FAQ
What the app does, what it deliberately does not do, and the maintenance numbers riders ask for most. 78 answers, straight.
What Moto Companion is, what it runs on, and what it deliberately leaves out.
Moto Companion is an iPhone app that tracks motorcycle servicing from the odometer. Every interval — oil, chain, valves, brake fluid — carries a countdown that falls as the reading rises, so the schedule shows what is due next rather than what was due last year. It also holds a per-bike logbook, reads workshop invoices into it, and answers questions in an AI mechanic chat. If maintenance is new ground, start with maintenance for beginners.
No. There is no subscription, no in-app purchase and no account — nothing in the app asks you to sign in or hand over an email address. The mechanic chat and the invoice reader run against Moto Companion's own server, so there is no API key to supply and no credit to top up. The app is not on the App Store yet; the listing goes up when 1.0 ships.
Mostly. The garage, the schedule, the logbook and the odometer live on the phone, so logging work, marking a task done or correcting the reading needs no connection. Two things do need one: the mechanic chat and reading a photographed invoice both go to a server. The bundled sample invoice is the exception — it is read on the device, no camera and no network, which is how to see the import flow before you have a sheet to scan.
Any iPhone that runs iOS 17.5 or later. Moto Companion is an iPhone app, portrait only, with no native iPad layout — it installs on iPad and runs there in iPhone compatibility mode, at phone size. Version 1.0 is phone-first on purpose: the odometer drum is dragged with a thumb and the schedule is read one-handed in a garage.
No. Moto Companion is written for iPhone only, with sync through Apple's private iCloud database, so there is no Android build and no web version. This site carries the guides, the privacy policy and support; the garage, the schedule and the logbook live on the phone.
None of the three. Moto Companion 1.0 ships as a single iPhone app: no watchOS companion, no Home Screen or Lock Screen widget, no Live Activity, no CarPlay screen and no Siri shortcuts. A CarPlay surface was drawn during design and left unbuilt for 1.0. Everything happens in the app on the phone.
No. Moto Companion sends no notifications at all — no push reminders, no badges, no alerts — and it never asks for notification permission. The schedule is checked when you open it: SERVICE lists every task with its countdown, amber as one comes close and red once it is past due. That is a deliberate cut for 1.0, not an oversight.
As many as you own. There is no cap, and each bike carries its own odometer, schedule and logbook; a chip row across the top of GARAGE switches between them, and the app reopens on the bike you were last using. A bike you stop riding gets archived rather than deleted, so its records stay.
Yes. Brand and model are typed in by hand, and the model year accepts anything from 1900 to 2027, so a 1978 twin is as valid as a bike bought last week. A small built-in library — Honda NX500, CB500X, Transalp 750, Africa Twin, CB650R — offers pick chips; every other bike is typed in, and its factory schedule is looked up on the web when you create it.
It goes looking. Step 2 of the add-bike wizard offers "Search the exact model" to pin the designation, and leaving step 3 fires a second search for the factory service schedule, which comes back as a checklist with everything ticked. That search takes tens of seconds, and the common set — oil at 12,000 km (7,500 miles), chain lube, chain tension, valves, brake fluid — stays usable underneath while it runs. If nothing solid comes back, the common set stands.
English only. Version 1.0 has no language switch: the interface and the guides on this site are English throughout, and the build ships no other language. If you need another language, write to support and name it — this is a scope decision for the first release, not a technical wall.
Where the intervals come from, what the colours mean, and how far you can bend them.
The odometer drives it. Every task carries an interval and a countdown to the next service, and moving the reading drops every countdown by the same distance — there is no automatic reading, no dongle, no GPS, no trip tracking. You set the odometer by hand, or let an applied workshop invoice correct it, and the schedule follows. Each bike in the garage keeps its own schedule, logbook and reading.
Either from a built-in common set or from a web search. Five Honda models are in the built-in list and start from the common set — oil and filter, chain lube, chain tension, valve clearance, brake fluid. Every other bike triggers a search for that model's factory schedule; what comes back replaces the common set as a pre-checked list you can untick before the logbook starts. Your service book stays the authority; service intervals explained covers what the figures mean.
