c v g a t e
cvgate keeps what you write.
It does not build a map, an AI, or a calendar. Other people build those, and you already use them. cvgate is a thin layer over the ones you have — it hands off to them, it does not replace them.
★ You do not have to read this through. Open the part that is giving you trouble.
The last chapter, "One thing to remember", is worth reading once.
★ This page is inside the app as well. t → Manual....
Three pages are in there — 日本語, English, Privacy — and they read with no signal.
Trouble comes where there is no signal, so the instructions travel with you.
Only Home and Support in the bar go out to cvgate.com (Safari opens).
Those need a signal. Anything new is posted there.
＊ Two marks are used here — ★ is something to watch for, ＊ is what a word means.
cvgate keeps what you write. Everything starts with writing.
| Finger | Touch the memo field | Any time. Mix it with your voice freely |
● ^O^ |
Press to start, press again to stop | Silence does not cut you off. You can think while you talk |
2 s |
Say it, then stay quiet for 2 seconds | It cuts itself off. This is the road for saying a place name |
＊ "Recording" in this app does not mean recording sound. It means speech turned into text through the microphone. No audio is kept.
Voice and finger work at the same time. If you fix a word by hand while you are still talking, your fix stays. What follows is added after it.
● ^O^ — press to stop when you are done talkingPress it and it turns red. Press it again and two things happen:
Stopping and confirming are the same press. You do not press enter.
Silence does not cut you off, so you can search for words while you speak.
Pausing to think is fine.
2 s — when you are stuck, talk firstPress it and talk. Say a name, stay quiet for 2 seconds, and three things happen at once:
＊ The band is the window your places line up in, and it stretches and shrinks.
Two ways to change its height: the ⤓ ＋ − stacked down the right edge, and dragging anywhere to the left of the climbing figure.
It has limits — about three places at its shortest, and at its tallest it stops at the bottom edge of the writing field.
Use it the way you would ask a tour guide. The name does not have to be exact.
Before you have opened a map app, pressed its microphone and spoken, you already have the answer.
Most people reach for the keyboard first. Here you press and talk.
★ This is the one for when you cannot remember the name.
Press it and describe what kind of place it is, in what area.
Stay quiet and it cuts itself off and goes looking.
"Kyoto, the eel place near the station"
"Barcelona, the cafe across from the Sagrada Familia"
"pasta"
★ Look at the last one. Give a place and it searches there.
Say no place and it searches at your feet, where you are standing.
Say "pasta" at Gifu station and you get the pasta places around you.
Saying nothing about the place is the instruction: here.
★ No map to open, nothing to type, no list to read.
The minutes spent staring at a screen in the corner of a station turn into the minutes of walking there.
enter — confirming what you typedWhen you type with your finger, enter confirms it. Same meaning as Enter on a computer.
While recording, enter becomes a camera.
It is not there to attach a photo. It reads the text in what you shoot and adds it to the memo (OCR).
A sign a shop name or address, without typing it
A business card contact details for a hotel or a restaurant
A notice opening hours, a closure
Camera, or pick from Photo LibraryWhile recording, press ● ^O^ to confirm.
e — throwing away what you wrotee, at the right end of c v g a t e, throws away what you were writing and stops recording.
It saves you from saving something and then swiping it out of the list.
e only touches what has not been saved. A saved memo is safe.
| Date and time | the moment you pressed |
| Position | where you were then |
| Address | the address drawn from that position |
Weather is not attached automatically. cvgate does not fetch the weather.
You look up, and you say it (see "Marks and categories").
★ The body is saved first, on its own. Position and address are filled in afterwards.
Even with a bad signal, the body is never lost.
★ Only when you confirm with c does the position become the place written in the body (see "c — confirm at that place"). It does not fall back to where you are.
c — confirm at that placeFor when you are in Tokyo, writing about Fukuoka.
Write the place in the memo, press c, and the position is recorded as if you had gone there.
c works while you are recording. Press ● ^O^ and speak — or type, then press ● ^O^, and then c.
★ Use c with the name of a registered place. What it is for is moving that place to the top of the list.
A registered place brings the coordinates you checked yourself. Put in two or three and it simply picks the one with the longest name — it works every time.
Confirm with words that are not registered, and it lands on some one shop in the area you named. Which shop is up to the map.
If the map misreads the place name, it can land in another city.
Look things up with 2 s; use c for a place you have chosen (see "2 s and c look alike, but they are different tools").
Say "yakitori Kyoto Station", then c
→ the memo is saved
→ the map's best answer for those words goes in, with its coordinates and address
→ the map opens
★ If nothing in the line is registered, what lands is the map's top answer for the whole line — not the place name inside it.
"yakitori Kyoto Station" may come back with the best-known yakitori house in Kyoto, which may be in Gion rather than at the station. Short words sometimes land, but where they land is up to the map. When you mean the station itself, write the station and nothing else.
When you do not know the shops yet, look with 2 s, not c. Google Maps lists the candidates.
★ When the ear and the word come from different languages, a syllable gets swallowed by a word of the listening language (found on the device by the author). Speaking Japanese to a Japanese ear does not do this. It is for people who switch with E / J.
English ear × Japanese word yakitori-don → -don becomes "don't"
Japanese ear × English word "don't" → donto (as in donto-yaki)
It is not only that one word. The sense of the line changes, so the words after it get pulled along — "Kyoto Station" can come back as something else entirely.
yakitori-don Kyoto Station -don can become "don't"
yakitori Kyoto Station holds together, and lands on the same shop
Watch for syllables that sound like a short word in the listening language: don, umi, shi, ku get swallowed by English particles and negations.
Dropping them costs you nothing. The map finds the place from "yakitori" and "Kyoto Station" alone. Say the shortest thing that still means it. Surer still: switch the ear first (E / J).
In the list it shows orange. Blue means "I was standing there".
Orange means "I looked it up".
Even if the body names two places, only one of them answers. It tries in order:
1 If a registered place's name or keyword appears in the body, use that place
If two or more appear, use the one whose word is longest
("Kyoto" and "Kyoto Station" → "Kyoto Station")
2 If nothing matches, hand the whole body to the map
3 If that fails too, try again with the last line alone
★ A registered place wins. You checked those coordinates yourself, which makes them safer than an outside search — the same shop name exists in other cities.
★ Put a place name in. Something specific like "Kyoto Station" lands more reliably.
Long sentences do not land well, so put the place on the last line.
★ If no place could be found, the position is left empty.
Nothing is safer than the wrong coordinates.
2 s and c look alike, but they are different toolsSay the same sentence to each, and a different thing answers.
2 s Hands the sentence to Google Maps as it is
Google reads what you mean and lists the places that fit
"a cafe in Kyoto where you can have matcha" → matcha cafes, on a map of Kyoto
c Decides one place to attach to the memo
If a registered place is in the text, it uses that (step 1 above)
If not, the map picks some one shop in the area you named. You cannot tell which
★ What 2 s registers is the words you said. Say "yakiniku Kyoto Gion" and the list of yakiniku places in Gion opens,
and the Place is named "yakiniku Kyoto Gion". It is not one particular shop.
c attaches one point. The same words make different things.
★ 2 s does anything. If the wording is a little off but Google understands it, that is the right answer.
What you said stays in the memo just as you said it, habits and all.
★ c is for putting a place on a memo. Confirm with the name of a registered place,
and that place moves to the top of the list. Use 2 s to look for things, and c for a place you have chosen.
★ Even if c attached the wrong place, tapping the memo opens the sentence itself in Google Maps.
Long-press the date in the list and that body is copied into the writing field.
Right after it is copied the field is read-only, and no keyboard appears.
Copying is usually the whole point. Touch the field when you want to edit.
★ Only blue memos can be copied this way. A plan is built in its own editor, so copying one into the writing field would lead nowhere. The same long-press does something else on a plan's row (see "Trips and exporting").
★ You cannot copy while recording. What you copied would be replaced by the next result, appearing for a moment and vanishing — which only confuses.
Two of them appear at the top right of the field. They disappear entirely while you write.
| ✎ | back to writing (the keyboard comes up) |
+ |
registers the text you selected as a place |
You can select by dragging. The field is read-only, so touching it only starts a selection — no keyboard. Nothing shifts on screen, so you select without repositioning your hand.
drag across a shop or hotel name → press + → Add to Places, carrying that name
★ This is for pulling one interesting restaurant out of yesterday's memo and registering it.
Nothing has to be retyped.
★ With nothing selected, + does nothing. You can see it was a misfire, so it does not tell you about it.
In a multi-line field, return means a new line. To close it:
Either works.
A mark means what you say. A category is one of eight we fix.
A place in the band can carry one circled letter. A place with no mark shows ●.
🅢 sushi 🅕 French 🅒 cafe 🅗 hotel …
Choose them so that the first letter does the remembering for you.
If we decided that 🅢 means sushi, it would be someone else's rule.
You remember what you chose yourself.
Mark table, press the mark that suits itSavePress the same mark again and it goes back to ●.
That is one step fewer than picking "none" from a list.
● can also mean "registered, but not on this trip".
