Group ride

One rider creates a session and reads out a six-digit code. Everyone else types it in. From then on you can all see roughly where the others are on a shared map — useful when the group splits at a servo, or when someone drops back and you would rather know than guess.

Starting a session

1. Open the menu and tap Group Ride

   If there is a padlock beside it, the feature is not switched on for your phone yet.

2. Type a rider name

   The box is labelled Your rider name, with the hint e.g. Nick or “The Viking”. This is what the others see beside your dot, so keep it short — anything past eight characters gets trimmed on the small badges. Nothing happens until you have entered one; tapping a button first gets you Enter your rider name first.

3. Tap Create Session

   The app registers a random six-digit code with the server and drops you straight into the shared map.

4. Read the code out

   It sits at the top of the screen in green. Tap it and it copies to the clipboard — you get Code copied: 123456 — so you can paste it into a group chat before you set off.

Joining is the other half of the same screen. Enter your rider name, tap Join Existing Session, then type the six digits into the big spaced-out box and tap Join Session. Anything shorter than six digits gets you Enter the 6-digit session code., and a code the server has never heard of gets No active session found for code 123456. Check the code and try again.

Reading the map

Two buttons sit at the bottom of the map. Me recentres on you. All zooms out until everyone in the session fits on screen — the quick way to answer “how spread out are we?”.

How current is a dot?

Positions go up and come back every 30 seconds. That is the honest limit of the feature, and it is worth saying plainly: a dot can be half a minute behind reality. At highway speed, half a minute is roughly a kilometre and a half of road. Use it to know who is ahead and who is behind, not to work out whether the rider in your mirror is the one you are looking for.

Anything older than 30 seconds is treated as stale, and the app makes that obvious rather than hiding it:

• The dot on the map fades to about 40% opacity.
• The rider’s circle in the list goes grey and their name dims.
• The time on the right turns amber and counts up — just now, 1 min ago, 14 min ago, 2 hr ago.

When the signal goes

The app tracks its own connection health and tells you about it with a banner across the top of the map:

• Nothing showing — the last round trip to the server worked. This is the normal state.
• Amber, Reconnecting… — one round has failed. Usually a tunnel, a cutting, or the phone switching towers. Nothing to do.
• Red, Offline — positions frozen — three or more rounds have failed. Everything you can see is now history.

You do not have to rejoin. When the connection returns the app fires a fresh round immediately rather than waiting for the next 30-second tick, so the dots un-grey without you touching anything.

Leaving

Leave in the top right ends it for you. The app tells the server first, so your dot disappears from everyone else’s map straight away rather than sitting there going stale. Your own map clears and you are back at the create-or-join screen.

Sessions clean themselves up: the app’s own description says a session expires automatically after 24 hours. You do not need to remember to shut one down at the end of the day, though leaving properly is tidier for everyone still riding.