They are distances, not dates. A task reads scheduled while its countdown is well ahead, turns amber and reads due once the countdown falls inside its lead time, and reads overdue in red once it passes zero — the overdue row shows how far past you are. Status is worked out from the current reading every time the screen draws. It is never stored, so correcting the odometer recolors the whole list at once.
Yes, in Settings, under lead time. Three modes: Early turns tasks amber twice as far out, Standard uses the factory lead times, and Last minute halves the warning. Standard is the default. Change the mode and the schedule recolors immediately, because every status is derived from the current reading rather than saved.
No. Moto Companion 1.0 has no notifications, no badges and no alerts of any kind. The schedule is checked when you open the Service tab, and it reads from the odometer at that moment. That was a deliberate cut, not an oversight — the app carries no notification code at all.
The task turns red and the row reads how far past the interval you are, so the figure keeps growing as you ride. Nothing is locked and nothing else changes — Moto Companion keeps the record, it does not nag. If the overdue job is brakes, steering or tyres, stop riding and have someone qualified look at the bike before you go further.
Tap the task on the Service tab and choose Mark done at the current reading. A sheet opens with the odometer prefilled and room for a note — parts, torque, cost — and confirming resets that countdown to the full interval and writes the job into the logbook. Ticking off all four steps of a DIY checklist, where one exists, does the same in one tap.
Through three of them. Chain lube, chain tension and an oil change each carry a four-step checklist with the bike's own figures beneath it — slack in millimetres, axle torque, oil capacity. Tick every step and a "Log it at" button appears, which resets that countdown and writes the entry in one tap. Every other task opens a workshop card instead, with a button that hands the question to the mechanic.
Yes. Tap the task, choose Edit interval, and step it up or down — 500 km at a time in kilometres, 500 miles (805 km) in miles — down to a floor of 200 km (124 miles), with no upper limit. The sheet shows where the next service lands before you confirm, and confirming shifts that countdown by the same amount. One catch: an edited interval is relabelled as a distance, so a months figure in the label is dropped.
Only in two places. If your bike is not in the built-in list, the add-bike wizard takes custom intervals — a name and a distance. After the bike exists, the one route to a new task is the invoice review, which can offer a chain kit, spark plugs or coolant interval when it reads one on the sheet. There is no add-task button on the schedule, and a task cannot be renamed or deleted.
In part. A months figure shows in the task label — brake fluid reads 24 mo — but it counts down in distance, converted at roughly 1,000 km (620 miles) per month when the bike is created. Nothing in the app counts down by calendar date. Brake fluid is a two-year job regardless of mileage; the interval guide explains why, and your service book should set the date.
No. Every countdown is distance-based, so a bike parked for a winter has moved zero on all of them while the oil ages and the brake fluid draws water. Track those by date yourself. Winter storage covers what a bike that sits actually needs.
One number per bike drives every countdown. Correcting it, moving it, and reading it in miles or kilometres.
By one number: the odometer reading you enter for each bike. Every schedule task carries an interval and a countdown, and advancing the reading drops every countdown by the same distance. Status is derived from that countdown whenever the schedule is drawn, never stored, so it is right the moment the reading changes. Nothing else feeds it — no trips, no GPS, no dongle.
Open the bike file and drag a digit on the drum until it matches the clocks. Every due date shifts with the correction — that is by design, because a schedule built on a wrong reading is wrong everywhere. Drag back down if you overshoot; the countdowns follow either way. Applying an invoice can correct the reading too, but only forwards: Moto Companion never rolls it back from a scan.
Miles by default. The switch is in Settings, under Units, and every readout follows it — the drum, the schedule, the logbook, the ride slider, the mechanic's replies. Readings are stored in kilometres underneath and converted only at the display and input edges, so switching back and forth never changes the stored figure. The CSV export is the one exception: it is always in kilometres.
