What's new in Plan&Ride

2.17.0

New

• Will I make the change? The planner shows how often each change worked on earlier days.
• You'll miss the change: a notification while following; tap it and the planner finds the rest of the way from the change stop.
• How full is the bus: say it in one tap once you're on board; others following the bus see it.
• Take me home: Home and Work above the planner, on the app icon, as a widget and for Google Assistant.
• Last bus home: an evening reminder before the last connection home leaves.
• Offline timetables: keep a region's timetables on the phone (picked on a map); the planner uses them without a connection. They update by themselves.
• Share my arrival: a link anyone can open to see when you arrive, live.
• Rain: connections with less walking first when rain is expected.
• Tell us what's missing: send a missing connection, stop or a problem at a stop; we check it before the timetable changes.
• Your year in numbers in History, and a choice of alert sounds.

Fixed

• Waiting at a wide bus station counts as waiting at your stop (report EM-0073).

2.16.1

New

• Going to the stop by car: "Will I catch it?" counts the drive along the real roads instead of the walk; switch between on foot and by car with one tap on the followed bus (suggestion EM-0072).

2.16.0

New

• Arrive by: pick a time in the planner and choose Arrive by to get connections that are there in time (report EM-0053).
• Following a later bus: a quiet notification says which bus you follow; the live one starts 30 minutes before it leaves, or as set in Account → Reminders (report EM-0054).
• The whole journey while following: Home shows where to get off and the next buses with their times (suggestion EM-0067).
• Nearest stop: the location button in the planner starts from the stop nearest to you (suggestion EM-0068).
• Install on your watch: Home offers to open Plan&Ride's page in the Play Store on your Wear OS watch.

Fixed

• A journey put together bus by bus shows on Home and lists its buses when tapped (report EM-0066).
• Stops named without their town are found with it, e.g. Lipovec in Zvolen (report EM-0065).
• The planner no longer keeps a past date (report EM-0069).
• The map of a bus follows the roads between its stops (report EM-0064).
• Following a bus: the position no longer jumps ahead on buses with stops far apart (report EM-0063).
• Buses whose operator data leaves stops out say so, and missing stops are filled in where the timetable allows (report EM-0062).
• The map follows the roads a bus really takes, bus station exits included.

2.15.1

Changed

• Blue is back: Zastávka is the default theme again, with a slate bottom bar and a blue P&R icon. The green themes stay in Account → Appearance.
• The followed bus on Home has a softly moving background in your theme's colour.

Fixed

• The bottom bar no longer squeezes the last icon when a tab opens (report EM-0052).
• Follow the whole journey now shows when the journey is followed (report EM-0055).
• A bus's stops show where you get on, not only where you get off (report EM-0057).
• Following a bus: at a stop, the notification names that stop, not the one before (report EM-0059).

2.15.0

New

• A new look: Plan&Ride green, a new P&R icon and a floating bar at the bottom that grows to show where you are.
• Departures and the planner are easy to tell apart: a clock for departures, a bus for the planner.
• Next buses on Home: your favourite stop's next buses as cards under the ticket.
• Every colour is yours: new themes (Plan&Ride, Sage, Dark green, Ink & mint) and each part of the app in Account → Appearance.

Changed

• Delays: on time stays calm, small delays in orange, 5 minutes or more in red.

2.9.0

New

• The bus you follow on the home screen: a live card with the countdown, the delay and the bus moving along your part of the route, from your stop to where you get off. Tap it for the stops, × to stop following.
• Photos in bug reports and suggestions: attach up to 3 screenshots or photos, for example with what you mean marked on them. They are made smaller and re-saved before sending, which removes their location and other details, and only the developers see them.
• New day and time pickers in the planner and for regular rides: a calendar with Today and Tomorrow, and a 24-hour clock you can also type into, with Now.
• Haptic feedback on taps and actions. Turn it off in Settings.
• The eye button shows the PIN while you type it, like the password.

Improved

• Many more connections in the planner. We now convert the carriers' timetables ourselves; about 60 % more trips have their times, e.g. evening buses between Banská Bystrica and Zvolen (report EM-0016).
• Automatic bus positions ask for location Allow all the time right away, on first start and in Settings.
• Emails about your reports now come from Plan&Ride.

Fixed

• A new install showed the app in English although Slovak was selected.
• Full stop names such as Štadlerovo nábrežie find stops the timetable abbreviates (Štadlerovo nábr.).

2.8.0

New

• City buses in the planner for any day: Zvolen and Banská Bystrica city lines, also with changes to and from regional buses, followed live (reports EM-0011, EM-0012).
• Star or repeat your own journey built bus by bus from the departure boards, like a planner result.
• Regular rides: different days in odd and even weeks, dates to skip (holidays), and the same lines or any bus at that time. Tap a ride on the home screen to change it.

2.7.1

Fixed

• City buses in the planner (report EM-0010): direct Zvolen and Banská Bystrica city buses are found from S.A.D. Zvolen's live data and followed live.
• The departure board no longer crashes when the operator lists the same bus twice.

2.7.0

Changed

• Timetables from our own server. The planner, other carriers on the boards and stop lists come from emhub, which loads the Slovak bus carriers' timetables every night. The app no longer uses cp.sk; star journeys saved before 2.7.0 again.
• Stop shortcuts: type the start of each word, e.g. z z p k for Zvolen, Zlatý Potok konečná, or bb as for Banská Bystrica, AS.
• For now the planner covers buses; trains are not in it.

