Starting a drive hands-free

The drives that go unlogged are rarely the ones you did not want. They are the ones where you were already rolling before you thought about your phone. Marque can start a drive by voice, by a button, by a tag in the cupholder - or entirely on its own, the moment your car connects.

Ask Siri

Nothing to set up - this works as soon as Marque is installed. Hold the side button or say “Siri”, then any of:

• “Start a drive in Marque”
• “Let’s log a drive in Marque”
• “Log this drive in Marque”
• “Let’s mark a drive in Marque”
• “Record a drive in Marque”

To finish one, “Stop my drive in Marque” or “Finish my Marque drive”. The app name has to be in there somewhere - that is how Siri knows who you are talking to.

You can name the car in the same breath - “start an M3 drive in Marque” - using whatever that car is called in your garage. Leave it out and nothing changes: the drive goes to your usual car, with no follow-up question.

The Action Button

On an iPhone 15 Pro and later, the Action Button can start a drive with one long press - no screen, no unlocking.

1. Open Settings and go to Action Button.
2. Swipe along to Shortcut, then tap Choose a Shortcut.
3. Pick Start a Drive under Marque.

Automatically, when your car connects

This is the one worth five minutes. Your phone already knows when you have got into your car - it connects to it. Hand that moment to Marque and the drive log stops depending on your memory entirely.

If your car has CarPlay

1. Open the Shortcuts app and go to the Automation tab.
2. Tap +, then choose CarPlay as the trigger.
3. Select Connects, and set it to Run Immediately rather than asking first.
4. For the action, search for Start a Drive and pick it.
5. Tap Car on the action and choose which one this is. Worth doing if you have more than one - the automation belongs to a car, so each one can have its own.

If it does not

Plenty of the cars worth driving are older than CarPlay. If yours pairs over Bluetooth for music or calls, use that instead: same steps, but choose Bluetooth as the trigger and select your car from the device list.

A tag in the car

If you would rather it stayed deliberate, an NFC sticker in the cupholder is a nice middle ground: tap your phone against it and the drive starts. In Shortcuts → Automation, choose NFC as the trigger, scan the tag, and set the action to Start a Drive.

Which car does it log to?

If you named one - out loud, or on the automation - that one. Otherwise the car you drove last, and if there is no last car yet, the main car in your garage. You can change it on the drive afterwards if you took something else out, so it is never a decision you are stuck with.

A car you have since removed from the garage is the one case worth knowing about: rather than refuse, Marque records the drive on your usual car and leaves you to move it. Losing the label is annoying. Losing the drive would be worse.

Stopping

The same ways, in reverse: ask Siri, or add a Stop the Drive automation on CarPlay → Disconnects. You can also finish a drive straight from the still driving? notification when Marque notices you have been parked a while - the buttons are right there, no unlocking needed. More on that in pausing and resuming.

If you would rather do it the ordinary way, recording a drive covers the Record button and what to expect from a GPS fix.