No. Every reading is entered by hand. Moto Companion has no OBD-II or ELM327 dongle support, no Bluetooth pairing, no GPS or trip recording and no Apple Watch companion, and it asks for no location permission. The reading moves when you move it, or when you apply an invoice that reads further than the app does.
Garage, then Add a ride. Set the distance on the slider and confirm — one ride takes 1 to 250 in your display unit, so up to 250 miles (about 400 km) at a time, and the slider starts on your last ride distance. The reading advances and every countdown drops with it. A ride is not a logbook entry; it moves the odometer and nothing else.
The total. Moto Companion holds one lifetime reading per bike and the whole schedule counts from it, so entering a trip meter zeroed at the last fuel stop would knock the reading back to almost nothing and push every countdown out by the same distance — nothing would read as due for years. Use the trip figure in Add a ride instead; that moves the total forward.
Enter the true total — the new clock's figure plus what the old one had on it — so the intervals count from real wear. Moto Companion keeps one reading per bike and no record of how it got there, so log the swap by hand with both numbers in the note. If the old total is genuinely unknown, enter the new clock's reading and treat the schedule as starting there. A written note is what makes the jump defensible at resale.
No. Distance is the only measure of wear it counts, in miles or kilometres. An interval quoted only in months is converted when the bike is set up — one month counts as 1,000 km (about 620 miles) — so nothing counts down by calendar date either. A bike parked all winter has moved zero on every countdown, so run your own spring check before the first ride.
How work gets on the record, and what the invoice reader will and will not do.
Four ways. Import a workshop invoice and apply the lines you keep; add an entry by hand from the LOG tab with a task chip, an odometer reading and a note; mark a schedule task done; or tick off a DIY checklist and log it. The last two also restart that task's countdown. A mechanic reply can write an entry itself when the answer warrants one.
Yes. Moto Companion takes a document scan through the camera, a photo from your library, or a PDF, and the PDF is rasterised on the phone before anything leaves it. One page per import: page one of a multi-page scan or PDF is the one that gets read. With no invoice to hand, Run the sample reads a bundled workshop invoice with no camera and no connection.
It hands back every line with a confidence score and a note on what it would do with it: match a schedule task and reset that countdown, become a new log entry, or nothing at all. Maintenance lines scoring 70 or higher arrive ticked, and you tick or untick the rest. Nothing writes to the logbook until you apply, and discarding the import writes nothing.
Only when the invoice reads further than the app does, and only with the correction ticked. It never rolls the reading backwards. Covered tasks then restart counting from the invoice's own reading rather than today's, so a sheet from three months ago does not push your next service out by everything you have ridden since. Every other countdown shifts with the correction, the same as when you drag the drum.
For three jobs, yes. A chain kit, spark plugs or coolant line with no schedule slot is flagged amber and offered as a capsule — add a chain kit at every 20,000 km (12,400 miles), for example. The offer is off by default; Moto Companion never invents an interval you did not ask for. Wear items with no honest factory figure, such as tyres, pads and battery, are deliberately not offered.
It is refused, not filed. Document type is checked first, so a lunch receipt or a supermarket till roll fails the import with a dry note rather than becoming rows: only workshop and parts invoices land in the logbook. Nothing is saved. You can try another shot, or type the entry in by hand instead.
There is no guarantee. Every line comes back with a confidence score and low scorers are flagged, but the text itself is not editable — a misread line is one you leave unticked rather than one you fix. Lay the sheet flat and keep the whole page in frame, since only one page is read per import. If the read fails outright, the failure screen opens the hand-entry sheet.
It is sent once, read, and not kept. The image goes encrypted to the server, comes back as text lines, and is not stored on the phone or held afterwards — there is no photo attached to a logbook entry and no way to reopen the original. The bundled sample never leaves the phone at all. The detail is in the privacy policy.
