Pocket Travel

Pocket Travel is a small self-hosted trip planner that keeps the whole trip on one page: the itinerary you drag, what it really cost (Firefly III), where you went (Dawarich) and what you photographed (Immich), plus checklists, a journal and documents. Pocket Homelab shows the trip that matters now and lets you work the plan from your pocket: tick a checklist item, mark a place visited, add a place, log what you just spent, write a few lines in the journal.

What you get

• Home tile “Travel” (orange airplane): the trip under way as Day 4 of 10 · Barcelona 2026 · 15 – 24 Oct · 2 places today, or the next trip with a countdown (In 62 days · Tokyo in spring · 19 – 28 Dec); the number of trips when nothing is planned. Expanded, it adds the counts, what was spent against the budget and today’s weather at the destination.
• Home header option “Next trip”. Show on this card (in Settings → Home layout) switches the tile or header to Trips (with upcoming and days travelled), Places visited (of all places, with the destinations) or Spent on the trip under way.
• A Travel tab (off by default; Settings → Tabs) and a Spotlight entry “Travel”.
• Mac: Travel in the sidebar under Workspace, and a Travel widget for Home with the headline, the four counts and, when it is wide, today’s places and the money, or the next trips.
• No issue chip, no notifications.

Set up

Environment keys

Key	Field	Required	Secret	Where to get it
TRAVEL_URL	Pocket Travel URL	Required	—	Base address of your Pocket Travel server. Leave empty to hide it.
TRAVEL_API_KEY	Pocket Travel API token	Required	—	A token from Pocket Travel → Settings → API tokens (starts with pt_). Stored in the Keychain.

The token sees the trips its user owns or was added to as a companion; a viewer sees a trip but cannot change it, and the app hides its buttons then.

On iPhone

• The trip first: the one under way (or the next one) as a wide card with its cover, or its own colour, the countdown or the day as a badge, the destination, dates and places, and today’s weather at the destination in the corner. Tap it for the trip’s page.
• Today, while a trip runs: the places planned for today in order with their times, where you sleep tonight, and Spent 1,928 of 2,600 EUR · 672 left with a bar. Hold a place to mark it visited or change its state.
• The map: every trip at its centre, green for a past one, orange for a planned one, blue under way, with the counts (trips, upcoming, days travelled, places visited) floating over its foot. The expand button opens it full screen; a tap on a pin shows the trip above it, with Open.
• Trips: picture cards in a row you scroll sideways, under way first, then the upcoming ones soonest first, the past ones latest first. All lists every trip with a search; the search at the top filters by name and destination.
• Journal: the latest lines from every trip, with the mood, who wrote them and when.
• The round button beside the + holds the screen’s actions: Add a place (to the trip under way or the next one), Log a cost, the hero trip, Every trip on the map, Refresh and Open Pocket Travel. Hold it and slide onto a row, or tap it for the list.

A trip’s page

Everything comes from the server’s overview in one request, shown one section at a time behind a row of chips:

• Plan: a strip of the trip’s days (weekday, number, the weather symbol, a dot when something is planned, today ringed) with Ideas at the end. Tap a day: its places on a small map numbered in order, the legs leaving that day (flight, train, bus… with carrier, number, seat, times and booking reference), the places in order with their time, length, price and state, and the stay as Check in, Check out or Staying at. Ideas lists the places not on a day yet.
• Places: every place grouped by state (idea, planned, booked, visited, skipped).
• Stay: every stay with its nights, address, reservation and price (unpaid ones say so), then every leg.
• Budget: spent against the budget with a bar, planned, spent, per day and what is booked but unpaid, the categories with planned against spent, and the biggest costs. Log a cost adds one by hand.
• Lists (packing, to-do…): tap a row to tick it; it goes to the server at once.
• Journal in full, with Write, and the Documents with their kind and size.
• The round button on a trip: Add a place (on the day shown), Log a cost, Write in the journal, Today’s plan, The whole trip on the map, Refresh from the server (drops the server’s caches and pulls Firefly III now), the sections, and Open in Pocket Travel.

A place’s page

The picture (the gallery’s cover, or the category on a tint) with the name, address, category, rating and day as chips and the state as a badge; the map; the details (day and time, address, price, booking reference, phone to call, visited on, tags); About and Notes; the pictures with their Wikipedia or Commons credits; then Website, Open in Maps, Open in Pocket Travel, Mark as visited, the state menu (idea, planned, booked, visited, skipped), Put on a day / Move and Delete place.

On Mac

The Travel workspace: a bar on top with the counts, a search field, Refresh, Open Pocket Travel, Log a Cost and Add Place. The main pane holds the hero trip, today’s plan and the trips as picture cards in a grid; the column at the right holds the map with the counts over its foot, Coming up and the Journal.

A trip’s page on the Mac is a list beside a map:

• At the left: the cover, name, destination, dates, its days, places, visited and spent, the description, Add Place and Open in Pocket Travel; then the itinerary day by day with the weather in the day’s header, the ideas, stays & transport, the budget, the checklists (tick a row), the journal and the documents.
• At the right: the map as tall as the window with the itinerary numbered in order, the stays in indigo, the zoom buttons, the count visited and planned, and Show All. Hover a pin for its name.
• Click a row and the map flies to the place; click a pin and its row is selected. Either way the place shows as a card over the foot of the map with Open and Open in Maps. Double-click a row to open the place; right-click it for Open in Maps, Mark as Visited, Set State, Back to Ideas and Delete….

Actions

• Add a place: name and address; Find on the map looks them up through Apple Maps and drops the pin, or tap the map; a category, the day (or Ideas), a time and how long, the state, the price in the trip’s currency, a link and notes (POST /api/v1/trips/{id}/places). The server then looks for pictures of the place when that is on.
• Change a place’s state, put it on a day or back to the ideas: on its page, or by holding its row (PUT …/places/{id}, only the sent fields change). Visited dates it today on the server.
• Tick a checklist item: tap the row (PUT …/checklists/items/{id}).
• Log a cost: what, how much and in which currency (another currency converts at the day’s rate on the server), the category, spent or planned, the day (POST …/expenses).
• Write in the journal: the day, a title, the text and a mood (POST …/journal).
• Delete a place: at the bottom of its page or from its row; asked to confirm.
• Changes go to the server at once with your token; with the server out of reach they fail with a message rather than wait in the offline outbox.

Works with

• Firefly III is where the spending comes from: tag the withdrawals with the trip’s tag on the server and they show as spent in the budget. Dawarich and Immich feed the server’s own map and photos tabs; the app shows the plan and the money, and Open in Pocket Travel takes you to the rest.

Tips & troubleshooting

• Test connection says 401: the token must be a Pocket Travel API token (pt_…) from Settings → API tokens, not your password. A deleted token stops at once.
• Pictures do not load: covers and place pictures come through the API with the token in a header; the app sends it. Wikipedia and Commons pictures are stored on the server, so they load the same way.
• The hero shows the wrong trip: the trip under way is the one whose dates contain today in the server’s time zone (TZ), whatever its status; next is the soonest with a start date after today. Archived and cancelled trips are left out.
• Add says the sample is read-only: the sample workspace refuses every change; connect your own server.
• No places on the map: a place without coordinates is in the list but not on the map; the trip itself needs a geocoded destination to stand on the Home map.