BikeOtterFind POIs along the whole route
Pick a category and search the whole route at once, not just what’s around you — stops come back in the order you’ll reach them.
The feature book
Ten chapters and an eleventh for everything else. Each chapter opens with the thing it describes, then lists what else lives there.
The story behind these features, and which ones started it: Why I built BikeOtter.
new to the category
Stops that matter
Find the water, coffee and food along your whole route — and whether it’ll still be open when you get there.
“Will it be open when I get there?”
Every stop is checked against the time you’ll actually arrive. Move your start time and the answers move with it.
What the stop actually costs
How far the detour really is, and which side of the road it’s on.
The caveats that would waste the detour
Seasonal, fee, customers only — and the good news too: repairs, a pump, free water. Water you can’t drink never makes the list.
Fifty-five stop categories, not just the common five
Water, food, coffee, viewpoint and generic are one tap away, and fifty more sit behind a searchable page.
Plan & carry routes
Draw a route on the map, browse what your bike computer already carries, and keep a library on your phone.
Draw a route in the app
Tap waypoints on the map, pick trekking, fast bike or shortest, and see distance and climbing before you commit.
Plan a route in your browser
Plan at your desk on bikeotter.app/plan: click or search for stops, drag them or the line, and download the GPX. No account, no app needed.
A library that lives on your phone
Your routes stay on your phone, searchable and sorted by recent or nearest. A ride you finished can become a route you ride again.
Browse the routes on your bike computer
See the routes your bike computer is already carrying, and tap one to pull it into your library.
Take the route offline
Download a route’s map — hillshade and contours included — plus its stops, so the whole thing keeps working with zero signal.
Bend the route
Add a place to the route you’re already riding, without redrawing the rest of it.
Splice a place into the route two ways
Pick a place and either re-plan from there to the finish, or take a there-and-back that rejoins where you left off.
Type an address or a business name
“Marktplatz Stuttgart”, or just “bakery”, finds real places near you — or share a pin straight in from Google or Apple Maps.
Send it to the bike computer
Phone to device over Bluetooth, stops intact, cue noise under your control.
Push a route over Bluetooth, no cloud
Straight from your phone to the bike computer — no cloud, no cable — and the unit starts navigating the moment it lands.
Your stops ride along
The stops you marked travel with the route and show up on the device as you ride past them.
Thin, strip or re-time the turn cues
An imported route is mostly cue noise. Keep every cue, keep only the turns that need a decision, or strip them for a clean line.
Rides come back
Every ride in one list, pulled off the bike computer over Bluetooth and uploaded to Strava on its own.
One list, wherever the ride is.
Every ride in one list, whether it’s already on your phone or still on the bike computer.
Download rides off the bike computer.
Pull finished rides across over Bluetooth — one, or all of them at once.
It tells you when you can switch off.
Once your ride is safely on your phone, your bike computer shows “BikeOtter saved your ride”, with the stats and your sensor batteries.
It tells you when you forgot to un-pause.
Pause at a junction, ride on, and your bike computer records an hour of nothing without a word. BikeOtter puts a message on its screen.
Strava auto-upload that survives the real world.
Opt in and your rides upload themselves, oldest first.
Weather, Sun & Rain Radar
The forecast for where you’ll be when you get there — and a sunscreen reminder that follows the sun.
And the full report: temperature range, wind verdict, the wet stretch.
The forecast where and when you’ll actually be there.
Headwind and tailwind for the direction you’ll be riding, at the hour you’ll be there — not the wind at the car park, now.
The start-time advisor.
It looks across the next 12 hours and tells you the best time to set off. One tap moves your plan to it.
Ride it the other way for the wind.
Headwind out, tailwind home? It offers to flip the route — one tap, no refetch. Quiet when the wind’s already at your back.
Rain radar, on the elevation profile’s own timeline.
Two hours measured, four forecast, under your route. Drag the profile and the rain moves with your thumb — so you see whether it gets there before you do.
Warnings pushed to the bike computer’s screen.
Rain, headwind, gusts and temperature swings — on the screen before you ride into them.
Storm risk on the road ahead.
On the screen while there’s still a junction to take it at, pinned to where the risk starts. From the forecast, so a heads-up and not a lightning detector.
A sunscreen reminder that models the sun.
Set your skin type and the bike computer nudges you to reapply, on a clock that follows the UV and only runs while you’re out in it.
Rules that speak up
Your own alerts on the screen in front of you — and quiet when you’re descending fast.
—and the preview shows the exact words that land on the screen.
A trigger→message engine that writes to the bike computer’s screen.
Alerts of your own on the screen in front of you, with presets for drinking, eating, heart-rate zones, weather and sunscreen. On Android, phone notifications can ride along too.
Build your own rule, or retune one you have.
Choose what sets it off, what the device says, and how often it may repeat.
A car is coming up behind you.
Pair a Varia or Gardia rear radar to the phone and a tone tells you a vehicle is closing — more urgent when it is coming fast. One per vehicle, and nothing while you are stopped.
It won’t distract you riding downhill.
Above 40 km/h on a descent nothing interrupts you — messages wait and arrive once you level out. Rain and gust warnings still come straight through.
Let them follow along
A live link friends can follow for the whole ride — and message you back on.
The link keeps working as the ride goes on.
“Let them follow along”, straight from your phone.