No. The logbook is prepend-only in 1.0 — tapping a row expands its detail, but there is no edit, no swipe to delete, no per-entry removal. The only way to clear records is Erase garage & logbook in Settings, which wipes every bike, schedule and entry, archived ones included, with no undo. If a reading went in wrong, log a correcting entry by hand and leave the trail intact.
Yes. Odometer, schedule and logbook all belong to one bike, and switching bikes on the garage chip row swaps the whole set. Entries read newest first. Archiving a bike takes it out of the garage rotation but keeps its records — restore it from Settings and the schedule and logbook come back intact. More on what a service record should hold is in keeping a maintenance log.
Yes, as CSV from Settings. Export logbook passes the CSV to the system share sheet as text — there is no .csv file and no filename, so where it lands depends on what you send it to. The export covers the bike you are on; switch bikes and export again for the second. Columns are date (day and month), code, name, odometer, source, reference and details, the odometer always in kilometres whatever your unit setting says; nothing reads a CSV back in.
Reading and writing it does. Entries added by hand, marked done, or logged from a DIY checklist save straight to the phone and appear at once; iCloud mirrors them to another device on the same account once the connection returns. Reading an invoice and asking the mechanic both need a connection, and the reader says so plainly and saves nothing when it cannot reach the server.
What it knows about your bike, where it stops, and what it will not do.
Yes. The MECHANIC tab is a language model — Google Gemini, called through the Vercel AI Gateway — that answers with this bike's file in front of it: brand, model, year, the current odometer, every schedule countdown, the last six logbook lines, and the last ten turns of the conversation. Ask in plain English. Three starter chips open the thread, and a reply comes back with up to three follow-up chips.
It narrows things down; it does not diagnose. Describe the symptom — when it happens, at what revs, hot or cold — and the answer works from that plus the bike's file and its last six logbook lines. Moto Companion reads no sensors: no Bluetooth, no OBD adapter, no fault codes, so anything needing eyes, ears, or hands on the bike still needs a workshop. The engine noise guide covers the same ground in writing.
It answers with your bike open in front of it. Every question carries the model and year, the current reading, every schedule countdown and its status, and the last six logbook entries, so a question about what is due comes back with your numbers rather than a generic interval. Replies quote your unit, and some of them write a line straight into the logbook.
A safety gate mounts before anything else. The chat dims and you cannot type or send until you answer it; the card reads DON'T RIDE ON A GUESS — brakes, steering, or tyres in doubt means the bike does not move until someone has looked. That is a trailer, not a test ride. Two ways out: find a shop, or confirm it has been checked and sorted.
No. Replies come from an AI model reading text — it cannot see, hear, or touch the bike, and Moto Companion carries no manufacturer's manual, service bulletin, or recall data. Torque figures, capacities, and clearances come from your manual, and DIY versus dealer covers which jobs are worth handing over. The line under the composer says it plainly: advice here is no substitute for a qualified mechanic.
Sometimes. A reply can carry a logbook line with it, written at the current reading and marked as coming from chat, and it lands like any entry typed by hand, with its two-letter code and the detail from the reply. It does not touch the service schedule — resetting a countdown still means marking the task done, or ticking off a DIY checklist in the app.
No. Every question goes to the server and back, so with no connection there is no reply — you get a line saying the workshop cannot be reached, plus a single chip that sends the question again once you are back on. The rest of the app is local: the schedule, the odometer drum, the logbook, and entries typed by hand all work with no signal.
No to all three. Moto Companion holds no shop listings, no ratings, and no prices, and it never asks for your location. When the safety gate mounts over a brakes, steering, or tyres answer, Find a shop near me opens a screen whose one button hands the search to Apple Maps — Maps does the finding. Booking and parts ordering are not in 1.0.
No on both counts. The thread lives in memory on your iPhone, one per bike, and is gone when the app quits — not written to disk, not synced to iCloud. What is sent, your message and the bike file it needs, is used to write the reply and nothing more: not stored, not used for training, and nothing in it identifies you. The privacy policy names the processors.
