Questions and answers

Wend is a navigation app for people riding bicycles and e-bikes. It shows your route on a 3D map of the real streets, gives turn cues you can read in a glance or hear, and replans in the direction you are going when you leave the route. It is designed for a phone on a handlebar from the start, not adapted from a car or walking app.

There is nothing to download from an app store. Open Wend in your phone’s browser. To have it start full-screen like any other app, add it to your home screen: on iPhone use Share, then Add to Home Screen in Safari; on Android use the browser menu, then Install app or Add to Home screen.

Yes. Turn cues are timed in seconds before a turn, not metres, so they arrive earlier at higher speeds, and arrival times are based on the pace you actually ride. Routes use cycling directions, so they include cycle tracks and paths. Switch on “I ride an e-bike” in Settings and it asks your battery level before and after a ride, tells you what the ride used, learns how far a charge takes you, and shows what a route should leave you with before you set off.

Nothing dramatic. The app waits a few seconds to tell a wobble or a pothole from a decision, then finds the way on from where you are, in the direction you are already heading. It does not tell you to turn back.

Yes. While you are moving it shows the next turn, your speed, the distance to go and your arrival time, at the edges of the map. As a turn arrives the cue turns amber. When you stop, the buttons to end the ride, mute the voice and open the menu appear, and they go again when you roll away. If you drag the map to look around, the view comes back as you ride on. One tap anywhere strips the display back to an arrow, a distance and your speed.

Yes. When you have stopped, hold a point on the map to pin a spot there, and add photos to it. The spot stands at that place on the 3D map when you ride back, and every spot is listed in the menu.

Yes. Turns are spoken with the street name to look for, the phone buzzes as a turn arrives, and you can dictate a destination. You are also told by voice about rain or strong wind on the way, and about friends falling behind on a group ride.

Partly. Once you have opened it before, the app itself opens without signal, keeps following the route it already has, and keeps recording your ride. Planning a new route, searching for places and loading new map imagery need a connection.

The screen is kept awake while you ride so the map does not go dark on the handlebar. A 3D map and GPS do use power, as with any navigation app, so a long ride is best with a charged phone or a power bank. You can shrink or hide parts of the display and rely on spoken cues.

Yes. Any recorded ride can be saved as a standard GPX file, which Strava, Komoot and bike computers all read. You can also share a ride as a picture.

One person starts a ride and shares its link. Everyone who opens the link appears on everyone else’s map, updated about once a second, for up to 12 riders. Tap a friend to fly to them, or hold them to keep them in view. When someone sets a destination the group is told, and anyone can ride there too.

The 3D imagery, cycling routes and place search come from Google Maps Platform. Weather comes from Open-Meteo, and the positions of street lamps at night from OpenStreetMap.