Adding and removing a mark is enough to say that.
Long-press a mark in the table and a name field opens.
🅢 [ Sushi 寿司 ]
★ A name belongs to the whole app, not to one place. You are not reserving 🅢 for this restaurant; you are deciding that here, 🅢 means sushi.
There are twenty-six of them — choose them so that you can remember them.
★ What you use it for is yours. If you want 🅢 for Steakhouse, use it for that.
We have decided nothing.
★ Two languages fit on one line. Write Hotel ホテル and either word finds it.
The table stays at twenty-six — you just write both words on one line.
★ The same field takes two ideas, if that is what the mark means to you.
Sushi Steakhouse is not a mistake: one person's 🅢 is a cuisine, another's is the food I love. Either word gathers the same places, because you decided what they share.
★ A mark with no name cannot be called by voice (see "Voice keys").
This is the one field worth filling in.
Naming them one at a time is above. When you want to see them all, press A–Z at the right of the Mark row. The same page opens from Marks A–Z in Settings — two doors, one page.
A – Z
🅐 [ Aquarium ] 0
🅑 [ ] 0
🅒 [ Cafe カフェ 喫茶 ] 8
…
🅗 [ Hotel ホテル 宿 ] 12
★ The number on the right is how many places carry that mark. Zero is shown pale, so the letters you are not using stand out — that is how you pick the next one.
★ Empty marks are shown too. The page exists to be looked over; nothing is hidden.
★ The field grows. It wraps when one line is not enough. Add as many words as you like.
★ One Save, once. However many you changed, pressing it files them all together.
Cancel closes without changing anything.
★ You do not set a place's mark here. Growing and choosing are kept apart.
Setting the mark stays where it was — the place's own screen, reached by long-press.
Close this page and you are back there.
A mark means whatever you say it means. A category does not:
you choose one of eight roots, and the app fixes the eight.
🍽️ Eat 🏨 Stay 👀 See 🌿 Rest 🚉 Move 🛍️ Buy 🚻 Need 🆘 Emergency
The emoji are in the picker. In the roster (p l a c e s l i s t), the word stands on its own, on a chip in its color.
You set it: long-press the place (unlock it first if it shows 🔒), or press a hexagon on the map and choose Class (see "The Places screen").
★ One exception: a place registered from Dictionary arrives with its category already set (see "Seven ways to find a place").
Everything else — 2 s, +, a paste, a .txt import — arrives with none.
★ A place with no category is not broken. Its hexagon is simply blue, and the roster shows no chip. The filter at the top left of the roster (a circle with three lines)
picks them up later: press it and they gather under no category (see "The Places screen").
★ So a .txt of 100 names gives you 100 places with no category — and no coordinates either, so they are not on the map yet.
Pick their coordinates up and they stand on the map as blue hexagons, and stay blue until you give them a class. Nothing is wrong with that.
What a category does:
Color on the map you reach from the Places screen, the hexagon takes its
root's color — orange for Eat, red for Emergency
Search the 🔍 at the right of the band, on the main screen, reads categories
as well as names
★ Only 🔍 does. The roster's own field reads names and addresses only (it says so: Search name or address).
★ The categories are English words. To reach them by voice, put the ear in English (the flag switches it). Typed, they match in any language.
★ You choose one; you cannot add to the list. These eight are the categories, and there is no field for a word of your own.
To divide things more finely, that is what the marks 🅐–🅩 are for.
Name one "ramen" and you can call it by voice — which a category cannot do.
(One job, one road.)
★ So, the division of labour:
mark you define it, you name it, you call it by voice
category you pick one of eight; it colors the map and answers searches
Say the name of a mark into the command microphone.
"cafe" → the 🅒 places gather at the top of the band
"hotel" → 🅗 joins them (they stack)
"hotel" → say it again and 🅗 drops out
To let go of all of them, open the climbing figure (Bring to top) and press Clear.
While something is gathered, that icon carries a color — the one you chose for Gathered marks (see "Settings").
★ Places fall into distance sections, so they gather at the top of their own section.
The band shows no dividing line — the color of each place is what tells you its section.
(see "Seven ways to find a place") A hotel 8 km away does not jump past one across the street.
★ Voice is what makes twenty-six workable.
Choosing one of twenty-six with a finger is work. Saying it is one word.
Without voice, this number would have shrunk to about six.
For when you want to compare the places you gathered and decide where to go tonight.
Stretch the band all the way up, and the gathered places (the ones with a colored frame) open Google Maps when pressed.
Look at the map, come back with ◀ CVGATE at the top left, press the next one. However often you go back and forth, the order does not move.
When you have decided, write it down.
gray ground pressed → Google Maps look, decide
white ground pressed → into the memo write
★ Places without a colored frame are written in as always.
★ Lower the band and it goes back to the map. While the band is not at its highest, every place is written in.
★ To finish, let go of the marks — say the same name again, or open the climbing figure and press Clear.
A place mark goes on a place. A weather mark goes on a memo.
☀️ ☁️ ☔️ ⛈️ ❄️ 🌫️
cvgate does not fetch it. You look up, and you say it.
Say the word into the microphone just after writing a memo and the emoji appears on that line.
When it appears, you are done.
★ The rules — how long you have, which memo it lands on, why it will not go on a place you only looked up, and how to teach it your own words — are in "Voice keys", because they are rules about the microphone.
The same word, "search", but they arrive somewhere different.
After a while your finger picks the right one without being asked.
For when you registered it once and cannot remember the name.
Press the magnifying glass at the right of the band. The search screen opens with the microphone already listening, so you can simply say it. Typing works too.
It searches the names, keywords, categories, mark names and addresses of the places you registered. A town name finds them too. Gathering by mark does not narrow it — it always searches all of them.
Pick one and the name is inserted into the memo you are writing.
The screen does not move. Carry on writing.
RedoFor when you know the inn is registered somewhere, and you want to think outward from it.
The search screen has an orange map icon at the top right.
Say a hotel's name out loud, for instance, and search for it.
If the hotel on the top row is the registered place you were looking for, press the orange map icon to confirm.
v is orange (below).★ Tapping a row and pressing the map icon are not the same thing.
Tap a row the name goes into the memo. No coordinates
Press the map name, coordinates and address go in, and the map opens.
This is the one that stands you there
★ If the one you want is not at the top, use Redo. Spot your hotel further down the list, press Redo, and say its name again (typing into the field works too). It comes to the top.
Check that it is the right one, then press the map icon.
What gets confirmed is always the top row, so bring it up first, then press.
The list can be as long as it likes: scroll to find it, Redo to raise it — two moves, and anything in the list can be confirmed.
If you press the hotel's own row by mistake, then as 1 described, its name goes into the memo.
With no match, it cannot be pressed (it stays gray).
Gray means this name is not registered. Close, and use 2 s or the waveform (4) — either one will take you somewhere you never registered.
For when your hands are full — driving, walking.
The command microphone runs on a wake word you chose yourself, followed by the command.
Say what a mark means and the places carrying it gather at the top of their own section.
What a section is, and what changes when you switch them off, is just below.
Marks, and how to name them, are in "Marks and categories".
What matters here is that this is one of the seven roads:
it only moves the places, and never leaves the screen.
★ You can also say a place's own name. That place comes to the top of the band and Google Maps opens on it at the same time (see "The name of a registered place also works", in the wake word chapter). With your hands full, one word puts the place you want at the top.
Places fall into distance sections. They come to the top of their own section.
The band shows no dividing line — the color of each place is what tells you its section.
Sections on (default) inside the 750 m section, the 🅗 places come up
a 🅗 in the 2 km section comes up inside the 2 km section
Distance comes first, and that rule is not broken.
A distant cafe never climbs over one that is close.
Sections can be turned off in Settings (Sections).
Sections off distance stops mattering; 🅗 comes up from everywhere on earth
★ Sections appear once you have set a center point — the place the band measures from.
Bring to top puts it where you are standing (6, below). To put it on a particular place, confirm with c while v is orange, or confirm with an orange map icon (see "Preparing Aid for somewhere before you go", in the Aid chapter).
Before you have ever set one, the order is the same as with sections off.
A center point never goes away — pressing another place only moves it.
★ This is sorting, not filtering. What you did not choose stays below.
Nothing looks like it has vanished, and you can still look down the list when you are unsure.
While a mark is chosen, the gathered places are ordered by distance inside their section.
The ones you did not choose keep their usual order — most recently used first.
★ The sections themselves run near to far, so the order holds across them.
Follow only the places with the chosen mark, top to bottom, and you read one clean run from nearest to farthest.
★ You can choose as many marks as you like, ● (no mark) included.
Choose every mark you use and the whole screen is in distance order.
Drop the marks and most-recently-used comes back.
The places you used in a memo most recently come up
With sections showing, they come up inside their own section.
★ So the places you use often rise on their own. Nothing has to be arranged.
For when the place is not registered — or you simply want it fast.
Press the waveform button and it starts listening at once. Say a name, press Try Maps, and Google Maps opens on the words you said. About two seconds.