2.6.1

Fixed

• Automatic mode with the app closed (report EM-0009) keeps working with the screen off.
• Following survives app updates: the bus is picked up again right after an update.

2.6.0

New

• testEM is now Plan&Ride, with a new icon. (The package name stays com.ksjd.testem, so it updates in place.)
• No account needed. Departures, the planner and following a bus work without signing in. On first start you can add your sadzv.qrbus.me account or skip; add or remove it any time in Settings. Removing it also removes the PIN.
• Opens straight away with an account. The ticket, credit, history and account details stay hidden until you unlock with your PIN or fingerprint. Tap the ticket to unlock. Lock now is in Account.
• My journeys (report EM-0008): star a connection in the planner and it shows on the home tab under the ticket, with a Follow button. Your favourite stops' next buses follow below.
• Regular rides: tap the repeat icon on a connection, then pick days of the week, a date range, extra dates and how early to start. Before each departure the app finds that day's bus and starts following it by itself. On Android 12+, allow alarms for it to start on time.
• Pick a date in the planner, not only a time.
• Other carriers on the departure board: intercity buses of every carrier from the cp.sk timetable (Arriva, Slovak Lines, FlixBus and more), next to the operator's live ones. Tap one to see its stops and follow it.
• Suggest a feature from Settings. Suggestions have their own list in emhub.
• This website, with what's new, support and the privacy policy. Full changelog and Settings → Privacy policy open it.
• Usage statistics switch in Settings: anonymous usage via Firebase Analytics, which no longer uses the advertising ID.

Improved

• GPS only when needed. On the way to the stop the location is checked every 1–3 min. Live GPS starts at the stop from 4 min before the bus, or earlier by as much as the bus is early or usually runs early. Will I catch it? counts with that earlier time too.
• Stopped or drove past (report EM-0007): a stop is judged only once the bus has left the stop's area. A bus that halts a little before or after the stop point now counts as stopped. Phones now also report while the bus stands.
• The walk to the stop is found for planner buses too (their stops come from cp.sk).

Security

• The sadzv.qrbus.me password is stored encrypted with a key in the Android Keystore.
• The PIN uses a slow hash (PBKDF2). After 5 wrong PINs, entry locks for 30 s, doubling each time up to an hour.
• App data is excluded from cloud backups and device transfers.

2.3.0

New

• Help with bus positions on every bus. Under Account → Community and location choose:
  • Off: only the operator's data and the timetable.
  • Buttons: Bus is here, Bus is leaving and At (stop) on the follow notification, now on every bus without a live position, city or intercity.
  • Automatic: while you ride a bus you follow, your phone's position marks where the bus is, with no buttons. Only the stop the bus is between is sent, never your location. It needs precise location.
• If you had community delays on, you keep Buttons.

Improved

• More accurate bus positions. The bus's own GPS is used when it's fresh and actually on the route, so the app no longer moves the bus ahead of reality. Positions the operator kept from long ago, or that belong to another trip, are ignored.
• Best source first: a rider's phone on the bus, then the bus's GPS, then riders' taps, then the operator's delay, then the timetable.

2.2.0

Improved

• Stop lists for every bus. The operator often has no stop list for a trip (city buses in Zvolen and Banská Bystrica, like lines 7 and 8 at Zlatý Potok). testEM then takes the stops and times from cp.sk instead. The operator's live data is still used first, and its delay is still shown whenever the bus reports one. You can follow these buses too.

2.1.0

New

• Follow intercity buses. Open a connection in the Planner, tap Show all stops, then Follow this bus. The live notification counts down to departure and shows the next stop, using timetable times from cp.sk.
• Platforms at every stop. When you open a connection from the Planner, each stop shows its platform.
• Choose when to be alerted. Under Account → Reminders → Following a bus, pick how early you're told the bus is coming: 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 minutes, or your own number up to 60. It used to always be 2 minutes.
• Community delays for intercity buses (optional). Intercity buses don't report their position, so riders can do it. The follow notification offers Bus is here, Bus is leaving, then At (next stop). The buttons move on by themselves, so if you forget one stop, just mark the next. Everyone following the same bus sees the pooled delay. Only the bus, the stop and the time are sent, with a random ID that changes for every bus. No account, no location.
• Will I catch it? (optional). While you wait for a bus you follow, the notification shows how long the walk to your stop is and when to leave, from your location on the phone. Your location never leaves the phone. It needs precise location permission.
• Report a bug under Account. It attaches this app's recent logs, with passwords and tokens removed. A summary, description, name and email are all optional, and you agree before anything is sent. Leave an email if you'd like a reply.
• Support testEM under Account. A link to karafa.net/support if you'd like to support further work. Entirely voluntary.
• Both optional features are asked about once, when you first open this version. You can change them anytime under Account → Community and location.

Improved

• Nearby stops → Refresh now gets a fresh location. Before, it could reuse a position from several minutes earlier, so the list didn't change.
• Planner results are sorted by departure time.
• The "bus arrives soon" alert shows the actual number of minutes.

Fixed

• Selected choices, such as the report category or the alert time, are easier to see (check mark).

Web version (iPhone)

The home-screen web app now has departures, the Planner, following a bus with push alerts, community delays, Will I catch it?, history insights, a PIN lock, themes, Slovak and English, bug reports and the support link. Ticket and history times now use your local time; they used to show 2 hours early.