The answer is dropped. A reply is written for one bike's file, so switching cancels the turn in flight and anything that arrives afterwards for the old bike is discarded rather than pasted into the new thread. Each bike keeps its own conversation, and the new one opens with its own greeting at its own reading. Ask again on the bike you meant.
No account, no analytics. What leaves the phone, when, and how to erase all of it.
No. Moto Companion has no sign-up, no email address, no password, and no in-app purchase or subscription in 1.0. Bikes, odometer readings, the service schedule and the logbook are written straight to the iPhone, and when they sync they go through your own iCloud — not a server the developer owns. Nothing is registered with anyone.
Your garage, schedule and logbook sync through your own private iCloud database, using the Apple Account already signed in on the phone. Apple encrypts it against that account; the developer has no way in and holds no copy. There is no sync switch and no status light in the app. The mechanic chat is the exception: that thread is held in memory only and is never synced.
Three features send anything out, and only when you use them: the mechanic chat, invoice reading, and the add-bike lookup. Each carries what the job needs — your message with the bike's file, the invoice photo, or the make, model and year — encrypted, read once, and not kept on the server. Your plate and VIN are never sent, and nothing in a request identifies you. The privacy policy lists each one in full.
None of the three. There is no analytics package, no crash reporter, no advertising, and no data sold or shared for anyone else's purposes. The bundled privacy manifest declares no tracking and no collected data types; the only declared API use is the standard user-defaults system, reason CA92.1. This site loads no analytics or tracking scripts either.
No. The mechanic chat, invoice reading and add-bike lookup run through Vercel and Google as processors — they handle the request only to produce the answer, and nothing is used for training. The server keeps no copy once the reply comes back, and there is no account for any of it to attach to.
Settings has "Erase garage & logbook", a two-tap control that deletes every bike, schedule and log entry, archived bikes included, with no undo. Deleting the app takes the copy on the device with it. To clear the synced copy, remove the app's iCloud data in iOS Settings. There is nothing to delete server-side, because nothing is kept there.
Moto Companion falls back to a store held only on that iPhone, and nothing else changes. The garage, schedule and logbook work exactly as before, because none of them depend on sync — the mechanic and invoice reading still need a network connection, iCloud or not. What you lose is the second copy: nothing is mirrored to another device, and deleting the app takes the data with it.
Sign the new phone into the same Apple Account and install Moto Companion. The garage, schedule and logbook come down from your private iCloud database on their own — there is nothing to export or restore by hand. Mechanic threads do not travel; they are never saved. Without iCloud there is no transfer path: the CSV export is plain text for the working bike, and the app reads nothing back in.
The push entitlement does one job: letting iCloud tell the app that synced data has changed. Those pushes are silent, carry no content, and never appear on screen. Moto Companion has no reminders, alerts or badges in 1.0. The schedule is there when you open it, and nothing arrives in between.
So the mechanic, invoice reading and bike lookup can only be called by the real app. Each request carries an Apple App Attest check — a cryptographic key held on the device. It is not an account, not a login, and identifies nothing about you. You see it only when it fails, and the reply says so plainly.
No. Archive is a soft delete: the bike leaves the garage rotation and its schedule and logbook stay exactly as they were. Restore it from the archived bikes list in Settings and everything comes back attached to it. There is no per-bike delete — the only permanent removal is the erase in Settings, which wipes every bike at once.
The numbers riders ask for most, each one handing off to the full guide.
Most bikes want fresh oil every 6,000–12,000 km (4,000–7,500 miles), or once a year, whichever comes first. Mineral oil sits at the short end of that range, full synthetic at the long end, and the owner's manual overrides both. A bike that covers little distance hits the calendar limit long before the odometer one. The interval guide breaks it down by oil type and use.
Every 500–1,000 km (300–600 miles), and after every wet ride or wash. That covers a sealed O-ring or X-ring chain in normal road use. Dust, rain and winter salt push it to every ride; dry summer tarmac lets you sit at the top of the range. The chain lube guide has the intervals by condition.