The place does not have to be registered. Anywhere on earth.
cvgate does not correct a slip of the tongue or a bad transcription.
The memo keeps what it heard — but say the same words again and you arrive at the same place.
★ If the map comes back to where you are standing, that word is not there.
Nothing has gone wrong — you are being shown a fact. Not every word exists in every place:
in Canada you call a taxi with an app, so "taxi" has no pin to land on.
For when you want somewhere like this restaurant, in a city you are traveling to.
It goes in through the same door as the waveform, and further down.
It builds a sentence for the AI out of a place and a prompt you choose (Find similar restaurants, and others). What comes back becomes a memo.
This is what decides whether it works.
Name only "somewhere like [the restaurant], in Kyoto"
With an adjective "somewhere like [the restaurant] — quiet, where you can talk
to the owner — in Kyoto"
Hand over a name alone and you get back the same kind of restaurant.
Add one line about why you like it and what comes back changes.
comfortable on your own
only locals in there
prices you can read
nobody minds a child
open early in the morning
★ It does not have to be well put. If it is what you actually felt, that works best.
★ This is a tool for carrying the reason somewhere else.
The name of the restaurant means nothing abroad. The reason still does.
★ Write those words into the body of the memo and they travel, because what is handed over is the memo itself.
If nothing comes to mind on the day, add a line to that day's memo later.
For when you have just arrived somewhere and want to know what you registered nearby.
Open the climbing figure. At the top of that screen, the words Bring to top — in blue, with a ⊙ beside them — are the button. Press them and:
It is the single move for "did I have something around here?" in the middle of a trip.
The press leaves a record, so you can retrace it later.
★ It is also the first thing to do.
The bands in the strip — the color breaks — come from the distance to a center point, and no center is set to begin with. On a device where this has never been pressed, there are no bands. Add as many places as you like: the colors stay the same and the list is simply in the order you last used them.
Settings shows a row of colors while the places refuse to change, so it looks broken. It is not. There is no center point yet. One press sets it.
★ The same is true after restoring a backup. The center point does not travel — carrying an old one means standing in one city while the strip measures from another. When you move to a new device, press it once first.
For when you cannot say it.
The roads that take a word from you all take it by voice — 2 s, the waveform, the command mic. All of them assume you can say the word. In a language you do not speak, that assumption is gone. This screen is the road you press instead of speak.
t → Dictionary. A built-in list of everyday words, read in nine languages.
🇺🇸 EN 🇯🇵 JP 🇫🇷 FR 🇪🇸 ES 🇮🇹 IT 🇩🇪 DE 🇨🇳 CN 🇰🇷 KR 🇵🇹 PT
The words are grouped by category — Eat, Stay, Move, Need, and the rest.
While you are reading a language other than English, the English is shown underneath, small, so you can check what you are about to show someone.
Each word carries an Add to Places button. Press it and that word becomes a place — with its category already filled in, because this list knows what the word is.
A word you already have reads ✓ In Places instead.
★ It registers the word in the language you are reading. Switch to 🇩🇪 DE before you press, or you will have registered the English one, which the German map will not match.
★ That is how a dictionary becomes a way to find a place. Register Apotheke and from then on it is a place you can press: the map opens on that word, where you are standing.
What cvgate hands over is the name and that place's own coordinates. If it has none, just the name. Those coordinates are where the map lands. A registered restaurant in Kyoto opens in Kyoto from anywhere. A bare word carries none, so Google Maps chooses — in practice, around you. It does not inherit the last place you opened: open a Kyoto hotel, press a word, and the word still searches near you.
That is what you want from a word — and why you must not pin one. Give Apotheke coordinates in Germany and it will keep landing there, from Spain, next year.
(A word with a place name inside it is a different thing: "Kyoto kakigori" goes to Kyoto, because the place is in the text you handed over. This is why a bare word lives in the list's n/a section — see "The Places screen".)
★ The center point is not part of this.
What v and Bring to top move is the order of the places — taking a registered place's coordinates, or where you are standing, as the center, and sorting every place you have registered by how near it is. None of that reaches Google Maps.
Only the place's own coordinates travel.
(The map you reach from the Places screen — the one with hexagons — opens on the first place in the list, not on the center point itself — see "Using the map".)
★ Some rows say phrase instead. Those are whole sentences, not things with an address, so they cannot be registered. (The emergency sentences live in Aid, under Phrases.)
★ Nothing here needs a signal to read.
★ The word is a door. What you bring back through it is the place.
You do not speak German. In Germany you look up Apotheke, register it, and press it — the map opens in German, where you are standing. You pick a real shop out of the results, come back to the app, and No, but add to Places... registers that one, with its address and phone (see "The fastest way to grow your list", in "The Places screen").
The word stays a word, and keeps opening doors. The shops you found through it are ordinary places, with coordinates.
★ Google Maps opens in the local language, so what comes back is the local spelling.
Write that into a memo and you are carrying that country's word for it from then on.
The Dictionary list is fixed, and beyond it cvgate translates nothing.
It keeps what the place gave you.
One memo is enough. A plan grows out of it.
Make one memo that holds nothing but a place name. That is where the plan will go.
Press ● ^O^, then any of these three:
Press a place in the band the surest way, if it is registered
Say it just speak the name
Type it the same result
★ Registering the place first pays off. A registered place carries its address, phone and booking link, so pressing Set later fills the template on its own.
★ An unregistered place still works, as long as the exact name can be found on the map.
You just will not get the address or the phone.
○ Nihon-ryori Seizan
✕ Nihon-ryori Seizan booked
✕ Nihon-ryori Seizan No
Nothing else belongs in this one. Unlike an ordinary memo, this memo is the destination.
★ One stray word and the first line survives when the template goes in.
It still reads — but the title that reaches your calendar changes (see 📅 below).
cNow it is an orange memo.
Blue map icon an ordinary memo — where you were standing
Orange map icon a memo a plan can be built on — a place you looked up
A 🖥 appears on an orange row. Press it and the plan screen opens.
top the planned date and time (Set time) return 🕐 ◎
middle the body
bottom Read / Edit Set Undo
Set time |
the time of the booking itself. Fill it in and a moves the memo to next. It becomes the calendar's start time |
return |
closes (it asks if you changed something) |
| 🕐 | fixes the times inside the body, and URLs (only in Read) |
| ◎ | saves. It darkens only when something changed. Unchanged, it cannot be pressed |
You do not have to write it all at once. Add what is settled, as it settles.
Press 🖥 and Set time is at the top left. Start there.
For a restaurant, that is the time you booked.
Once it is filled, the ◎ on the right darkens — it can be confirmed.
A 📅 now appears on the row in the list. From here it can go to the calendar (it goes there when you press the 📅).
★ You may stop here, as a holding position.
Dates change constantly on a trip. Put the time in as soon as going is decided, and add the details later.
SetSet at the bottom loads the details of the place — address, phone, booking link.
Inside that panel there is a second Set time.
Set time, top left the booking itself becomes the calendar's start time
Set time, in the panel when you will move becomes ■ HH:mm in the body
Once the time is in, confirm again with ◎.
★ The two are not alternatives. They end up in different fields of the same calendar event — see "There are two times" for which goes where.
To keep going, press a. The memo you just wrote is in the list.
Press 🖥 again and add the next entry.
🖥 → Set → ◎ → a → 🖥 → Set → ◎ → …
★ Which means a day does not have to be built in one sitting. Add things in the order they settle.
The 🕐 at the top right (Booked times) works block by block.
time rewrites the ■ HH:mm in the body
URL writes into that block's Note line
travel press a mark under the Note line and it joins the end of the block
★ If the travel is settled when you build the plan, put it in the Set panel.
If it is not settled yet, add it here later.
★ Travel is added at the end. As many as you like, never in the middle.
To change the order, fix the body in Edit.
When you remove one, remove its Tel and Link lines too — they belong to it.
★ A URL can point at something other than the restaurant.
the site you booked through (restaurant, hotel)
a train or airline booking page
a map, or an event page
★ Put it in while you are building the plan and the change you have to make later is one press away. Those sites usually know you already: press, and you are signed in, and a booking is confirmed or moved in half a minute.
What eats the time is looking the site up again, on a phone, in a hurry.
★ URLs arrive by three routes.
Booking the place's own reservation. It arrives on its own, from the registered place
Note whatever you add yourself. One line, written by hand
Link the travel booking. Pick the company and it arrives on its own
Open Booked times and the Note line is the URL field — a chain beside it, and while it is empty a blue URL. Leave the URL out and Note stays what it was — a line for a note. It is one line, so it holds one or the other.
★ Fixing a time with 🕐 does not move the Set time at the top left (see "There are two times").
Read is the default. You open it, see the whole thing, and can call from where you are.
★ Phones and maps are only pressable in Read. If nothing responds, check which one you are in.
Set — building one entryYou do not have to write the body by hand.
Set and a panel for one entry comes upSet again and one entry is written into the bodyThe place is already in. You chose it when you wrote the orange memo.
