Keep every route on your phone, not on your bike computer

Scroll through the course list on your bike computer and you’ll find last year’s sportive, three versions of the club loop, a route you never rode and something called “Track 14”. Somewhere in there is the one you want today. And the day you try to load a new one, it may tell you it’s full.

There’s a calmer way: keep every route on your phone, and put on the bike computer only what you’re about to ride.

Why not keep them all on the bike computer

A bike computer’s screen is small for browsing, and it’s a poor place to compare routes or check where the water is. A Garmin Edge, for one, keeps at most 100 courses. Your phone has the big screen, search and a map you can zoom into.

With Ridekit the library lives on the phone, and a route goes to the bike computer when you need it:

• Garmin Edge: sent over Bluetooth in seconds, with no internet, so there’s no reason to preload the Edge “just in case”.
• Wahoo, Hammerhead, Bryton and others: Export for your bike computer… makes a FIT course or a GPX with stops to open in its app (ELEMNT, Hammerhead, Bryton Active…).

Your bike computer stays light, and the whole library is with you, signal or not.

Find any route

On the library page:

• Search looks in route names and collection names.
• Filter chips narrow the list: Ready offline, Not ready or Not sent, and a distance band: Under 100 km, 100–200 km or 200 km + (60 and 120 miles if you use miles). One of each group at a time, and they combine.
• Sort (the arrows button) by Date Added, Name, Distance or Size.

Each route shows where it stands: Ready offline when its map and stops are on the phone, Sent with the date it last went to your bike computer, or Changed · send again when you’ve added stops since.

Collections for trips and events

A collection groups the routes of one trip or event: a week in the Alps, a 600 km audax in four parts, the club’s winter loops. Inside, the routes are stages in order, each in its own colour on one map.

From a collection you can Send all… to an Edge in one go, or Get ready to download the maps and stops for every stage while you have signal. The ⋯ menu reorders the stages, shares the whole collection with another rider, or exports it as a zip of GPX files with stops, for any bike computer.

Collections need Pro or Plus. A zip of several routes, like an organiser’s pack, comes in as a collection named after the zip.

Several routes at once

Tap Select, pick routes, and the bar at the bottom offers Send, Get ready, Move to a collection, Share and Delete. Sending several is one transfer, one course after another.

Tidy without worrying

• Duplicates are spotted. Import a route you already have (as GPX or FIT, downloaded again or renamed) and Ridekit asks before adding a copy. See routes from Komoot, Ride with GPS and Strava.
• Deleting is reversible. Deleted routes go to Recently Deleted (in the ⋯ menu) for 30 days, with their stops and offline map, and can be restored from there.
• Courses on your bike computer are never touched. Deleting a route in Ridekit doesn’t delete it from the bike computer, and Ridekit can’t see an Edge’s course list. To make room, delete old courses on the bike computer itself.

Each route keeps a log of its sends to an Edge from this iPhone: on the Send page, Last sent shows when, to which Edge and at what detail, and All sends lists the rest.

Backed up in your own iCloud

With Keep in iCloud on (it is by default), your routes, stops, collections and ride plans go to your own iCloud. A new phone or a reinstall gets them back. There’s no account and no sign-in.

Offline maps aren’t kept in iCloud: they’re big, and Get ready downloads them again. To see what iCloud is doing, open Settings → iCloud → Activity. With no signal, changes wait (“Waiting for a connection”) and go as soon as you’re online.

Good to know

• On the free plan you can keep and send as many routes as you like. Offline maps come for every route up to 170 km, and up to 500 km of new maps in any 7 days; Pro or Plus gets maps for every route. The plans list the rest.
• Your plan ends? What you’ve made stays yours: routes, offline maps and stops already downloaded are never locked.
• The bike computer is full? Delete old courses on it, then put on what you need from the library. Nothing is lost: the routes are still on your phone.

How sending to an Edge works is in send a route to your Garmin Edge with no internet. More on backups on the support page.