Apple customers are now able to find the nearest bike-sharing stations that are close to their vicinity using Apple Maps on their iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch.
As TechCrunch reported on Monday morning, the Cupertino company has signed a partnership with Ito World to add bike-sharing data to Apple Maps in over 175 cities across 36 countries.
It supports Citi Bike in NYC, Ford GoBike in San Francisco, BIKETOWN in Portland, Santander Cycles in London, bicing in Barcelona, BIXI in Montreal, CityCycle in Brisbane, nextbike in Germany, Austria, Croatia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, plus dozens of others.
To find the nearest bike-sharing station, type “bike sharing” in the search bar of the Maps app or the name of the service. Alternatively, say something along the lines of “Hey Siri, find the nearest bike-sharing station in New York” or some such.
Left to right: bike sharing stations in Barcelona, Hamburg, London and Portland
Apple currently doesn’t tell you the number of available bikes or empty docks, but there’s nothing preventing them from adding this feature in an upcoming update. Apple Maps also currently will not tell you whether or not a bike-sharing operator is offering a dock-less service, but specialized apps like Mobike, Ofo or oBike take care of that.