■ 18:30 The Westin Miyako Kyoto
Address Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto…
Tel 075-…
Booking https://…
Ref booking number
Note
→ Car 21:30 G7 (15min)
Tel 075-…
→ Train 22:10 22:45 JR Nozomi 231 (35min)
Link https://…
Car, train and plane share one panel. What you fill in is what appears.
Time only → Car 21:30 G7
Minutes only → Car (15min)
Both → Car 21:30 G7 (15min)
Neither → Car
A flight can also carry the arrival time.
→ Air 20:15 11:45 ANA 231 (8h30min)
★ The flight or train number is its own field, under Choose a company.
You can write it without picking a company at all.
★ Nothing is calculated. 20:15 and 11:45 are clocks in different countries, so subtracting one from the other tells you nothing. All three are exactly what you typed.
Undo, right afterA block that has been Set cannot be reopened in the panel. Fixes are made by hand, in Edit.
To reopen one, the app would have to read the text back and refill the fields.
But you can edit the body by hand, so the text is not always in the shape it was written in.
Read it wrong, write it back, and the line you added by hand is gone.
What is never read cannot be misread. So that road does not exist.
Right after Set, though, Undo appears — for the moment you notice the wrong time.
Undo parses nothing. It only remembers the body from before, so there is nothing in it to fail.
Touch the body and Undo is gone.
Under the body, the names of the places this memo holds are listed.
① Nihon-ryori Seizan ② Goto Inuyama …
The circles standing on the map are made from this list. The numbers match.
Say you drop one entry and delete its block from the body. The link is still there.
Which is why you can see it listed here.
To remove it, press the name. It asks first.
★ Only the link goes. The circle leaves the map, but the text is still in the body. Switch to Edit and delete it by hand.
★ The two steps exist so that nothing goes by accident.
Editing the body and unlinking a place are deliberately different actions.
One plan carries two times. They do different work.
The large date and time, left the booking itself the one you write first
■ 10:50 in the body when you move the one from the `Set` panel
When you Set the first entry and the left is still empty, the block's time goes in there too.
So they start out the same. Making them differ is your part.
Left 11:00 ← the booking is at eleven
■ 10:50 the place ← but you want to be there by ten to
The car park is far. The hotel is large, and it is ten minutes from the door to the lobby.
Nobody arrives exactly on the hour. That margin lives in the body.
★ The gap itself is a note to yourself.
Looking back, you can see this was a place you needed to enter ten minutes early.
No gap means you can simply turn up.
★ Fixing the body's time with 🕐 does not move the left-hand one.
When the booking itself changes, change the left one too.
★ Long-press the date on a plan's row and it shows when the plan was written instead of the time it is planned for. Press again, or tap it, and it goes back.
Navy is the planned time, gray is when you wrote it.
A plan is built in its editor, so the long-press was free — and it answers a question you do have: when did I decide this?
Both of them reach the calendar. They land in different fields.
The event's start time 19:00 the booking itself (the large date and time)
The event's title ■ 18:45 Seizan the body's first line — the time you move
A month view lists titles, so 18:45 is what catches your eye there.
Open the event and its own time, 19:00, is sitting in it unchanged.
One event answers both questions: when to leave, and what you booked.
A plan with a date shows a 📅 on its row. Press it and it goes into the iPhone Calendar.
cvgate has no field for local time. Write the time as it is.
Open that booking in the iPhone Calendar and:
In Tokyo, entering a booking in Barcelona → it shows something like GMT+2
★ That is an iPhone feature, not something this app draws.
cvgate only hands the place's time zone over with the plan.
While traveling the phone's clock switches to local time on its own.
So there is no time difference to work out inside the app
Before you leave what you typed is on your phone's current clock
What that will be locally is on the calendar's `GMT+2` line
★ After entering a booking, open it once in the calendar and look at the (GMT+○) line.
That is the local time. If it is not what you expected, fix it there and then.
★ cvgate does not calculate the difference. The iPhone Calendar shows you both.
Nothing is computed here, so nothing can drift.
The event's title is the first line of the body — which is where the moving time travels across (see "There are two times").
★ This is the part to watch.
It holds only when the memo's first line is the place name alone.
If an unrelated word is in that line, Set does not delete it (it might be something you meant to write). And then:
First line is the name alone the line goes → title is ■ 18:45 Seizan ← the moving time arrives
First line has a stray word the line stays → title is that line itself ← it does not
A word can slip in when you dictate, or when you paste.
Delete that line in Edit, press Set, and you are back to the usual shape.
★ A memo whose first line survived shows the place name twice — the leftover line, and the template. That doubling is how you spot it.
No date, no 📅. There is no day to put it on.
Add the date and it moves to next, and only then does it appear.
Swipe the memo out of the list and the calendar event goes with it.
t → Export plan...Choose a period and take out every plan inside it.
.txt |
to send. Straight into an email to the people you are traveling with |
| to print. A monospaced face, so the columns line up |
★ The lines are the same lines. Screen, email and paper all look alike.
★ You can give it a name. The name stays, so next time you export the same trip, pressing the name fills in the dates. Deleting a name does not touch the plans.
★ Both end days go in whole. Someone who says "from the 19th"
means to include the morning of the 19th.
★ This comes with the full version. In the free version, your plans stay in your memos, and a long press copies them.
The chapter changes subject here. What follows is not about building a plan.
It is about what the list puts in front of you, and how to narrow it — and the same one setting is used by three different screens.
a — now / next / pasta, in c v g a t e, changes what the list shows.
now |
black | ordinary memos |
next |
orange | plans ahead of you (the ones with a date) |
past |
gray | plans that are over |
The moment a date goes in, the memo moves from now to next.
The date you set is what decides where it lives.
★ Press c while next or past is showing and the places in those plans appear on the map as numbered circles (see "The Places screen").
★ A half-written memo waits behind the plans. Press a with something unfinished and the band and the writing field step back, so the plans fill the screen. Nothing is lost — a small dot at the top right of the a means something is waiting. Press a back to black and you carry on where you stopped.
★ You can build a plan while recording.
Press a in the middle of talking and the plans appear. The ear stays open. The band and the writing field stay too, so you can read the plan and keep talking into the memo. Press a place and its name goes in as well. Reading, speaking and writing carry on in one screen.
If the band is high, it hides the plans. Pull the band down (the ⤓ ＋ − at the right edge, or drag to the left of the climbing figure).
★ A call does not end the recording. It waits.
During a call, iPhone gives the microphone to the phone (that is iOS, and the same in every app). While that lasts, the app waits with its ear closed, and comes back by itself when the call is over. Calls you make and calls that come in behave the same — answered, declined, or left to ring out, it comes back. So:
The call itself does not go in
After you hang up it carries on — speak and it is recorded
A phone conversation cannot be recorded. What you can do is say it back afterwards.
★ You cannot start a recording while a call is live, though. Press ● ^O^ on the o page and a red line says so (see "o"). Start it after you hang up.
★ When you want the whole screen for planning, confirm first (press ● ^O^ again).
The band, the places and the writing field all step back and only the plans are left. You get the room to work in, and the microphone stops, so it costs no battery.
o — open the plan as one page, and call from itOnly while a is orange, the e at the right becomes o — open a page.
Press it and everything next is showing opens as a single page. Nothing is left out. Scroll down to the place you want.
Phone numbers, booking sites and addresses are live. Press a number and it dials; press an address and the map opens. Nothing has to be typed again.
★ o comes with the full version. In the free version, the monitor icon on each plan opens it on its own — phone numbers and links work there too.
When the call is over, press ● ^O^ at the bottom. Three things happen:
nowSay back what you heard — the confirmation number, the directions. The words appear in the writing field, so you can see them land. They stay as a memo.
★ The ear cannot open while a call is connected. During a call, iPhone gives the microphone to the phone. That is iOS, and it is the same in every app.
Press ● ^O^ while still connected and a red line appears; the page does not close.
The call is still connected. Hang up, then press again.
Hang up, then press again. You never find out afterwards that nothing was recorded.
★ The app cannot end a call. That is the red button on the phone screen. All the app can do is know whether a call is live.
★ The mark at the top left (a square with an arrow) sends the whole page.
Press it the whole page goes on the clipboard
and iOS asks where to send it (Mail, Messages, AirDrop…)
Choose there and then. Short enough for a message, or long enough for mail — judging that is a person's work. The app does not choose for you.
Close it without sending and the copy stays on the clipboard, in case you change your mind and paste it somewhere else.
★ In black (now) and gray (past) the button is e again. One letter does not carry two jobs.
Plan several trips ahead and all of them queue up in next. Three settings narrow it.
Still “next” |
how many days a past plan stays in next (default: one month). On day three of a trip, days one and two should not fall into past |
Filtered past |
stop using past. a then circles between two |
Filtered future |
show only the plans between these two dates in next |
★ Turn Filtered future on and two date wheels appear. Both end days go in whole.
★ The circles on the map follow the same window. You can look at just the trip you are on.
★ Nothing is deleted. Switch it off and everything is back.
Still “next” — do not let the trip fade while you are in itOn a ten-day trip, if each finished plan drops into past behind you, the trip fades as you go. By day three, days one and two never happened.
