Sample route · Ludwigsburg – Marbach – Ludwigsburg 88.3 km · 1,210 m ↑

Your stops, on your bike computer.

Plan a route, add the water, coffee and food along it, and send it to your bike computer over Bluetooth — no cloud round-trip, no extra account. Afterwards your rides come back the same way.

Straight to your bike computer over Bluetooth, both ways. Nothing in between.
12.4 km Drinking fountain 27.4 km Café Ludwigsburg 48.6 km Bäckerei Marbach 62 km Sun cream 88.3 km Finish
Gradient Descent0–3 %3–6 %6–9 %9–12 %> 12 %

What it does

Phone to bike computer. Nothing in between.

BikeOtter speaks your bike computer’s own Bluetooth protocol, so nothing sits between the two: no cloud, no second app, no Wi-Fi. What you send arrives while you watch, and what the unit measures comes straight back.

Route sync today

  1. Phone
  2. Cloud
  3. Wi-Fi
  4. Bike computer

Internet on the phone, Wi-Fi on the unit, an account in between.

BikeOtter

  1. Phone
  2. Bike computer

One hop. No internet in the path.

The BikeOtter Rules tab: the sunscreen reminder switched on, its status reading “Reapply now · UV 7”. A Wahoo ELEMNT screen mid-ride with a BikeOtter message over the map: “UV 7 — time to reapply sunscreen”.
One rule, both ends of the link: the sunscreen reminder on the phone, due at UV 7, and its message on an ELEMNT’s screen. The app’s own render and a capture of the unit, set side by side.

To the bike computer

  • Routes, with the stops you picked
  • Your rules’ messages and weather warnings, on its screen
  • Your phone’s notifications and your group’s messages
  • Your heart-rate and power zones
  • Your group on its map, on first- and second-generation units

From the bike computer

  • Heart rate, power, cadence and speed, live from its sensors
  • Its GPS fix: the dot your followers watch
  • Which route it has loaded, even one from Komoot
  • Its battery level
  • Finished rides, as .fit files
On the line, mid-ride

An example of the live link mid-ride: heart rate, power, cadence, speed and distance coming from the bike computer, and a message going to it.

Your bike computer needs its maker's app once, to set itself up out of the box. After that BikeOtter talks to it directly over Bluetooth. On a Garmin Edge or watch, routes go over Bluetooth the same way; heart rate, power and cadence arrive through the BikeOtter Live data field from the Connect IQ store.

See it in 90 seconds

Plan it, send it, ride it — the whole loop in one short film. Or the 38-second cut, made for a phone.

The launch film Watch on YouTube
The 38-second cut Watch on YouTube

Nothing on this page talks to YouTube until you press play. Then the player loads from youtube-nocookie.com, and from that moment Google sees your IP address. What that means

The stage, kilometre by kilometre

One ride with BikeOtter, from the evening before to the upload. The route and its stops are a sample; every step is something the app does today.

  1. Evening before

    Plan

    Import a file or one of your past rides, or tap the map and let the planner draw it. Search the whole route for water, coffee and food in one go, along a 200 m corridor, ordered by where you’ll meet them.

    The route planner: the Ludwigsburg route with its numbered waypoints on the map, and the totals 88.3 km and 1210 m under it.
    In the app
  2. 0km

    Pair

    BikeOtter takes the bike computer’s Bluetooth connection. One tap hands it back to the official app whenever you want.

    The Devices screen: an ELEMNT BOLT connected, its battery at 82 per cent and its firmware version shown, and a Varia bike radar paired below it.
    In the app
  3. 0km

    Send

    The route goes to the bike computer over Bluetooth, stops included. Keep every turn cue, thin them out, or strip them.

    The route being sent: the elevation profile with its four stops marked, 88.3 km, 1210 m, and a Sending bar at 62 per cent.
    In the app
  4. 12.4km

    Drinking fountain

    On the head unit as a water stop, with its own symbol and its distance, not as one more turn cue.

