Cycling app of the week: Cycle Now

What is it?

Just arrived in a new city and would rather get around by bike? Cycle Now is a bike share finder that helps you to find the nearest hire bike, and also directs you to an onward docking station that's closest to your destination. If you're in any major world city chances are Cycle Now will be able to locate a bike for you, as it covers over 200 and countless different companies, including Santander Cycles (London's Boris Bikes to you and me) Nextbike and New York's Citi Bike. In fact the list is growing at a faster rate than Cycle Now are updating their website, as Next Bikes in Bath aren't listed but as you can see in the screenshot below, the app located them for me! 

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The trip planner, powered by Google Maps, finds both the closest bike to your current location and the closest station to your destination, and then navigates you as well. You can also enable an additional widget that will show nearest bikes in your Today planner without having to open the app, useful if you're on a city break with lots of spontaneous bike journeys in the pipeline. 
 

How can it help me?

It's going to help you find a bike, of course! And the navigation means you won't struggle to find a docking station when you're at your point of interest. The 'favourites' location tool is useful as well, which means if you regularly use a hire bike to get you home it will show how may bikes are available in that location straight away. 

The icons show places you can pick a bike up, indicating the ratio of bikes (green) to docks (white) 

What makes it unique?

It's third party and pulls together many different bike-sharing companies, so the database is huge - pretty much every major world city is covered by at least one sharing scheme. The fact that it finds your bike then navigates you to a dock closest to where you want to go is handy, too. 

Where can I get it?

Cycle Now is available for free on both Android and iPhone, and as an in-app purchase you can remove the ads for £2.09.