So the default is one month. For a while after you come home, the itinerary is still sitting in next.
★ Change it freely, of course. Nine steps, from Today to 1 year.
Filtered past — circling between twoSwitch it off and each press of a alternates between two.
Orange plans (next)
Black ordinary memos (now)
Each press swaps the kind of memo you see. Mid-trip, when you are not looking back, this is enough.
Filtered future — do not search while you are travelingTraveling means checking, constantly.
Getting into a taxi you need the hotel's address → press `a`, it is there
Running late you want to call the hotel → one press from where you stand
Rebooking a leg the rail or airline site → open it from what you registered
Almost every day of a trip has one of these. And when it does, pressing a puts every contact you need in front of you.
Which is exactly why months of other plans mixed in there get in the way. You end up searching.
Show only Oct 1 – Nov 1 → press a, and only what you need now is listed
★ Think of it as a feature for removing scrolling.
If you have several trips planned, each period can be remembered.
1 Set From / Through
2 Press `Remember these dates`
Remembered periods are listed below. Press one and that is the window.
Kyoto, autumn 2026 Oct 10 – Oct 30 ← a trip you named when exporting
Dec 1 - Dec 28 Dec 1 – Dec 28 ← one remembered here
★ You type no name. The dates themselves are the name.
Add a step and the thing stops being used.
★ It is the same list as Named trips in the export screen.
A trip you named there appears here under that name, and the other way round.
★ Swipe left to remove one. Only the marker goes. The plans are untouched.
★ The same period cannot be remembered twice (the button reads These dates are saved).
★ Name it while exporting and the date-name is replaced by the real one.
Dec 1 - Dec 28 → export it with the title "Barcelona 2026"
Barcelona 2026
Dec 1 – Dec 28 ← the period stays
The list does not grow by one. The date-name was a placeholder.
What the list holds a name, a first day, a last day. That is all
The plans themselves untouched
So delete them whenever you like. Delete one after exporting and neither the plans nor the exported file change. Only the marker goes.
★ One small marker, three uses.
Travel mode see only that period —— during the trip
Export take out only that period —— onto paper or into a PDF
Looking back call up a past trip by its dates —— once it is over
One single "this period", used by three different screens.
The third one arrives later. Name a period and keep it, and a trip from years ago comes back whole at one press. It works like a label on an archive box — the searching disappears.
★ Powerful, and one of the thinnest layers here.
It holds a name, a first day and a last day. Nothing of the contents — only where to look. A grain of sand that opens a whole trip: the smallest form of the thin layer this manual started with.
The band is a window that stretches and shrinks. This is the room.
| The stacked-places button | bottom right of the band |
| Swipe the band right | faster when the phone is in one hand |
Say Places |
when your hands are full |
Three roads to the same place. Press if you are looking at it, swipe if you are one-handed.
★ There is a fourth door, and it opens on the map instead of the list:
c, while a plan is showing. It is further down this chapter.
Inside, your registered places are listed one to a row (the list), in the same order as the band: grouped into distance sections when there is a center point, and inside each section, the most recently used first. While a mark is chosen, the gathered places are ordered by distance inside their section (see "3. Gather by mark").
With no center point there are no sections — just most recently used first.
★ A gathered place wears a double ring (◎) around its mark. The band shows this with a colored outline, but here the chip already carries its section's color, so the shape says it instead. You no longer have to hunt by name for a place you saw in the band — follow the double rings and you are reading the distance order.
Press the 🗺 at the top right and all of them appear on a map as hexagons.
Press it again for the list of buttons.
list ⇄ map one button, as often as you like
★ What appears on the map is the places that have an address (coordinates).
Somewhere added with + a moment ago, with no coordinates yet, is in the list but not on the map.
★ Those gather in a section of their own, n/a, shown in gray and placed at the far boundary — in the band as well as here. A word registered from Dictionary lives there by design; a shop with no coordinates yet is waiting for you to open it once.
★ The face you switched to with 🗺 is remembered only while the screen is open.
Close it and open it again, and the door you came in by decides which face you get.
the stacked-places button / swipe the band right / say `Places` opens the list
`c` from a plan opens the map
★ There are two maps. Tell them apart by shape.
Hexagon this screen's map. What is there
Numbered circle a plan's map. In what order you go
cOnly in plan mode — when a is on next or past.
That is the numbered-circle map (see "Seeing a plan on the map" at the end of this chapter).
★ Pressing c on an ordinary memo (now) opens no map.
On the writing screen, c is the button that decides a place (see "Writing and confirming").
| Tap | Google Maps opens on that place. Come back and it asks "add to the memo?" |
| Long-press | the details (name, mark, address, coordinates, phone, booking, keywords, category) |
+ |
add a place |
− |
get ready to delete. Press what you want gone, then ✳︎ to do it |
✳︎ |
put what you chose into the memo (while deleting, it deletes) |
p l a c e s (the title) |
opens the roster (below) |
★ The details are exactly the same as long-pressing in the band.
A screen that behaves differently is a screen you have to learn twice.
★ A place with an address opens locked (🔒). A stray touch changes nothing — not the mark, not a field. In exchange, the phone number and the URL can be pressed:
call the place, or open its booking site, in one press from here.
To edit, press the 🔒 at the top right; it becomes 🔓 and everything is writable as before.
Close it and open it again, and it is locked again.
A name-only place (n/a) is still being filled in, so it never locks.
★ To the left of the 🔒 at the top right is a Sections On / Sections Off button. It is the same switch as Sections in Settings.
Long-press any place and you can flip it here (it shows on places with no lock, too).
A place you have just written tends to get lost inside a section. Turn it off here and the list becomes one line (most recently used first),
so you find it straight away and can give it a class and a mark (see "Sections — whether the band is divided by distance").
★ The ✳︎ carries two meanings, and one of them costs you something — so two deliberate steps come before it. Press − and it turns red:
you are now deleting. Then you choose what goes, and only then does ✳︎ act.
After that last ✳︎, it asks once (see "Free and full version").
A tap opens Google Maps on that place. That is not the end of it.
Look along the same street at places of the same kind
Find something unexpected among the search results
Abroad, this kind of detour is where the good ones come from.
Found something? Just come back to the app. It is waiting with "add to the memo?".
★ What you found while you were out there can be picked up on your way back in.
You do not have to memorise a name to bring it home.
The question has four answers.
Yes put it in the memo
Yes, and add voice comment put it in, and add to it by voice
No, but add to Places... not in the memo, but register it as a place
No nothing
★ They are ordered by how much they do. No is last because it is the button that does nothing.
★ When you are simply looking around a few known places, the question gets in the way.
Ask on / Ask off, under the title, turns it off.
The map still opens. Only the question stops.
The third one, No, but add to Places..., closes into a loop.
1 Press a registered place → Google Maps opens
2 Find a new one there
3 Long-press to copy its name
4 Come back to the app → "add to the memo?"
5 `No, but add to Places...` → the name field opens empty
6 Paste into the field → registered
Back to 1. Repeat and your list grows.
★ It becomes a matter of seconds. Not one character is typed.
Press, copy, come back — and the pasting is usually done for you.
★ The field at 5 is empty because it is for the place you found, not the one you pressed.
So nothing has to be cleared first.
★ Step 6 is usually pasted for you. Only when it is not does the screen say "long-press to paste". Long-press only then.
★ Once it is pasted, an address appears, and the coordinates come with it.
Press Add and you are done.
★ If the address is wrong — press Other matches (n). Places with the same name are listed; press one and the address is swapped for it. This is for the day the first answer is the Tokyo shop and you wanted its Kyoto branch.
There are up to 15 of them. If it is not among fifteen, the number is not the problem — something else is. The name may be written differently, the place may have opened too recently to be on the map, or it may have closed. Change how you search.
★ The first thing to try is the other spelling — the name in Latin letters, or in the local script. A well-reviewed new place in Kyoto gave fourteen wrong answers in katakana and the right one on the first try in English. Which spelling the map holds differs from place to place.
★ The name field is left alone when you pick another one. What is in it is the text you pasted. Picking again settles which place it is, not what you call it.
p l a c e s — the rosterPress the title and you get a screen that reads your registered places with everything they hold.
128 places
The place [ Eat ]
─────────────────────────────
Keywords sushi, evening, book ahead
Address Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto…
Tel 075-… ← pressable
Booking https://… ← pressable
Coordinates 35.001234, 135.767890
Last used Sep 14, 2026 19:30
Source Places
★ This is the only place the contents can be checked. No band, no map here — the name and what it carries, and nothing else.
★ The phone number and the booking link are pressable. Anything you registered beforehand — an insurer, an embassy, a taxi firm, an airline — can be reached from here.
For anything not in your itinerary, this is the only door.
★ Which is to say: the things that are not in your itinerary are the ones worth registering.
The contacts you hope never to need are the ones you will have no time to look up.
★ For a hospital, look in Aid, not here.
On the road, the Aid set taken from where you are standing is the surer answer (see "Aid").
★ The field at the top searches names and addresses only — unlike the 🔍 search, which also reads keywords, categories and mark names.
