, which can make its copy look newer than your deletion. Check that each phone sets its date and time automatically, then delete it again, and it stays gone.

Location isn't working

Loopr needs foreground location permission for Current location and the locate button. Grant it in your device settings under Loopr. If you'd rather not, use a fixed first stop instead — everything else works without it.

The scanner won't read a label

In Address mode, fill the frame with the address block, hold steady, and give it good light. Reflective plastic sleeves and creased labels are the usual culprits. Many barcodes carry only a tracking number, which Loopr can't turn into an address — if it tells you so, switch to Address. Nothing is added until you tap a match, so if a label is read but found in the wrong place, don't tap it — type the address instead.

Subscription and billing

• What Pro includes — up to 200 stops per route instead of 10, unlimited saved routes instead of 3, unlimited saved places instead of 5, and package scanning. Optimizing, reordering, directions and sync stay free. See pricing.
• Pro needs an account — Loopr works without one, but Pro is tied to your account, which is what lets you restore it on a new phone. Sign in with Apple or Google before you subscribe.
• Restore a purchase — signed in to the account you subscribed with, go to Settings → Account → Restore purchase. Use the same Apple Account you bought it with.
• Cancel — through the App Store, not through Loopr: on your iPhone or iPad, Settings → your name → Subscriptions, or Manage subscription on Loopr's Account screen, which opens the same settings. Deleting the app, or your Loopr account, does not cancel a subscription.
• Free trial — if you're eligible, the App Store offers one when you subscribe, and shows how long it lasts and the price after it before you confirm. Loopr's Account screen shows when it ends and whether it will become a subscription. Nothing is charged until then; to avoid paying, cancel as above at least 24 hours before it ends. Deleting the app, or your Loopr account, does not cancel a trial, and a new Loopr account does not earn another: Apple gives one per Apple Account, across all three plans.
• Refunds — handled by Apple under its own policies. Write to us anyway and we'll help you ask.

Known limits

These are properties of the platforms Loopr builds on, not faults we're about to fix.

• Navigation apps get one stop at a time. Apple Maps has no waypoint parameter at all and Google Maps accepts at most nine, so Loopr keeps the route and hands over a single destination per leg. Neither hand-off can misrepresent your trip that way.
• Nothing comes back from the navigation app. There's no callback telling Loopr you arrived, so you advance the route yourself by tapping Done (or Collected, or Failed). Detecting arrival automatically would need background location, which Loopr deliberately does not ask for.
• Time at each stop changes the order only around opening times. It's counted into route totals and arrival times, so the plan reflects your day. On its own it can't change which order is fastest — the same dwell at every stop adds the same to every ordering — but once stops have opening times, it decides which orders reach each one while it's open.
• A finish time is a target, not a guarantee. Optimize plans the route to end by it, and with opening times your start time decides which stops can still be reached in time. When no order fits, Optimize plans without the finish time and tells you, and the summary shows how far over you are.
• Estimates know nothing about traffic, or about a business's real opening hours — only the opening times you enter on a stop, which arrival times wait for. Time at each stop is one number for every stop rather than per stop.

Privacy and your data

The privacy policy covers this in full. The short version: no ads, no tracking across apps, no background location. From version 1.44, Loopr reports which features are used, how fast it runs and when it crashes, under a random ID for the phone rather than your account, unless you turn off Settings → Privacy → Share usage data; Google's scanning library sends Google its own diagnostics. Package scanning reads the label on your phone, and only the address it picks out — or a code's contents — goes to address search. Loopr never uploads stop photos.

• Delete your account and everything in it — in the app, Settings → Account → Delete account. You sign in once more to confirm, and it happens on the spot. It doesn't cancel a Loopr Pro subscription or free trial, so cancel that first. What gets deleted.
• Already removed the app? Use the deletion request form, or email privacy@apploopr.com and tell us the email on the account.
• No account? Settings → Account → Delete local data erases everything Loopr has stored on the phone, apart from the few things the privacy policy lists; from version 1.44, among them your Share usage data choice and the usage reports recorded on the phone.
• Delete just your saved routes — Settings → Data → Clear saved routes. If you're signed in, they're removed from your account and your other phones too; the route open in the planner, and your account, stay.

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