FAQ

How is the CO₂ saving calculated?

It is an estimate of what a car would have emitted covering the same route — the same distance and the same climbing — with two terms:

  • Distance. 170 g of CO₂e per kilometre. That is roughly the real-world tailpipe average of the European car fleet. It is deliberately not one of the ~250 g/km lifecycle figures other calculators use, which fold in manufacturing and fuel production and make the totals look far better than they honestly are.
  • Climbing. Lifting a car (about 1400 kg with a driver) up a hill takes real energy, which a combustion drivetrain delivers at roughly 25% efficiency. That fuel is burned and not given back on the descent — a car sheds the energy into its brakes, not into the tank. So a hilly loop costs a car more than a flat one that ends in the same place.

Roughly: a flat 20 km ride saves about 3.4 kg; the same ride with 300 m of climbing saves about 4.5 kg.

Is that a real saving, or a nice story?

It is an estimate against a counterfactual, and Biko says so every time it shows one — always as “saved vs. driving the same route”, never as a bare kilogram figure. It is not a claim that you would otherwise have made that exact trip by car, and it is not a certified offset or a carbon credit. What it is good for is scale: seeing what a year of commuting by bike adds up to, and comparing one month against another on the same honest basis.

Where are my rides stored?

On your phone, and nowhere else. Biko has no account and no server: every ride, track, photo and note lives in a local database inside the app’s private storage. Nothing is uploaded, and the developers cannot see any of it.

How do I delete my data?

You have three options, all under your control:

Option 1: Delete a single ride

Open the ride in the app and delete it. Its GPS track and its photos go with it.

Option 2: Clear app data via device settings

  1. Open your phone’s Settings.
  2. Go to Apps (or Applications).
  3. Find and tap Biko.
  4. Tap Storage & cache (or similar).
  5. Choose Clear Storage or Clear Data.

This erases the app’s local database, removing every ride.

Option 3: Uninstall the app

Uninstalling removes the app and all of its data from your device.

Note that backup files (.biko) and share images you exported yourself are copies — deleting rides in the app does not touch them.

Why does Biko need location permission?

To record a ride. Location is read only while a ride is being tracked, and only to build that ride. On Android, “while using the app” is enough — an ongoing notification runs for the length of the ride, which is what lets tracking continue with the screen off. Background location access is never requested. On iOS, “Allow While Using the App” is enough for the same reason.

Does tracking keep working if I lock the screen or switch apps?

Yes. Lock the phone, put it in your pocket, take a call — the ride keeps recording. On Android an ongoing notification shows the ride’s progress and takes you back to it when tapped; on iOS the system’s own location indicator is shown.

What happens if my phone dies mid-ride?

Your track is written to disk as you ride, so the ride survives. Next time you open Biko, the unfinished ride appears on the home screen and you can save it or discard it. Its totals are rebuilt from the recorded track, so the ride you get back is the ride you rode.

Does Biko work without an internet connection?

Recording does — GPS is not the internet. Distance, speed, elevation, charts, stats and saving all work fully offline. Only map imagery needs a connection, since the tiles are downloaded as you look at them.

How do I move my rides to a new phone?

Export a backup from Settings. Biko writes a single .biko file with all your finished rides and hands it to your share sheet, so you can put it in Files, a cloud drive of your choosing, or send it to yourself. On the new phone, import that file. Importing is additive and safe to repeat: rides already present are skipped, and nothing is ever deleted to match the archive.

How accurate are the numbers?

As accurate as consumer GPS allows. Biko filters out low-accuracy fixes, rejects impossible jumps, and detects stops so a coffee break is not counted as riding — but distance, speed and especially elevation are estimates, not measurements of record. Expect small differences from other apps and from bike computers.

I found a bug or have an idea

Please email zerocodeteam@gmail.com. Feedback shapes what gets built next.