★ Press the filter at the top left (a circle with three lines) and only the ones missing something are listed, in two groups.
12 no category no category yet
40 missing details no coordinates, or no phone
Categories come first: that one is a single tap to fix, while a phone or a coordinate may need looking up. If both are empty it says Nothing is missing.
Checking 500 entries by eye is not possible, so the machine lists them.
★ Long-press a row and you can fix it there. The same screen opens as when you long-press a place in the band (category, mark, name, address, phone, booking).
Save or Cancel, either way you are back in the roster. A light tap does not open it — that one is for the phone number and the booking link.
★ Words live there too, and they are meant to. Anything registered from Dictionary has no coordinates on purpose, so it will always be counted here.
Read N need work as "N rows with a hole in them" — for a word, the hole is the feature.
★ Source says where the name comes from — Built-in Dictionary for a word the app already knew, Places for something you added. That is how you tell a word from a name in this list, without guessing.
★ An empty field shows —. So that empty is something you can see.
★ Aid's hospitals, pharmacies and police are not in here. Those are a different shelf (see "Aid"). What is listed here is what you registered.
The pins stand as hexagons, and each one carries three things.
Color what kind of place it is — its category. No category: blue
Letter your mark
Filled the mark currently chosen; outline: everything else
★ With 🅗 and 🅢 visible on the map, you can put a taxi route together where you stand.
A mark does not say "what I am looking for" — it says what is there.
★ One hexagon wears a double outline — white, and its category's color around that. It is the first place in the list — the one the map centers on when you open it. Its letter is a little larger and outlined in black.
The size is not saying it matters more; it marks where the map is looking from.
★ How that "first place" is decided:
No mark chosen the most recently used place in the innermost section
A mark chosen the nearest place carrying that mark
The center point itself never appears on the map. What appears is the one place chosen from around it. Moving the center point (c while v is orange, or Bring to top) changes which places fall into the innermost section, and the first place is picked again from those.
★ To look at a place you have in mind, set the center point, then choose a mark. While a mark is chosen the most-recently-used memory steps aside, and you get pure distance order from that center.
Press a hexagon and two things appear.
Google Maps (blue) |
opens the map on that place |
Class (orange) |
changes its category on the spot |
Two buttons, top right.
| ✳︎ (far right) | back to the main screen |
| ☰ (next to it) | back to the Places screen (the list) |
The round button at the bottom right.
The map opens on the same center as the list — the center the list is sorted around.
Press this when you want to see where you actually are.
Press it again and the original center comes back.
★ While you walk, it follows you.
+)Search type a name and choose from the map's suggestions
Paste paste a name you copied
Instagram / X open them, copy a name, come back
Import a .txt add many at once (below)
★ If something copied on a Mac or an iPad has arrived, it says so.
.txtPrepare a text file with one name per line, and nothing but names.
Nihon-ryori Seizan
Goto Inuyama
Dominique Bouchet Kyoto Le Teppanyaki
L'Àpat del Prat
| Format | plain text (.txt), saved as UTF-8 |
| Each line | the name only. No addresses, no phone numbers (those come later) |
| Lines | up to 100 |
| Line length | up to 100 characters |
★ Empty lines are skipped, and surrounding spaces are trimmed. It does not have to be tidy.
★ The same name goes in once. Twice in the file, or already registered — either way, one. At the end it tells you how many went in and how many were skipped.
Added: 23 places.
Skipped (duplicates): 4
★ No coordinates or addresses arrive at this point. You get name-only places — no category either. With no coordinates they sit in the n/a section of the roster.
Long-press one, press Search Auto or Manual, and address, coordinates and phone arrive; the mark and the category are set in the same place. Filled in, it leaves n/a for a distance section.
★ That advice is for named places. Do not do it to a word registered from Dictionary: a pinned Apotheke keeps landing on that spot — from the next country, and the year after (see "Seven ways to find a place").
★ Registering a shop you found through the word is a different thing entirely, and it is the point of the exercise. That shop is its own place, with its own coordinates.
The word is untouched.
★ The roster's filter (the circle with three lines) counts missing categories too (the no category group). Giving them a class is still a separate pass, whenever you feel like it — forget, and that group remembers for you.
Press a for next (orange) or past, then press c.
The places in those plans appear as navy circles with numbers.
① ② ③ … the order you entered them
Filtered future in Settings and only the trip you are on is drawn★ c has not changed meaning. c is always "place".
On a writing screen you decide a place; on a reading screen you look at one.
The noun stays; the verb follows the screen.
It reads with no signal. This one screen is built that way.
The numbers you hope you never need are the ones already here.
Press g and there is the Aid chain along the bottom of the screen. It reads one of three ways.
Aid — works offline nothing gathered yet
Aid — searching… gathering now
Inuyama · 7 · Aug 25 you have a set (nearest place, how many, the day it was gathered)
Press it and it opens. Each place you visit stays on, linked to the one before — which is why it is called a chain (see Other areas below). g is the button for finding things. Ordinarily it finds restaurants;
when something is wrong, it finds help. Your thumb goes to the same place either way, so there is nothing to look for while you are rattled.
★ It says works offline only while you have no set at all. The line is there so that you will open it when you have no signal — someone who does not know that gives up the moment the bars disappear. Once you have a set, it shows you the set instead.
| SOS | large, red. The emergency number for that country |
Police (the number stands beside it) |
only in countries where the police have their own number (not where 112 or 911 covers it) |
Checked Aug 2026 (the red line below) |
the month the emergency numbers were checked |
Phrases |
sentences to show someone |
My card |
what is true of you (allergies, blood type, contacts…) |
Hospital / Pharmacy / Police |
name, address, phone. Press to call |
Other areas |
the sets for other towns. Nearest first. Press one to swap to it |
Refresh |
look again, from where you are now |
★ SOS is sized so that you have to mean it.
A screenful of red catches the thumb of someone reaching to go back.
★ Phrases and My card are a pair.
One is what you say; the other is what you are. Write My card before you travel.
Pressing does not connect you. iOS always stops at a confirmation.
That is not there to be inconvenient. A wrong call to an emergency line occupies it, and in that moment somebody who needs it cannot get through.
⚠ Emergency number not verified
Please check the local emergency number.
The places below are saved on this phone and work offline.
It once said "if in doubt, dial 112". That was removed.
"112 works everywhere" is not true, and the person it fails has nothing left to try.
Say what cannot be given, and point at what can.
Even with no number, the hospitals below are on the phone. They read with no signal.
Press g, and if there is no set for that town, one is gathered.
3 hospitals / 2 pharmacies / 2 police ← at most; a small town gives fewer
g in that town quietly gathers it again.★ Gathering needs a signal. Reading does not.
★ A set older than six months shows its date in orange. Whether to renew it is yours to decide.
A set for somewhere you are not going can stay old.
It is better than nothing, and the orange tells you it is from last year.
Other areas row left (it asks)Delisted (n) and swipe that row left (Restore)★ This is the one thing here that cannot be gathered again.
Everything else on this screen can be rebuilt from the network in a few seconds — the hospitals, the numbers, the phrases. But "this pharmacy has closed" is something you found out, by standing in front of it. Refresh would bring it straight back.
The dropped list is what keeps your finding.
★ It can be put back because a place is sometimes shut for refurbishment, not for good.
★ The list stays folded, and shows only a count. Someone opening this screen in a hurry should not be reading the names of hospitals that have closed.
A road that exists only when you turn it on (t → Settings... → Aid; off by default).
Prepare Aid for a place
v so it is orangegWhich place? The current center point — set by pressing an orange map icon, or by confirming with c, in both cases while v was orange. Failing that, it is the topmost memo with an orange map icon, in the now list (the memo list on the launch screen).
With neither, nothing is gathered and it says so:
No place to prepare. Confirm a place with c first, or open its orange map pin.
It will not quietly use where you are standing.
So the two steps (v then g) are enough when the center point is already where you are going.
The walkthrough below is how to put it there.
That place's emergency numbers and phrases are gathered, and v goes back to black.
The color tells you it has been used.
Orange a place confirmed with c (= a place you looked up)
Blue a place you were standing in
v is the switch that says pretend I am there.
Words alone do not show the shape of it, so walk through it once.
You are traveling to Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto and will spend a few hours there.
Before the trip, register Kiyomizu-dera as a place. One place appears.
1 With the memo writable, press the Kiyomizu-dera place once
→ Kiyomizu-dera goes into the memo
2 Press ● ^O^ once
→ the button turns red, and so does the c above it
3 Press v so it turns orange
→ orange means Virtual
4 Press c to confirm
→ Kiyomizu-dera becomes the center point, and your places reorder around it
5 Press g
→ the Aid set for Kiyomizu-dera is gathered (3 hospitals, 2 pharmacies, 2 police)
★ Skip 3 and nothing reorders.
After 2 you can press c and the memo will still carry Kiyomizu-dera's position.
But while v is black the center point does not move, so the Aid around it cannot be gathered.
v comes before c.
★ The confirmation at 4 opens the map straight away. Come back and carry on.