Most chain-driven street bikes want 25–35 mm (1.0–1.4 in) of total up-and-down movement, measured midway along the bottom run at the chain's tightest point. Your manual's figure beats that range. Too tight is the expensive mistake: it loads the gearbox output bearing on every bump. Moto Companion carries a four-step DIY checklist for the adjustment and logs it against the odometer when you tick it off.
Whatever the placard on the swingarm, chain guard or frame says — for most street bikes 2.2–2.5 bar (32–36 psi) front and 2.5–2.9 bar (36–42 psi) rear. Check them cold, once a week. The number moulded into the sidewall is the carcass maximum, not a target. The pressure guide covers load, two-up riding and cold checks.
At 2 mm of friction material, and immediately at any metal-on-metal sound. New pads start at roughly 4–5 mm, so 2 mm is well past halfway and wearing faster. Grinding means the disc is being cut — stop riding and have the brakes looked at before the next trip. Reading pads in the caliper shows how to check them in two minutes.
Inspect closely from five years and replace at ten, whatever the tread depth. Rubber hardens with age and wet grip fades before anything looks wrong. The last four digits of the DOT code on the sidewall give week and year — 2318 is week 23 of 2018. Cracking at the groove bases or around the bead means the tyre comes off before the next ride.
Every two years, regardless of distance. DOT 4 absorbs water from the day it goes in; two years typically leaves 2–3% water in the fluid, the boiling point falls, and the lever goes long exactly when the brakes are hot. Moto Companion counts brake fluid down in distance like everything else — nothing in it counts by date, so the two-year clock stays with you.
Every 24,000–40,000 km (15,000–25,000 miles) on most modern bikes, and the manual's figure wins. It is a measuring job first: on a healthy engine checked on time, often nothing needs adjusting. Valves drift tighter with wear rather than looser, and a tight valve burns itself in silence. Valve clearance explained covers the symptoms and the cost.
Standard nickel plugs every 10,000–15,000 km (6,000–9,000 miles); iridium and other precious-metal plugs run to 40,000 km (25,000 miles) and beyond. The manual's figure wins. Plug wear follows distance, not the calendar — a bike parked all winter ages its oil and brake fluid, not its plugs. Read the old plug before it goes in the bin: tan to light brown is healthy, black soot is rich, white and blistered is lean.
Every two to three years or 40,000 km (25,000 miles), whichever comes first. Use an aluminium-safe, silicate-free coolant sold for motorcycles. The interval is a calendar item because the corrosion inhibitors deplete whether you ride or not — old coolant still cools, it just stops protecting. Check the level at the expansion tank cold; a hot system is pressurised and opens with scalding force.
Five things in the same order every time: tyres, controls, lights, chain, leaks. Two minutes, bike stationary. It catches what actually strands riders — a screw picked up overnight, a chain gone dry, a fresh puddle under the engine. A brake lever that reaches the bar is a no-go: the bike stays parked until a professional has looked at it.
Five habits cover most of it: check the tyres weekly, lube the chain every 500–1,000 km (300–600 miles), change the oil on schedule, keep the battery charged, and write down what you do. None of them needs a workshop. Valve checks, suspension and diagnostics can wait until those five are automatic.
Budget $300–1,000 (€280–950) a year for a commuted mid-size bike covering 8,000–12,000 km (5,000–7,500 miles). That is consumables — chain lube, oil, pads — plus one proper service. Doing the routine work yourself roughly halves it, and a year that lands tyres and a chain kit together runs past the top of the range. The cost breakdown goes item by item.
Five jobs: a full tank with stabiliser, the battery on a smart maintainer, the tyres off the cold floor, a wash plus corrosion protectant, and a breathable cover. Change the oil before storage rather than after — used oil carries acids that sit against bearings all winter. Petrol starts degrading within one to three months, and a lead-acid battery left flat sulphates and never fully recovers.
Still stuck
Something broken, or something missing here — write to emmanuel@captaindev.io. Include the bike and what you did last. Replies come from a person.
Moto Companion — for iPhone