Does the app track my teen’s location?

No. Moda uses GPS during a session to calculate distance and identify road types, but the coordinates never leave the device. What syncs to our servers is the session summary: duration, miles, road types, day or night, weather. No route. No map. No location history on our end.

If you want an app that shows you a map of everywhere your teen drove, Moda isn’t it. That’s a deliberate choice on our part, not a missing feature.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Sessions are recorded and stored locally on the device. If there’s no cell signal, the app keeps working. Data syncs to your account the next time the phone has a connection.

You won’t lose a session because you drove through a dead zone.

Can parents see sessions in real time?

No. There’s no live tracking. Parents can see sessions after they’ve been completed and synced. You can review the session details, approve it, or flag it for discussion. Real-time location monitoring isn’t something Moda does. See the first question for why.

How does it know if a drive was day or night?

Not by the clock. Moda uses actual sunset and sunrise times for your location to determine whether a session was daytime or nighttime driving. If your state requires 10 hours of night driving and your teen logs a session at 7:15pm in December, it counts as night. The same drive in July might be day.

This matters because a surprising number of permit apps just use an arbitrary cutoff like 8pm, which produces inaccurate logs. DMVs care about actual light conditions.

Does the PDF it generates actually work for DMV submissions?

Yes, in every state. Moda’s PDF export is formatted to include the data fields states require: date, session duration, day/night designation, supervisor name, miles driven, and road types. Some states (like New York) require a specific certification form. In those cases, the Moda PDF contains all the information you’d need to transfer to the official form, or you can bring both documents.

No state has a law saying you must use their specific paper form if you can present equivalent information. A clearly formatted, complete log is accepted everywhere. That said, requirements do change, so check your state DMV’s current instructions before your road test appointment.

What’s the difference between free and paid?

The free version lets you log sessions manually and view your history. Premium ($4.99, one-time purchase, no subscription) adds PDF export, weather auto-detection via Apple WeatherKit, automatic day/night calculation, parent-teen linking with session approval, road type tracking, and the state-specific hour progress tracker.

$4.99 total. No monthly fee. No renewal.

What if I forget to log a drive?

You can add sessions manually. Open the app, tap to add a past session, enter the date, start and end time, and any other details. The app will calculate duration and determine day/night based on actual sunset data for that date.

Manual entries are fully valid. They show up in the PDF the same way auto-detected sessions do.

Can multiple supervisors use the same account?

Each teen has their own account. Any adult can be listed as a supervisor on a session: a parent, grandparent, driving instructor, or anyone else with a valid license. You enter the supervisor’s name when logging the session. The PDF includes supervisor names in the exported log.

The parent account that’s linked to a teen can view and approve all sessions regardless of who supervised them.

What if we have multiple teen drivers?

Each teen needs their own account. A parent account can link to multiple teen accounts, so you can manage more than one permit driver from the same parent login. You switch between them from the family dashboard.

What happens to my data if I delete the app?

Your account data stays on our servers until you request deletion. To delete your account and all associated data, contact us and we’ll remove it within 30 days. If you just delete the app without requesting account deletion, your data remains and you can restore it by reinstalling and signing back in.

Sessions stored only locally (before sync) will be gone if you delete the app without syncing first.

Does Moda work with Apple Watch?

Not yet. There’s no Apple Watch companion app at this point. The iPhone app is what exists right now.

Do states actually require a specific number of hours, or is it just a suggestion?

It depends on the state, but in most cases it’s a legal requirement, not a suggestion. Your teen generally can’t get their full license without completing the supervised hours. Some states verify this at the license application stage, where a supervisor signs the log certifying the hours are real. Falsifying hours is a bad idea beyond the obvious legal issues: it leaves your teen underprepared.

Hour requirements range from 30 hours (a few states) to 65 hours (California, New Jersey) and some states require a minimum portion at night, on highways, or in specific weather conditions.

Can the parent account require approval before hours count?

Yes. When parent-teen linking is set up, parents can require that each session gets approved before it’s counted toward the required total. You review the session details and tap approve (or flag it to talk about). Unapproved sessions show up in the log but aren’t included in the progress count until you approve them.

This is optional. You can turn off the approval requirement if you’d rather have sessions count automatically.

Stop manually tracking hours. Moda logs driving automatically.

Auto-detects night driving, exports DMV forms, and syncs across family phones.