"Standing in that town for a moment" is the whole point, so confirming and going are not split.
★ What was gathered stays on the phone. On the day, it reads with no signal.
A prepared area is marked with v in the list.
It clears when you actually arrive and it is gathered again.
★ Leaving this setting off is fine. v is a switch for reordering Places, and hanging Aid on it as well makes an ordinary press confusing.
★ It works at every stop, before you arrive at any of them.
The virtual position is not for one town. However many places you are going, you can stand in each of them beforehand and collect what you will need.
Not searching once you arrive — having it already, when you do.
We do not correct the mishearing. We make it the key.
Say CVGATE and the iPhone comes back with CB GATE. It does that to English speakers too.
Try to teach it the right spelling and you will be at it for ever.
So it is turned around: whatever came back is registered as the key. From then on it matches.
★ What you register is not the spelling you want — it is what your iPhone actually returned.
★ One command can carry as many keys as you like. Say it three times and you have three.
Any of them opens the same command.
t → Voice Keys...1 Choose a command, press Speak
2 What it heard appears
3 Press it and it becomes a key
4 Say it again and you have another
This is not a screen you type into. It is a screen you talk to.
★ Say it a few times, a little differently each time.
Walking, in wind, tired — what comes back changes.
The more keys, the wider the surface you can hit.
Choose words that do not sound alike, not words that mean different things.
gem and gym too close
place and plan too close
The recognizer knows nothing about meaning. It hears sound.
Press the microphone once and it stays open until its time runs out. You do not hold it down. How long it stays open is set by Listen for (one minute by default).
When the time is up it closes on its own.
So everything you say reaches it — talk with a companion, thinking aloud.
Speech alone does not say whether it is a command. So you say one fixed word first.
That is the wake word. Only what follows it is read as a command; the rest is dropped.
"<wake word> cafe" in one breath
"<wake word>" … "cafe" the wake word, then the command within 5 seconds
The color of the microphone says which of the two you are in.
| Red | listening. The gate is still shut |
| Green | the gate is open (5 seconds) |
★ It does not have to be cvgate. Every command passes through here, so use the word your iPhone hears most reliably — and one you would never say while dictating a memo — because the gate opens on it whether you meant it as a command or not.
The app's name and your wake word are allowed to be different things.
Wake word |
the wake word. This one first |
Gem Finder |
same as g |
Places |
opens the Places screen |
Aid |
opens Aid |
Phrases |
opens Phrases — the sentences you show someone (see "Aid") |
Save memo |
saves the memo you are writing |
Try Maps |
only while the waveform is listening. Saves, and opens the map |
v (virtual sort) |
flips the v button. Say it again to flip it back |
Language |
swaps to the language you used before |
Waveform |
opens the waveform screen, which starts listening as it opens |
★ The names of your marks ("cafe", "hotel") work in the same microphone.
Those need no registering — the name you gave the mark is the key (see "Marks and categories").
★ Misheard? The name field takes more than one word. Write the spelling your iPhone returns beside the one you meant — the same field that holds two languages.
That is how you widen a mark's surface, without registering anything.
When a phrase matches no command and no mark, it is tried fourth as the name of a place you have registered. No separate voice key has to be registered — the name on the chip is itself the key.
A hit does four things at once.
one the name goes into the memo
two Google Maps opens on that place (a pin drops)
three the memo keeps an orange map icon — a virtual location
four the center point moves there, and the band reorders by the new distances
★ It is the same road as c (the right-hand microphone), with one difference: c has to find the place from what you said, while this one does not have to look — the chip already carries its coordinates. Only a chip with no coordinates is looked up by name.
★ There is no second way of saying it. "Just show me the map" and "stand there" were not split apart; it always stands there. If you did not want it, delete the memo — and in exchange every name you spoke stays in your memos, so you can walk back through them later.
★ While a mark is chosen, only places carrying that mark are searched. Say a hotel's name with W gathered and nothing happens. Drop the mark first.
★ The center point moves, so the band reorders. That is not a fault — it is the same thing that happens when you confirm with c while v is orange (see "The Places screen", "How that first place is decided").
The recognizer is a different machine for each language.
A key registered in Japanese does not come back in English mode.
If you use Language (the swap), register on both sides.
Register "inglés" in Spanish → you can get to English
Register "Spanish" in English → you can get back
One side only, and you can go but not return.
Say rain, or sunny — one word, nothing else — and it goes in.
Where it goes is the memo you have just finished.
Which memo one with a blue map icon (an ordinary memo, taken where you stood)
When within one minute of confirming it
How many the newest one with no weather yet, and only that one
★ It does not go on an orange memo — a place you decided with c.
Weather is what you felt, there, that day. If you could put rain on a Kyoto memo from Tokyo, it would not be an observation.
★ Nor on anything older than a minute. If you could add this morning's weather at dinner, it would be recollection, not observation.
Clearing has the same minute, so the way to say it again is always there.
★ With nowhere to put it, it says so (No memo from the last minute is waiting for weather.)
★ It only passes when the whole utterance is the weather word.
"It's raining" and "rain tomorrow" do not. Saying one word, alone, is not something conversation does.
★ And what goes in is one emoji, on one memo, removable with a long press.
Putting it back is cheaper than guarding the door.
★ The words are yours to add. rain and sunny are only the start — write the way you actually say it in the weather field in Settings.
Nothing here needs registering as a voice key: these words are matched directly.
It closes when nothing can follow, and stays open when something can.
Weather went in → closes (a full stop; nothing follows)
Try Maps went out → closes (you are going to look at a map)
Gem Finder opened → stays (something does follow)
★ You know it closed because the emoji appeared. Nothing else announces it.
The same thing is not said in two places.
★ There is also a ceiling. The microphone closes after Listen for minutes even when nothing happens at all.
What you are holding is visible before you press anything.
t → Backup
Export |
writes everything into one file. iCloud Drive, or anywhere else |
Restore from a file |
reads that file back |
Last export |
the day you last exported. So you can see how many days are unguarded |
Below that, the count of what would go into a backup made now.
In this backup
Places 128
Place keywords 340
Memos 512
Places in plans 3
Saved dates 2
Delisted places 2
Aid areas (names only) 7
Settings 4
Symbol meanings 11
Weather words 6
Voice keys 23
Gem prompts 5
And below that, what is not carried, by name.
★ Most apps do not show you this page. This one does.
If you cannot see what you own before you export it, you cannot tell whether it is safe.
The exported file has a README at the top.
Without the app, the same numbers can be read as text.
app cvgate
exportedAt 2026-09-16 ...
counts Places 128 / Memos 512 / ...
notCarried Aid places ... / Calendar links ... / ...
★ You can check that a file is the real thing without opening the app.
| Aid's hospitals, pharmacies, police | addresses and phone numbers go stale. The area travels as a name, and fills itself when you open Gem Finder there — with a signal |
| Calendar links | an event's id belongs to one calendar on one phone |
| The built-in dictionary | it comes with the app |
| Photos | this app holds none |
| Band height, center point, last export date | the phone's state, not your choices |
★ Nothing is dropped silently. What was left out is named on screen, with its reason.
★ Aid areas travel as an empty shell. The emergency numbers and the phrases come from the country alone, so those are never lost. The hospitals fill themselves the next time you press g in that town, with a signal — or beforehand, with v → g (see "Preparing Aid for somewhere before you go").
Swipe away the areas you do not want.
Three things live around Aid, and one sentence sorts them:
carry what cannot be got back; leave what can.
Aid places (hospitals…) can be fetched again, and go stale → not carried
Aid areas the towns you actually walked → the shell travels
Delisted cannot be fetched again → carried
A closure is not in the map data. A hospital in Vancouver had shut; there was no way to know but to stand in front of it and check the local map against what the app was holding.
The app can never derive that again.
So Delisted does not sit with Aid's data. It sits beside Places:
Places a record of where you went
Delisted a record of where it was no use going
★ Change phones without it and it is all gone — and you find out it is gone in an emergency, after walking to that hospital.
★ This is why Refresh respects it (see "Aid"). The list holds something the network does not know, so the network is not allowed to overwrite it.
Choose a file and it asks first.
File: 128 places, 512 memos
This phone: 40 places, 200 memos
Replace deletes the 40 places, 200 memos and 2 delisted places on this phone.
Add keeps them and skips anything already here.
Replace |
deletes what is here and puts the file's contents in |
Add |
adds. Anything already here is skipped |
Cancel |
nothing happens |
★ Replace is narrower than it sounds. It swaps only what is swapped as a whole:
your places (with their keywords), your memos, and your delisted list.
Everything else on that count is added to what you already have, or left alone.
Delisted goes with Places because they are one record — where you went, and where it was no use going. Swapping half of that would leave closures attached to shops that are no longer there. The file carries both, so both are swapped together.
Voice keys, weather words,
prompts added to yours. Nothing of yours is removed
Aid areas never deleted. Losing a town you walked is not a restore
Mark names, settings one value each, so they cannot sit side by side —
the file's wins. What the file does not carry is left alone
Voice keys are safe for the same reason they are worth having: you made them by speaking, walking, in wind — there is no way to type them back.
