B&G: Companion App for Sailors

I want to love this app, I really do. I’m a sailor using this app on the iPhone to sail the skerries in Sweden and Norway, occasionally down to Denmark or Germany.
The maps and coverage in Europe are excellent, but it has usability issues that affect safety on the water.
For example:
- it is impossible to keep the map pointing north up. I’ve tried everything but it somehow always keeps reverting to heading-up.
- it crashes regularly and randomly, occasionally at very inopportune moments, such as when trying to set the anchor marker.
- it logs me out while sailing and navigating with the app, ostensibly “because I have been inactive for a while”
- saving a track requires too much information upfront (like name, start and destination), should be editable later but isn’t.
- it tries to helpfully zoom in and out when accidentally touching the screen (thus setting a mark or selecting an object), causing me to lose overview
- the averaging time for the heading and speed should be settable. At slow speeds or in waves, this becomes unusable to determine heading or ETA.

The app has some serious flaws, importing a GPX file from within the app seems impossible and sharing a GPX from Apple Files crashes the app. Sometimes when restarting after a crash it will ask to import the GPX but waypoint names are then obliterated. Connecting remote view and control to the paired plotter seems to require scanning a QR code from the plotter screen every time, which defeats the purpose of remote view as user is already at the plotter screen by then. It’s not on par with the quality that the Zeus3 provides.

Works normally quite ok, but crashes randomly . At start up - black screen instead of map and app crashes (on my iPhone)

I need to keep north fixed up. When navigating (and recording track) I can deselect the “allow chart rotation” checkbox in the chart options.
However, this is not persistent. For example when I select a point on the chart (mostly by accident) and then dismiss that point, the checkbox is ticked again and the chart immediately rotates back to heading up. A very annoying bug that makes it risky to use while underway.
Also, your feedback form “should what is this issue about” does not cover this usability issue.
Another issue is that when I start the app, an error comes up “error configuring sd card” - no idea, iPhones don’t have them.
Then, at random points when using, it sometimes zooms completely in or completely out. Some sort of reset of the main navigation page.
Also, the feedback form in the app is also broken so this is my only option.
It’s got a lot of usability bugs like that. The underlying charts are fine though, and it does work to a degree.

Works very nice with app and plotter. Would be nice to have online course and tutorials.

In basis is dit een prachtige app. Echter handmatig een route invoeren kan niet meer. Je kunt wel een afstand meten met waypoints, maar je kunt er geen route van maken. Autorouting werkt slecht. Routes gaan gewoon over land en door verboden vaarwater. Regelmatig verschijnen er programmastrings in een invoerveld. Kortom, ik hoop op een snelle update, zodat de app doet wat het beloofd.

The app didn’t bring me the same data’s navionics did.Auto routing doesn’t work. Distance measuring is difficult and without the heading so please try to upgrade it soon!

Werkt goed, luxe plotter en navigatie! Soms nog wat mirror & remote problemen met de iPad. Ene keer goed, andere keer instabiel

Works very nice with app and plotter. Would be nice to have online course and tutorials

In basis is dit een prachtige app. Echter handmatig een route invoeren kan niet meer. Je kunt wel een afstand meten met waypoints, maar je kunt er geen route van maken. Autorouting werkt niet. Routes gaan gewoon over land. Regelmatig verschijnen er programmastrings in een invoerveld. Kortom, ik hoop op een snelle update, zodat de app doet wat het beloofd.

The app could be very useful, but because it doesn’t support Vulcan 7 FS it has limited functionality for me. Strong request to support this device as well.

De B&G app gebruik ik veel om de te varen route te plannen en eventuele opties te bekijken. Vervolgens makkelijk te downloaden naar je B&G plotter. Ben erg content. J