Help & User Guide

You can sign up for tripcode in several ways:

• Email & password — enter your email and choose a password (minimum 6 characters).
• Google Sign-In — tap the Google button to sign in with your Google account.
• Apple Sign-In — tap the Apple button to sign in with your Apple ID.
• Magic link — enter your email without a password and we will send you a one-time sign-in link.

After signing up with email, you will receive a verification email. Tap the link inside to confirm your account.

After creating your account you will complete three quick setup steps:

• Travel style — choose the styles that describe you (Backpacker, Comfort, Luxury, Adventure, Cultural, or Relaxation), your pace (Slow & Steady, Balanced, or Action-packed), and experience level.
• Interests — pick at least 3 interests from tags like Hiking, Diving, Photography, Food & Wine, Nightlife, History, and more. These help us match you with trips and travellers.
• Profile — add your name, a short bio, and a profile photo. This is what other travellers see when you apply to trips.

After signing up with email, check your inbox for a message from tripcode. Tap the verification link to confirm your account. If you do not see the email, check your spam or junk folder. You can request a new verification email from the sign-in screen.

The Discover tab is your main feed of available trips. At the top of the screen, tab chips let you switch between views:

• All Trips — every public trip, sorted with the nearest upcoming trips first.
• Featured — trips highlighted by hosts or travel operators.
• My Trips — trips you are hosting and trips you have joined.
• For You — trips matched to your interests and travel style.
• Following — trips from travellers you follow.
• Saved — trips you have bookmarked.

Use the search bar to find trips by destination or title, and apply filters to narrow results by interests or maximum budget.

The Map tab shows trips as pins on an interactive map. Pins cluster together when you zoom out and expand when you zoom in. Tap any pin to preview that trip.

You can filter by interests, maximum cost, and status. The Nearby tab uses your location to find trips within a radius you choose (50 km to 1,000 km). A heatmap overlay shows areas with the most trip activity.

Trips have one of two join modes, set by the host:

• Approval mode — tap Apply on the trip or swipe right on its card in the Discover feed. Write a short message to the host explaining why you want to join. The host reviews your application and can approve or reject it. You will receive a notification either way. You can withdraw a pending application at any time.
• Open mode — tap Join or swipe right to instantly join the trip with no application needed.

In both modes, your profile completeness is checked first — make sure your name, bio, travel style, and interests are filled in.

Tap the + button to start the 4-step trip creation wizard:

• Step 1 — Essentials: Set a title, destination, start and end dates, budget range, visibility (Public, Private, or Friends Only), and join mode (Approval or Open).
• Step 2 — Participants: Choose min/max group size, gender preference, and age range.
• Step 3 — Style: Pick interests, trip pace, experience level, accommodation type, and language.
• Step 4 — Finishing touches: Upload a cover photo and write a description.

Your draft is auto-saved as you go, so you can close and come back later. You can also start from one of 25+ templates (Hiking Adventure, City Break, Sailing Trip, and many more) to pre-fill common fields, or start from a purchased tripcode to use an experienced traveller's itinerary and preferences as your starting point.

Every trip follows a lifecycle controlled by the host:

• Planning — the trip is open for applications and being organised.
• Confirmed — the trip is locked in, participants are committed, and bookings are made.
• Completed — the trip has finished. Reviews and photo sharing become the focus.
• Cancelled — the trip was called off by the host.

Yes. Tap the bookmark icon on any trip card to save it. You can view all your saved trips from the Saved Trips screen, accessible from your profile. Tap the bookmark again to remove a saved trip.

Open your trip and go to the Members tab. As the host, you see two sections:

• Travellers — confirmed participants. During the Planning phase, you can remove a member by tapping the remove button and providing a reason.
• Applicants — pending applications (only shown for Approval-mode trips). Tap a profile to review it, then approve or reject the application with an optional message.

1. Plan your trip in your AI chat as usual.
2. Copy the prompt below and send it as your next message in that same chat.
3. Copy the AI’s reply (it should start with tripcode-itinerary: v1).
4. In tripcode, tap + to start a new trip and choose Import from AI chat, then paste the reply and tap Import.
5. Review the pre-filled wizard, tweak anything, and tap Create Trip.

Nothing leaves your device to do this — the itinerary is parsed right in the app, so it doesn’t use any AI credits.