★ A mark's name is also its voice key (see "Voice keys"). If a restore renames one — your 🅢 was Steakhouse, the file says Sushi — then saying the old word stops gathering anything. Say the new name, or write the old one beside it in the field: that field holds more than one word.
★ When the phone is empty — exactly zero — it says Replace is safe.
One single item and it will not say that, because that item is something you wrote.
The delisted list counts as an item: a phone with no places and no memos but five closures in it is not empty, and will not be called safe.
Replace| When | |
|---|---|
| You moved to a new iPhone | It is empty. You will see Replace is safe. |
| You want a second iPhone you haven't used for a while to match this one | Its old contents go, and it becomes the same as the file |
| You deleted or changed something by mistake | Replace what is here with a file you exported earlier. Anything added after that export is lost |
To add to what is here and keep it, use Add.
★ It is one file, handed over. No iCloud sync is involved,
so it works between iPhones with different Apple IDs.
Export on the first → put the file where the other can open it (iCloud Drive, for example) → Restore from a file on the other.
There is no rule, but there is a measure.
Look at Last export, and ask whether losing everything since then would be all right.
If it would not, export now. It is one file.
t → Settings...
Ordered from the top by how often you touch them.
Text size Standard / Large / Larger
Long typing tires the eyes; this is for that. It enlarges almost every word on the screen by the same step — memos, plans, the places in the band and on the Places screen, place details, Add to Places, Aid, Gem Finder, Find a place, Dictionary, Voice keys, Export plan, Backup, and Settings itself.
★ It adds to your iPhone's text size. If you have already made the iPhone's text larger, this goes one step further. There is a ceiling so it never becomes absurd, and it is never smaller than the size you chose on the iPhone.
★ After changing it, close the screen you are on and open it again.
★ Larger places mean fewer of them fit on a line. At the same band height you see fewer, so raise the band with +. The buttons on the right (+ − 🔍 mic, waveform)
move down with the rows on their own. The button icons keep their size — you aim at them rather than read them.
★ The table of marks, the phrase you show someone in Phrases, and the keyboard-down mark keep their size: the table has a fixed shape, the phrase is already as large as it gets, and the mark is a picture. The text inside the PDF that Export plan writes keeps its size too — it is set separately so the columns fit on paper.
★ With larger text, where the band stops can drift a little from the bottom of a memo.
Press + or − once and it measures again and lines up.
Hide older memos switch it on and a "From" wheel appears
Memos written before the day you choose are hidden from the main screen.
Choose the first day of a trip and only that trip's memos remain.
★ The day you choose is visible, which makes it read as "the trip from this day".
★ How many are hidden is shown in the description. A setting whose effect you cannot see is a dangerous setting.
★ Nothing is deleted. Everything is in the Memo Archive (t).
While they are hidden they cannot be swiped away by accident either.
Switch it off and they are all back.
★ The switch and the date are kept separately. When the trip is over, switch it off — the date is remembered.
Still “next” how many days a past plan stays in next (default: one month)
Filtered past stop using past. a circles between two
Filtered future show only the plans between these two dates in next
From / Through the two dates
Remember these dates remember this period
Saved dates the periods you remembered. Press one and that is the window
★ Still “next” — on day three of a trip, days one and two should not fall into past.
Last year's trip stays in past regardless.
★ Filtered future — this is for when several trips are planned ahead.
Both end days go in whole. The circles on the map follow the same window.
★ Saved dates is the same list as Named trips in the export screen.
"Trips and exporting" has the detail.
★ All three act on next and past only. They do nothing to the memos on the main screen.
★ Filtered past and Filtered future come with the full version. In the free version they are gray.
Sections off, and it becomes one flat list (most recently used first)
★ You can also flip it from the button left of the 🔒 when you long-press a place.
★ Turning it off changes how you search.
on places sort by distance from where you stand → search by distance
off the distance ruler is removed → search by what it is
While the sections are there, a mark you gather can only rise within its own section.
A far place stays far. Turn them off, and the marked places come to the very top.
★ Use it to dig out a place you lost.
A place you forgot you saved is usually buried far away. Turn Sections off,
gather a mark from Bring to top, and it rises regardless of distance.
★ It is also the quickest way to see No mark.
Words from Dictionary, and places with no coordinates yet, live in n/a
(the farthest section). With sections on they cannot leave it. With sections off
they come to the top.
★ Inside the gathered group the order is most recently used first — so the ones
you have not used sit lowest. If you are looking for something you lost,
look at the bottom of the gathered group.
Six boundaries, each chosen. The unit is km or mi.
★ The smaller the town, the smaller the numbers.
In Kyoto, 300 m / 1.1 km / 2 km work well.
★ The outermost number does two jobs. It is where "another town" begins, and it is also where the n/a section sits — the places with no coordinates (see "The Places screen").
★ Remember these distances — all six at once. Remembered sets are listed below under Saved distances; press one and all six boundaries change together.
Swipe left to remove one.
★ They are not named. The numbers are the name — the same idea as the colors.
A set appears as 300 m · 1.1 km · 2 km · 4.5 km · 15 km · 45 km, and that row is all of it:
only the numbers are kept. The town a set was made for is not recorded.
★ The unit is not part of a set. Only the numbers are kept, so a set is shown in km if you read in km, in mi if you read in mi. Pressing one does not change that.
Marks A–Z 12 / 26
All twenty-six marks and what each one means, on one page. The number is how many you have named. What it does is in "Marks and categories" (see "All twenty-six on one page").
★ The same page opens from A–Z in a place's own screen.
A color per section, shown exactly as it will look (with white text on it).
★ The default is darker the closer it is. Pale colors lose their white text outdoors.
★ The color of Gathered marks — the places pulled up by a mark, by voice or by the climbing sheet — is chosen here too. It is not the Bring to top button in the band, which recenters the list on where you are.
★ Remember this set — all seven at once. Remembered sets are listed below;
press one and the whole scheme changes. Swipe left to remove one.
★ They are not named. The swatches are the name. Adding a step where you type would cut down the number of times you try one — and trying is the whole point.
Keep visible 3 memos / 2 memos / 1 memo / None
When the band is pulled all the way up, how many rows of memo stay above it.
None leaves only the writing field.
★ The limit is decided the moment you take hold. Otherwise a memo could move mid-pull and thrash under your finger.
Prepare Aid for a place off by default
→ the end of the "Aid" chapter. Leaving it off is fine.
Language |
the language you are speaking now. Every flag in the app is this one setting — in t, on the search screen, on the waveform screen. Many doors, one room |
Offline dictation |
whether that language can be heard without a signal, as far as we can tell |
Default |
the language at launch. Set current as default makes it this one |
Listen for |
how long the command microphone stays open (1 / 3 / 6 minutes; one by default) |
Voice Keys |
→ the "Voice keys" chapter |
★ Offline dictation is an indication, not a promise.
can be typed ≠ can be heard
can be heard ≠ can be heard with no signal
iOS decides this, and this app cannot change it.
Test it in airplane mode before you travel.
For each of ☀️ ☁️ ☔️ ⛈️ ❄️ 🌫️, you can add the way you say it.
Japanese and English are there from the start (they are the faint text).
For another language, add yours here, separated by spaces.
The built-in words stay whatever you add.
At the very bottom of Settings. Full Version buys it; Restore Purchases brings it back. (See "Free and full version".)
The free version takes you through one trip, start to finish. Only places are counted: up to 26. There is no limit on nights or days.
Free Full version
Places up to 26 no 26-place limit
Memos, Hide older memos no limit no limit
Backup everything everything
Still “next” yes yes
Open plans one by one yes yes
Filtered past / future — yes
o (the trip on one page) — yes
Export plan — yes
t → Settings... → Full Version at the bottomBuy once and it is yours to keep.
You can also buy from the Full Version button in the notices.
Restore PurchasesWith the same Apple ID, one press brings the full version back. Then restore your backup and every place comes with it.
2 s tells you once, when the 26th place is saved
from the 27th on, only the new place is not saved
the memo stays and the map still opens; each time, it tells you
+ tells you right there, as you try to add it
.txt, restore brings in up to 26 and says how many more there are.
The rest stays in the file
★ Nothing you have is removed. Memos and search keep working. Only adding a new place stops.
★ Words from the Dictionary (pharmacy, toilet…) are not counted.
★ Delete a place, and there is room again.
On the Places screen, − → choose what goes → ✳︎, and it asks first.
Delete “Kiyomizu-dera”?
It is in 3 memos. There it will lose its color
and its place in In this plan. The text, phone and links stay.
In the memos that used it, the name loses its color and drops out of In this plan. The text, phone numbers and links stay.
In the free version, Keep it — full version is offered too.
The buttons along the top need almost no learning.
enter |
the same Enter as on a computer. Confirms |
^O^ |
a face, talking. Press it to record |
2 s |
the only new one. A microphone that ends itself after two seconds of silence |
2 s is the one rule this app has of its own. Learn that, and the rest of that row you already know.