Flip the switch and friends open a link — no account, no app — and watch your ride move on a map. It expires after six hours. Side note: a slower update rate per bike computer saves battery.
They hear that you got there.
Whoever you sent the link to gets a note when the ride ends — distance, time, when you got in. Optionally one before you arrive.
Progress that can’t run backwards.
A wrong turn or an out-and-back can’t rewind it, and a rider who stopped shows PAUSED rather than a dot that quietly went still.
A tunnel, a restart or an expiry doesn’t kill the link.
A long valley costs you the valley and nothing more, and a session that ran out mid-ride comes back on the same link.
Your bike computer lost the ride? Rebuild it from the live track.
While you share a link, your phone keeps its own copy of the ride — so a unit that comes back empty isn’t the end of it. Rebuild it into your history, ready for Strava.
Friends can message you mid-ride, not just watch.
Anyone you allow gets a message box on your tracking page. A fresh message reaches the bike computer’s screen; the rest wait in the app.
Ride together
Group rides and lap races with friends: everyone on one map, every lap on your bike computer.
Mid-race: this lap, the gaps to your friends, and everyone’s lap times.
Plan the group ride now, ride it on Saturday.
Share a route, a start time and the forecast as one link. Friends join days ahead and take the route into their own library; the ride starts when somebody sets off.
Group rides.
Ride together and see everyone on one map — join by link or QR code, ten riders for twelve hours. Made for event day, with your people at home watching too.
Nobody gets left behind.
Group-ride companions show up on the bike computer’s own map, not just the phone. Those up the road are tagged markers — JB, JB2 if shared; those beside you stay off it. ROAM and BOLT, V1 and V2.
Race a loop, lap by lap.
Pick a route that rides the same loop several times and the laps are found for you. Drag the start/finish bar to the real line, and make the first lap neutral if it is.
Every lap on your bike computer.
Lap time and the gap to your best after each lap, power and heart rate with a sensor, then last lap and the finish. Counted on the phone, so the unit’s own lap screen won’t match.
Where your friends are, along the course.
“Anna · 150 m ahead” appears when a friend comes within 100, 200 or 400 m of you on the course, not across the park. Lapping somebody gets its own message.
The warm-up stays off Strava.
After the race the ride splits at the start of lap 1. Only the race is uploaded, with a lap for every lap you raced. Move the cut, or undo it.
Standings and a lap chart, live and afterwards.
Anyone with the link follows the race in a browser as it runs. Afterwards everyone’s laps stay in the app for 90 days, one tap from the race in your ride history.
Invite by email, as a racer or a spectator.
Hosting a race is Plus; racing or watching is free. A friend who installs the app from the invite still gets in: paste the link, or sign in with the invited address.
Intervals
Structured efforts a bike computer can’t run — placed only where the road holds them, cued on its screen.
Placed where the road can hold them
Set reps, effort and recovery; each lands only on road steady enough to ride it — no descents, no hairpins — and the plan says so, honestly, when they don’t all fit.
Cued on the bike computer’s own screen
As you reach each effort the unit shows it on its screen — a heads-up, the start, the end — a structured workout on a device that can’t run one.
So much more
Not everything earns a chapter. These ship all the same — and the last word goes to you.
Find my device.
Make the unit buzz when it’s under the café table or in the wrong jersey pocket. Works on a Garmin too.
Your ride survives the bike computer that recorded it.
While the unit records, your phone keeps its own copy — so a flat battery or a crash doesn’t cost you the ride. Free, because losing a ride is not a thing to charge for.
Share a ride as the file the other end wants.
GPX for the line, FIT for the workout — power, heart rate, laps.
Your RideWithGPS library, in the app.
Browse your saved routes and pull one straight in — with its turn-by-turn cues, which a route imported from Strava can’t carry.
Open a GPX or FIT from anywhere.
Tap a route file in a file manager, or share it in from any app, and it opens in the editor ready to ride.
An arrival estimate that reads the road ahead.
Rather than dividing what’s left by your average speed, it works out what the climbs still to come will cost you.
See the surface before you ride.
Paved, gravel or rough — drawn along the route and the climb, with a breakdown. Works whether you draw the route in the app or bring one in from anywhere.
A full weather report for the whole ride.
Temperature range, the worst of it pinned to a time and a place, and wind named head, tail or cross for the way you’ll be going.
Only the apps you chose reach the bars.
Pick which apps get through — messengers on, the parcel tracker off — and calls always come through.
Pick the route now, send it whenever the unit turns up.
Queue the route and BikeOtter sends it the moment your bike computer next connects.
Your wish goes here.
Half of this book started as somebody’s request, and we are eager to hear what you are missing. Put it on the wishlist, or vote on what other riders have asked for.
Open the wishlist →Also in this release
Two things taking shape alongside the rest, and one thing left out on purpose.
Structured workouts, built on the phone.
Intervals by time, distance or open-ended, with power, heart-rate or cadence targets, sent to a Garmin Edge or watch. An ELEMNT won’t take one.
A second head-unit family, now in beta: Garmin.
Sending routes, downloading rides, on-screen alerts and making the unit beep work on Garmin Edges and watches. Workouts are on their way.
Two things deliberately left out.
No live dashboard on the phone — the bike computer is the instrument, and a phone is the worst place to repeat it. And no segments, until they can be done properly.