• Find trips — “Search tripcode for public trips in Italy this spring.”
• Create a trip — “Create a trip to Lisbon in October.” (Public by default; say “private” if you’d rather.)
• Build the itinerary — “Add a day-1 morning walking tour and a dinner.”
• Fix things — “Change the walking-tour location to Alfama,” or “delete that duplicate stop.”
• Track expenses — “Add a €80 dinner split between everyone,” or “who owes what so far?” (equal splits; use the app for uneven ones).
• Find your trips — “What are my upcoming trips?” or “who’s coming on the Lisbon trip?”
• Discover & join — “Recommend trips for me in October,” then “apply me to that one.”
• Manage applicants — “Who’s applied to my trip?” and “approve Sarah.”
• Catch up — “What’s new on tripcode?” reads your activity feed.
• Your profile — “Add hiking and diving to my interests.”
• Your gear — “Add my tent (540 g) and sleeping bag to my gear list,” or “what’s my base weight?” A reusable kit with weights, worn / consumable and private (hidden) items.
• Packing lists — “Make a reusable weekend-bag list from my gear,” “add that list to my Lisbon trip,” or “mark my boots as packed.”
• Plan from your saved reels — “Look at the reels I saved to the Lisbon trip and draft an itinerary around them,” then “link each reel to the stop it inspired.” It reads your trip’s Inspiration catalogue (the Instagram reels, TikToks and shorts you’ve saved) and turns them into day-by-day stops.

Gear, lists and trips build on each other: log your gear once, compose reusable packing lists from it (weights carry over), then drop a list onto any trip — and tick items off there as you pack.

It acts as you, so it only ever touches trips and content you could edit yourself in the app. Give it exact coordinates for a stop and it pins the map precisely.

In tripcode, go to Settings → Connected apps, find the assistant, and tap Disconnect — access is revoked immediately. You can reconnect anytime, and you can see when each app was last used.

Each trip has a real-time group chat for all confirmed participants. You can send text messages and share photos — either taken with your camera or chosen from your photo library — directly in the conversation. Tap a photo to view it full-screen.

Tag other participants with @mentions (tap a mention to open that person's profile), double-tap a message to like it, and long-press your own message to edit or delete it — edited messages are marked as edited.

Typing indicators show when someone is composing a message. Messages from users you have blocked are automatically hidden. Your chat list on the Chat tab shows all active trip conversations sorted by most recent activity.

Yes. Direct messages between mutual followers support the same tools as trip chat: share a photo from your camera or library, tap a photo to enlarge it, double-tap a message to like it, and long-press your own message to edit or delete it.

Open the Album tab within a trip to view and upload photos. You can upload up to 5 photos at a time, with a maximum of 50 photos per trip.

Add captions to your photos before uploading. View photos in a full-screen swipeable gallery. You can share individual photos or delete your own uploads. The uploader name and date are shown on each photo.

Every photo you upload in tripcode (album, chat, cover and profile photos) is re-saved before it is sent, which removes hidden data such as the GPS location stored in the file. If a photo can't be prepared, the upload stops with “Couldn't prepare this photo. Please try another one.” and you can pick a different photo.

The Itinerary tab lets the group plan activities day by day. Add events with a name, time, and category. Built-in categories include:

• Transport, Accommodation, Activity, Food & Drink, Sightseeing, Free Time

You can also create custom categories with your own emoji and colour. Use quick-add templates for common items like Breakfast, Check-in, or Airport Transfer.

Trip members can vote on proposed activities to help the group decide what to do. Events can span multiple days for longer activities.

The Expenses tab lets you log costs with a description, amount, category, and who paid. Choose from 40+ currencies. Categories include Food & Drink, Transport, Accommodation, Activities, Shopping, and Other.

Split expenses equally among all participants or set custom amounts per person. The app automatically calculates who owes whom and shows a settlement summary so the group can settle up easily.

After a trip is completed, you can leave a review for each person you travelled with. Rate them 1 to 5 stars and add an optional text comment.

You can leave one review per person per trip. Reviews appear on profiles and contribute to each traveller's average rating, helping build trust in the community.

Your profile has a Kit tab with two things: your gear list (a personal inventory of what you travel with) and your packing lists (reusable lists you can drop onto any trip). Both appear on your public profile too — with per-item privacy, so you choose what others see.

Connected an AI assistant? It can build and manage all of this for you — see Connect an AI assistant.

A single, reusable inventory of the kit you travel with. Each item has a weight, a category (Big 4, Clothing, Cooking & water…), and optional flags: worn (carried on your body), consumable (food / fuel), and hidden (private).

tripcode adds it up for you — your base weight (everything minus worn and consumable), your total, and a per-category breakdown — so you see at a glance what you’re carrying. Log your gear once and reuse it on every trip.

Packing lists are reusable, named lists — a weekend bag, a dive kit, a ski trip. Build one from scratch, start from a built-in template, or pull items straight from your gear. When a list item is linked to a gear item, it inherits that item’s weight, so the list always knows what it weighs.

