1. Welcome to Etappe#
Etappe is a travel planner for iPhone and iPad. Before we get to buttons and fields, this chapter sets the scene: what the app is built for, which jobs it deliberately leaves to others, and how to find your way around this manual.
1.1 What Etappe is for: your travel memory#
A trip produces paperwork that ends up scattered across your email inbox, notes app, photo library and glove compartment: the address of the vacation home, the ferry booking number, the slip of paper with the door code, the fuel receipt, the dog’s vaccination record. Etappe gathers all of it in one place and keeps it within reach — even when there is no signal out in the back country.
The structure follows this idea:
- Records you set up once: countries, people, pets, vehicles, packing list templates and your home. After that they are ready for every trip.
- A Trip is the bracket around everything else: accommodations, journeys, activities, outdoor activities, budget, packing list, to-dos, entry checklist, documents and reminders.
- On the road you work with “Today”, the calendar, the map and the journal — that is, with whatever is coming up right now.
- At a glance, the Overview, Alerts and “Where I’ve been” show what you have prepared and what is still missing.
Everything lives on your device. The app keeps working without an internet connection; only map tiles and the one-time country download need one. If you use iCloud, Etappe syncs your data between your devices through your private iCloud database — see iCloud sync.
1.2 What Etappe deliberately doesn’t do (no booking, no navigation, no recommendations)#
Etappe is deliberately narrow in scope. Four things the app does not do:
- Not a booking portal. You keep booking wherever you like. In Etappe you record what came of it: booking status, booking number, price, address, attachment. Prices are never looked up or compared.
- Not a navigation device. The map shows what you have planned — it does not tell you when to turn. From “Today” you can hand the next destination over to your route planner (set under Settings, with Apple Maps as the fallback). That app then does the guiding.
- Not a recommendation engine. There is no “Top 10 near you”. What you find interesting, you collect yourself under Research and turn into an accommodation, journey or activity when you need to.
- No data sharing. Etappe requires no sign-in and creates no account. Your data leaves the device only when you export or share it — or sync it through your own iCloud. Details in Your data.
On top of that: no subscription. After the trial, the full version is a one-time purchase (Trial and full version).
1.3 Who the app is for — road trip, camper, family, traveling with a dog#
Etappe is built for trips made up of many separate parts — not for the package flight with transfer.
| If this is how you travel | what helps you most |
|---|---|
| Road trip with many stops | Sketch, journeys and map |
| Motorhome or caravan | Vehicles with dimensions, consumption, documents and service log |
| Family or group | People with ID documents and vaccinations, packing list per person |
| Traveling with a dog or cat | Pets with EU pet passport, rabies status and deworming treatment deadlines |
| Hiking, cycling, sports | Outdoor activities with GPX import, elevation profile and walking time |
| Vague ideas without a date | Trip status “Considering” and “Bucket list” |
The chapters that go with these are Sketch, Journeys, Map, Vehicles, People, Packing list, Pets, Outdoor activities and Core concepts.
Etappe is a poorer fit if you are looking for an app that suggests destinations, books accommodations or navigates you live.
1.4 How this manual is organized#
The manual follows the course of a trip:
| Part | Chapters | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | 1–5 | Orientation, installation, the interface, core terms, purchase model |
| Setting up records | 6–11 | Countries, people, pets, vehicles, templates, home |
| Planning a trip | 12–24 | From creating the trip to reminders |
| On the road | 25–30 | Today, calendar, map, recording, journal, quick actions |
| Keeping an overview | 31–33 | Overview, alerts, country statistics |
| Sharing, printing, backing up | 34–37 | Exports, backup, storage, iCloud |
| Security and privacy | 38–39 | App lock, how your data is handled |
| Settings at a glance | 40 | Every setting explained |
| Appendix | 41–45 | Calculations, FAQ, glossary, what’s next, legal |
You don’t have to start at the front. To get going, Installation and first launch and Core concepts are enough; after that you can jump straight to the chapter that describes the problem you have right now.
Two conventions run through the whole manual: paths through the app are written with arrows (“More → Help → Getting started”), labels of buttons and fields in bold. Wherever Etappe does the math — walking times, budget status lights, deadlines — the formula is in How Etappe does the math. Unfamiliar words are explained in Glossary, and if something gets stuck, FAQ and troubleshooting will help.