ProBikeGarage: Bicycle tracker

ProBikeGarage is a fantastic bit of software. It takes usage data you’re already gathering via Strava (route it through a free account if you don’t) to help you stay ahead of maintenance tasks on your bikes. Don’t forget to lube your chain or top up sealant. It’s useful for maintenance and usage tracking (how long did those tires last?). But it really changes the game if you work on your own bikes and change/upgrade components. Then you know the history on each part on a bike or the shelf. It’s really well thought out to automate base data by importing from existing data on Strava. But its internal UX is also very effective for adding components, setting reminders, tracking service etc. The free version is really very robust and frankly enough. If I have any complaint at all it’s the boundary to the paid service. I think it’s too big a jump (free to subscription paid) for the additional features. I’d actually be happy to pay something because it is truly useful but can’t justify the relatively big bump on ANOTHER subscription. (This is more a suggestion to the dev than a complaint)

I love this app! I’ve been using it for years and it keeps getting better and more stable. I especially like the new and improved interface. I use this app to track all of my bikes on both indoor and outdoor rides. It takes a little thought during set up in ProBikeGarage mainly due to limitations in Strava. For example, when riding indoors on a trainer, I’m not using brakes so don’t want to count indoor rides against my brakes’ maintenance intervals. To get around this I created “BIKE1” and “BIKE1+Wahoo Trainer” in Strava and in ProBikeGarage. And in ProBikeGarage I didn’t “install” the brake components on the BIKE1+Wahoo Trainer. Now when I ride indoors, I make sure to edit my Strava ride event post ride to say I used BIKE1+Wahoo Trainer and then when I sync, ProBikeGarage takes care of the rest. It keeps me on track with everything. I have even used it for tracking when to charge my Di2 batteries and it’s pretty much spot on with notifications from my Garmin head unit. Keep up the great work!

Really great features, but I thought this would be a nice, easy way to get a handle on all the parts on all my bikes. However, it only pulls in bikes and associated rides, it does not pull in the parts I’ve already built onto all my bikes in Strava. This means I have to spend hours duplicating work in this app if I want to track part maintenance. A lot of common parts are not listed in the apps. For instance, I can find E-Thirteen and some DT-Swiss wheelsets, but it doesn’t have my SRAM Roam wheels. The components appear to be user generated, which is actually nice because I can can track individual pieces of gear that I’ve moved from bike to bike. I guess I’ll get to work transferring stuff over manually since this app appears to have a a lot better handle on maintenance. Good thing I’m in quarantine for now...