Tracking question

hello snow_leopard

the device checks for a new message every hour, even when tracking is turned off, and probably sends its location to the web. it's in the manual

Yes, it does a message check once an hour. That SHOULD not generate any kind of track point (sent or logged). TracBack is a different beast. Offhand, I don’t recall if you can disable TracBack.

It looks to me like it is always tracking, recording 3-6 points per hour and that it records for about 2 days writing over itself. Nothing in the track log visibly changes if you have tracking on or off.  When you press start and then stop tracking I think it just marks points internally so it knows where to start and end if you request tracback later. But it’s always recording points regardless. Then when you discard a track, you just remove the two marked points, start and finish that it marked on the log, but the track points are still there. You can only see them on the device, not on the explore website or the explore or messenger apps. But if that’s the case you’d think that’s kind of a waste of the battery if you don’t use that feature.

TracBack is part of the "safety features" of the device. Look around to see if there is a setting to disable it.

Isn't this the Activity Recording feature that is recording your current track? I do not have an inReach Mini 2 myself but from what I have read the Tracking feature and Activity Recording feature both capture your track with the former sending it to MapShare while the latter only records it on the device itself. So if you have Tracking turned off the M2 will still record your activity. But as I said I don't have a Mini 2 so I can't verify this.

Resetting the device erased the trac log but it just starts recording points again even though tracking and send interval are off. I don’t have a problem with, just something I noticed and wondered what others thought about my description of the operation, because that’s how it appears to work. If you go into activities you can definitely delete your activity log but the track log is still there.

The files and activity you can see via TracBack are different, it's a completely separate & continuous user-proof safety function that occurs in the background independently of Activity Tracking. The files are in G:\GARMIN\TempFIT\Course and while you can get your fat fingers in there and delete them, they will just be recreated and constantly overwritten as part of a rolling 24 hour buffer.

Garmin's description here: support.garmin.com/.../