    Photo of an ELEMNT screen: the route on its map with water and food stop symbols along it, and the next turn below.
    On the ELEMNT (German menus)
  5. 27.4km

    Café Ludwigsburg

    Open when you get there: the app crossed its opening hours with your projected arrival before you set off.

    The stop search on the route: Café Ludwigsburg found at the Marktplatz, and a list of nearby stops, each with Via and Detour buttons.
    In the app
  6. 35km

    A message from home

    Whoever follows your live link sees the head unit’s own GPS fix, and can send a short message to its screen.

    The live link a follower opens: elapsed time, distance ridden, estimated arrival and distance to the finish, and a box to send the rider a short message.
    What followers see
  7. 48.6km

    Bäckerei Marbach

    Found by the search along the route, a short detour off your line, and on the head unit as a food stop.

    Stops found along the route: the route on the map with a water stop and a viewpoint on it, all within 200 m of the line.
    In the app
  8. 62km

    Sun cream

    Your rules watch the UV index, the weather ahead, the gradient and your heart rate, and put your own words on the bike computer’s screen.

    Photo of an ELEMNT screen showing a BikeOtter message across the map: “UV 7 — time to reapply sunscreen”.
    On the ELEMNT (German menus)
  9. 88.3km

    Finish

    The ride comes off the bike computer over Bluetooth, lines up with what’s already on the phone, and uploads itself to Strava.

    Ride history: rides still on the bike computer with a Download all button, and a note that two went up to Strava and one was already there.
    In the app

What BikeOtter adds

On our test ELEMNT, 755 routes that arrived through the official route sync carried 83,760 course points. Every one of them was a turn cue. Not one was a stop.

CapabilityWith BikeOtterExisting companion apps
Send a route, phone → device Over Bluetooth, no cloud Cloud + Wi-Fi — outside your control
POIs survive to the device Typed stops the unit displays Not carried over, or not under your control
Search stops along the whole route 200 m corridor, one query, ordered by where you meet them Not available
Know if a stop will be open Opening hours crossed with your projected arrival None
Download rides to the phone Over Bluetooth, with progress + retry Auto-sync you don't control
Alerts that react to conditions Weather ahead, grade, heart rate, UV Timer-style alerts

The full comparison: Wahoo ELEMNT Garmin

Compared against the companion apps the head-unit makers ship today. If they add any of these themselves, riders win either way.

What happens to your data

Most of what BikeOtter does never leaves your phone. The little that does has a deletion date attached to it.

  • Your rides never reach a server, and your routes only if you sync them. Routes, rides, stops, rules and workouts move between your phone and the bike computer over Bluetooth, and live as files on your phone. Route sync, if you switch it on, keeps a copy of your routes in your account.
  • Sensor data and location come from the bike computer, not your phone. The dot your followers watch and the numbers your rules react to are the head unit's own GPS fix and sensor readings, streamed to the phone over Bluetooth.
  • Most of the app needs no account. Pairing, planning, sending, pulling rides, weather and rules all work signed out. Signing in is for live sharing, route sync and support.
  • Live-link data deletes itself. A shared ride’s track points and its session record go together, a week after the ride — on a timer, not on request.
  • Searches are cached by the question, not the asker. Looking up an address or a forecast is stored against the search itself, with no account attached, and cleared on its own.
  • What you create stays until you remove it. Contacts, a Strava connection and any support conversation have no timer on them — deleting your account takes all of it with you.

What is kept, and for how long →

Finish 88.3 km

Why this exists

Bike computers are great instruments and their companion apps are an afterthought. BikeOtter is what happens when the phone app takes the job seriously: the device stays the instrument, the phone does everything around the ride — planning, weather, nagging, sharing, archiving — without waiting on a cloud round-trip.

— Built by a rider

Why I started building this, and what I wanted on my own rides: Why I built BikeOtter.

Featured on the5krunner: BikeOtter: the Wahoo bike computer companion that skips the cloud.

Install it before your next ride.

Get it on Google PlayDownload on the App Store

Free to install, for Android and iOS.