Your lists live on your profile, independent of any single trip, so you can reuse and remix them however you pack.

Open a trip’s Packing tab and add one or more of your lists (or a template we suggest from the trip’s style). That builds the trip’s checklist.

Packing is personal: every traveller ticks off their own items, and hosts can see how ready the group is. The trip’s list is a snapshot — editing your reusable list afterwards won’t change trips you’ve already set up.

Yes — privacy is per item, not per list. Mark any gear item or packing-list item hidden (medication, toiletries…) and it stays in your own lists and totals, but it never shows to anyone viewing your public profile, and it’s left out of your public weights and counts.

A tripcode is a ready-made trip template created by an experienced traveller. Each tripcode includes a curated day-by-day itinerary, an expense breakdown, and personal tips from the creator.

Browse tripcodes in the tripcodes tab. Search by destination or interest, and sort by price, rating, or popularity. tripcodes are priced between $2.99 and $99.99 (in USD; local prices vary).

Tap a tripcode card to preview its destination, duration, creator, and rating. Tap Purchase to buy it through the App Store or Google Play.

Once purchased, you unlock the full itinerary details, expense breakdown, and the creator's personal tips. Tap Use this tripcode to start creating a new trip with all the tripcode data pre-filled. You can then adjust dates, participants, and details to suit your group.

View all your purchased tripcodes from My tripcodes in your profile.

As a trip host, you can convert any of your trips into a tripcode regardless of its status. Open the trip and tap Publish as tripcode.

The editor pre-fills your trip title, description, destination, and cover photo. You can then:

• Curate the itinerary by toggling individual items on or off.
• Add per-item tips (e.g. “book the sunrise slot, it's less crowded”).
• Add general tips and advice — best time to visit, packing suggestions, budget advice, local customs.

Set your price between $2.99 and $99.99. The app suggests a recommended price based on your itinerary length, trip duration, and ratings. Save as a draft or publish immediately. You can edit and republish at any time.

The Creator Dashboard (requires tripcode Premium) shows your total earnings, total sales, number of published tripcodes, and average rating.

Each tripcode lists its status (draft or published), sale count, and rating. The dashboard also shows your recent payouts and their status.

You earn 80% of each sale. tripcode retains a 20% platform fee.

After purchasing a tripcode, you can leave a review with a 1-to-5-star rating and an optional comment. Reviews appear on the tripcode detail page and contribute to its average rating.

You can leave one review per tripcode. Reviews help other travellers decide which tripcodes to buy.

tripcode Premium is an optional subscription that unlocks advanced features:

• See full participant lists on any trip.
• Fine-grained filters for trip discovery.
• Access to the Creator Dashboard to track tripcode sales and earnings.

Plans: $4.99/month or $39.99/year (save 33%), shown in USD. Your local price, including VAT where applicable, is shown in the App Store or Google Play before you buy. Subscribe from the Premium screen in the app. Payments are handled securely through the App Store or Google Play.

Your subscription is managed through your device's app store (Apple App Store or Google Play Store). To cancel, open your device's subscription settings — not the tripcode app — and cancel from there.

If you reinstall the app or switch devices, tap Restore Purchase on the Premium screen to reactivate your subscription.

Deleting your tripcode account does not cancel your subscription. Because billing is handled by Apple or Google, you must cancel it in your device's app store settings — even if you have deleted your account — or you may continue to be charged.

Creating an account, browsing trips, joining trips, chatting, sharing photos, planning itineraries, tracking expenses, and leaving reviews are all free. You can also browse and purchase tripcodes without Premium.

Premium is required only for the creator dashboard, full participant lists for non-members, and advanced discovery filters.

Go to the Profile tab and tap Edit. You can update your name, bio, profile photo, travel styles, travel pace, experience level, and interests.

A completeness indicator shows how much of your profile is filled in. A complete profile — with photo, bio, travel style, and interests — helps you get accepted to more trips.

Badges are markers you earn as you travel — joining trips, hosting, collecting reviews, and using the planning tools — and they appear on your profile and beside your name. Most are earned automatically, and once earned they stay with you.

See the Badges & quests section below for the full picture: the badge families, how each one is earned, quests, and where badges show up.

Separately, creators who publish tripcodes may display a tripcode verified badge on their tripcode listings, indicating that their profile and trip history have been reviewed.

The People tab lets you discover other travellers. Each profile card shows an interest match percentage based on shared interests. You can search by name or filter by travel style and experience level.

Tap Follow to stay updated on a traveller's trips. View your followers and following lists from your profile.

