Help with UK Buses.

Live positions come from bus operators through the Bus Open Data Service, the Department for Transport’s open data for local buses in England, and timetables from the operators’ published data.

UK Buses turns them into arrival times from where each bus is, how late it’s running and how buses on that road have really run before. Every night it learns from when buses actually reached each stop. They’re still predictions, so leave yourself a little time.

The first time anyone chooses a place in the iPhone app, UK Buses gets it ready: it fetches the timetables and starts following the live buses there. That usually takes a few minutes, and from then on it’s kept up to date for everyone who travels there, in the app and on the website. The website shows which places are ready; one that isn’t is set up by choosing it in the app.

Not every bus reports where it is. When one doesn’t, UK Buses shows the timetable and says so, rather than guessing. A live time moves as the bus does.

In the iPhone app, add a live event:

1. Choose a stop, or the one nearest you.
2. Pick the lines you take from it.
3. Choose the days, and a window of up to four hours, like 08:00 to 09:00.

At the start of the window a countdown appears on your Lock Screen by itself, even with the app closed. When your bus has gone it moves on to the next one, and at the end of the window it clears itself away.

• Check that Live Activities are allowed for UK Buses, in the iPhone’s Settings under UK Buses.
• Check that the event is switched on, and set for today.
• Your iPhone needs a connection when the window starts.
• iOS limits how often a Live Activity can be updated, so a countdown can be a little behind the app.

No. The app works the moment you open it, and on the website the live map, every stop’s next buses and a bus’s journey need no account. A free account lets you track the stops and lines you use: the server records every bus at them, every minute, for your statistics and the planner’s plan, and keeps them the same on the website and in the app.

Yes. Open it out and the live map sits on one page with the next buses on the other; pick a bus and its journey opens beside them. Closed, the cover display shows the next bus. Fold or unfold whenever you like and it keeps your place.

Tell us the stop, the line and roughly when, at [email protected]. The data comes from the operators, so we may pass it on to them; we can’t change a timetable ourselves.