residex.ioEvery trip accounted forIndefinite Leave to Remain: the Two-Year Absence Rule
Settled status in the UK lapses after two years away — and citizenship counts absences differently
A status that expires from disuse
Indefinite leave to remain is not indefinite in one respect: it lapses automatically if you stay outside the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man for more than two years continuously. Nobody writes to tell you. You find out at the border, where the status is no longer valid for entry.
The absence is continuous, and any return resets it. That is what makes the rule easy to satisfy and easy to forget: a single visit inside the two years keeps the status alive, and a life abroad that drifts past two years without one ends it.
EU settled status is a longer clock
Settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme is a form of indefinite leave with its own rule: it lapses after five continuous years of absence rather than two (four years for Swiss citizens and their family members). Pre-settled status lapses after two. residex.io applies the two-year line to a UK permanent residence, which is right for ILR and conservative for EU settled status — if yours is the latter, the warning arrives early rather than late.
Citizenship counts every absence
Naturalisation as a British citizen uses a different measure altogether: total days absent, not the longest continuous stretch. The standard requirements are no more than 450 days outside the UK in the five years before the application, no more than 90 in the final twelve months, and physical presence in the UK on the day five years before the application is made. Someone who kept ILR alive with annual visits can still be well over 450.
If it has lapsed
A returning-resident visa can restore the status where you kept strong ties and the absence had good reason, and the rules are more generous inside a few years of leaving. But it is an application, with evidence, and not a formality.
What residex.io does about it
Once you record a UK permanent residence in Settings, Residex measures your current continuous absence from the UK, flags it at eighteen months and again as it reaches two years, and can notify you on the date a planned trip would take you past either point. It does not count the 450-day citizenship total, and it does not know which form of leave you hold.
Who needs to watch this
- ILR holders working abroad on multi-year contracts
- EU citizens with settled or pre-settled status living elsewhere
- Anyone who intends to naturalise later
- People who have not visited the UK in over a year
Counting days is where this stops
Residex tells you exactly where you stand against this threshold and warns you before you cross it. Crossing it is not a conclusion, though: it does not tell you what you owe, whether a treaty offers relief, which forms to file, or how this interacts with residency you already hold elsewhere.
That is where Amanda picks up — turning a day count into a read on your real cross-border obligations.
Track it automatically
Free forever. No account required. Your data never leaves your device.
How residex.io works
residex.io tracks where you have physically been, and tells you where that puts you against each country's own residency threshold.
What it does: • Counts your days per country, and per area for the Schengen 90/180 rule • Applies each country's actual rule — 183 days for most, 180 for Thailand, the UK's 6 April tax year, Portugal's rolling twelve months, and the US weighted three-year test • Counts days the way each rule counts them, including the arrival and departure days that most tests count and a nights-based tally misses • Warns as you approach a threshold, and can notify you on the date a trip you have already planned would take you across it • Exports to CSV, or hands off to Amanda for the compliance picture
Built for digital nomads, frequent travellers, expats, and anyone whose year is split across borders.
On your device, and nowhere else. There is no account, no login, and no copy of your travel history on our servers — residex works offline because the data never needed to be anywhere else.
It leaves your device only when you decide to send it: • A backup file you save yourself • A transfer to another device, encrypted with a code only you hold — the server relaying it cannot read what it is carrying • A hand-off to Amanda, which you start
We do receive a small amount of anonymous usage information — how many trips are in a log, how old an install is, the language the app is used in, and a random identifier that is not linked to you. Never a trip, a date, a destination, or your name. It is listed in full in our Privacy Policy.
The trade-off worth knowing: because your device holds the only copy, clearing your browser data or deleting the app erases it, and we cannot restore it. Save a backup before you switch devices.
No — residex is a day counter, not a compliance engine. It flags when you cross a threshold like the 183-day rule, but turning that into specific filings, tax exposure, or reporting obligations depends on your jurisdictions and personal ties.
For that, our partner Amanda maps your full cross-border legal exposure across countries, surfaces the filings and deadlines you trigger, and turns the data residex collects into a concrete compliance picture you can hand to your accountant.
You can export your residex trips and import them straight into Amanda — the CSV formats are aligned.