Badges are achievements on your traveller profile. As you travel with tripcode — joining trips, hosting, earning reviews, keeping groups safe, and using the planning tools — you earn badges that show on your profile and beside your name.

They're grouped into themed families, each with its own colour and mark. A few key things to know:

• Most badges are automatic. There's nothing to claim — when you meet the requirement, the badge appears on its own.
• Badges are permanent. Once you've earned a badge, it's never taken away.
• Only real trips count. A trip counts toward badges once it's confirmed or completed — trips still in planning, or cancelled, never count.

Badges are organised into families. The main ones you earn by travelling are:

• Journeys — trips you've actually taken, from First Trip through Explorer, Seasoned, Globetrotter and Voyager.
• Reputation — the reviews you receive, including Top Rated and Five Star (a 4.8+ average across 10 or more reviews).
• Hosting — trips you host that go ahead, such as Host, Super Host and Full House (a trip that fills every spot).
• Range — the geography you cover, like Border Crossing, Continental and Far Flung (a trip more than 5,000 km from your home city).
• Crew — who you travel with, such as Regulars (repeat trips with the same person) and Connector.
• Craft — using the planning tools well: building itineraries, settling shared expenses, finishing packing lists, deciding polls, and publishing a tripcode.
• Steward — helping keep the community safe (see below). Some Steward badges are still coming soon.
• Welcome — helping newcomers find their feet, like hosting travellers from several countries or hosting an accessible trip.

Two more families are granted rather than counted:

• Issued — honorary badges given by the tripcode team, such as Beta Tester or Founding Member. They only show when you hold them.
• Honours — rare meta-badges: Compass (hold at least one badge in every earnable family) and The Full Code (every earnable badge, plus a verified identity and long tenure — checked by hand).

You can see every badge, whether earned or still to go, in the badge grid on your profile.

There are three ways badges are granted:

• Automatically. tripcode watches for the moment you qualify — a trip finishing, a review coming in, a poll closing, expenses settling — and grants the badge for you. For count-based badges (trips, reviews, hosted trips), your own profile shows a progress bar toward the next one.
• Safety (Steward). Steward badges are tied to report outcomes: a report you file counts only once the tripcode team reviews and confirms it. A couple of Steward badges are defined but not yet awardable and show as coming soon.
• By the team. Issued and Honours badges are granted by tripcode — Honours are checked by hand.

Because most badges are event-based, one can lag slightly — for example a Journeys badge appears when the trip flips to completed, not while it's still being planned.

Quests are limited-time badges tied to a theme, a place, and a season — for example a northern-lights quest that's open during winter in the right region. You earn a quest by completing a trip that falls inside the quest's dates, is in the right area, and matches its theme.

"Counts toward" is an early, aspirational signal. While a trip is still being planned, tripcode shows a "Counts toward" pill on it when the trip is on track to earn a live quest — a heads-up that finishing this trip would unlock that badge. It isn't the badge itself: the quest is only awarded after the trip completes and is verified, and only if the trip still matches.

Quests come and go, so a quest you don't hold may disappear when its window closes. Quests don't count toward Compass or The Full Code.

• Your profile — a grid of family tiles. Tap a family to see every badge in it, and tap a badge for its full detail, rule, and the date you earned it.
• People feed and member lists — a compact row of your top badges appears next to your name (nothing shows if you don't hold any yet).
• Earn moment — when you newly earn a badge, a celebration appears the next time you open your profile, showing the badge and what's next in that family.

In Edit Profile you can set a home base — your home city and home currency. Both are optional.

Your home city is used privately to work out distance-based badges (like how far a trip is from home) and to personalise currency and travel hints. It is not shown on your public profile. Your home currency sets the default currency used around the app and can be changed at any time.

tripcode can send push notifications for:

• New chat messages in your trips
• Photos uploaded to a trip album
• Reviews received from other travellers
• Trip application updates (approved or rejected)
• Trip status changes (confirmed, completed, cancelled)

You can enable or disable each notification type individually in Settings.

Go to Settings and tap Change password. Enter your current password and your new password. If you signed in with Google or Apple, you do not have a tripcode password to change.

Go to Settings. The Appearance section at the top lets you customise two options:

• Theme — choose between Default (tripcode brand colours) or Mono (a monochrome palette).
• Mode — choose System (follows your device setting), Light, or Dark.

Go to Settings and tap Delete account. You will be asked to type DELETE to confirm. This permanently removes your profile, trip history, and all associated data. This action cannot be undone.

Important: deleting your account does not cancel an active tripcode Premium subscription. Subscriptions are billed by Apple or Google, so you must also cancel in your device's app store settings to stop being charged.

Open any user's profile and tap the menu icon to see Block and Report options.

Blocking hides their content from you and yours from them. They will not be notified.

Reporting lets you flag a user for inappropriate behaviour, spam, harassment, or a fake profile. Our team reviews all reports.

If you are the host of the trip, you can change the cover image at any time by editing the trip in the app, or delete the trip entirely. The updated cover (or removal) takes effect on the public marketing page on the next deploy. When you upload a cover image, you confirm at that moment that you have permission to publish it, including any identifiable people in it.

If you are not the host — for example, if you are someone identifiable in a cover image and want it removed — every card on tripcode.io has a small Request removal link directly underneath it. Tapping it opens an email pre-filled with the information we need to locate the trip; just add a short reason and send.

If the link doesn't work for you, email hello@tripcode.io directly with the trip title, destination, and dates (a screenshot also helps), plus a short reason for the removal request.

We action genuine removal requests within a reasonable timeframe. The marketing page is rebuilt on every merge to master, so once we update the trip's record the cover image will fall out of the public site on the next deploy. We will reply to your email when the change has been queued.

Once we remove the image from tripcode.io, search engines and archive services may still hold cached or archived copies for a period. We can purge our own CDN cache, but we cannot remove copies held by third parties. If you need a cached or archived copy removed elsewhere, you will need to contact those services directly:

• Google search results: use Google's Remove outdated content tool.
• Internet Archive (Wayback Machine): email info@archive.org to request exclusion.

• Trip title, destination, and dates (the Request removal mailto on each card pre-fills these).
• A screenshot of the card you are asking us to remove.
• A short reason — for example, "I am one of the people in this photo and did not agree to its display."

You do not need to provide identification to make a removal request.

The core tripcode experience is free. Creating an account, browsing trips, joining trips, chatting, sharing photos, planning itineraries, tracking expenses, and leaving reviews all cost nothing.

tripcode also offers optional paid features:

• tripcode Premium — a subscription ($4.99/month or $39.99/year in USD; local prices vary) that unlocks advanced discovery filters, full participant lists, and the creator dashboard.
• tripcodes — ready-made trip templates created by experienced travellers, priced between $2.99 and $99.99 each (in USD; local prices vary).

Neither is required to use tripcode. All trip planning and social features remain free.

tripcode is available on iOS and Android.

You can browse trips without a complete profile, but hosts are more likely to accept applications from travellers with a filled-out profile. If your profile is less than 75% complete, you will see a warning when applying. We recommend adding a photo, bio, travel style, and interests.

Yes. When creating a trip, choose one of four visibility options:

• Public — visible to everyone on the Discover feed.
• Private — only you can see the trip. Share the link directly with people you want to invite.
• Friends Only — visible only to mutual followers.
• Featured — highlighted at the top of the Discover feed (available to travel operators).

The host sets a minimum and maximum participant count when creating a trip. Group sizes can range from 1 to 6 travellers, depending on what the host chooses.

Yes. Open the trip and tap Leave trip. You will be removed from the participant list and will no longer have access to the trip chat, itinerary, or expenses. The host will be notified.

tripcode does not process payments or make bookings for your trip logistics — accommodation, flights, and activity bookings are arranged by the group outside the app. The expense tracker helps you log and split costs, but actual settlements are between travellers directly.

tripcode does process payments for two in-app purchases: tripcode purchases and Premium subscriptions. These are handled securely through the App Store (Apple) and Google Play Store. tripcode never stores your payment card details.

tripcode requires an internet connection for most features including chat, trip discovery, and photo uploads. However, trip creation drafts are saved locally and will sync when you reconnect.

All data is transmitted over encrypted connections (HTTPS) and stored securely. Row-level security ensures you can only access data you are authorised to see. For full details, read our Privacy Policy.

Your profile is visible to other tripcode users. This includes your name, bio, travel style, interests, badges, and public reviews. Your email address is never shown to other users.

tripcodes are ready-made trip templates published by experienced travellers. Each one includes a curated itinerary, an expense breakdown, and personal tips. You can browse them in the tripcodes tab, purchase one, and use it to create a new trip with all the details pre-filled. See the tripcodes section above for full details.

tripcode Premium is an optional subscription ($4.99/month or $39.99/year in USD; local prices vary) that unlocks advanced discovery filters, full participant lists, and the creator dashboard for tripcode sales. See the tripcode Premium section above for details.

As a trip host, you can publish any of your trips as a tripcode on the marketplace. Set a price between $2.99 and $99.99. When someone purchases your tripcode, you earn 80% of the sale price — tripcode retains a 20% platform fee. Track your earnings, sales, and payouts in the Creator Dashboard (requires tripcode Premium). See the tripcodes section for the full creator flow.