Support

Setting up, fixing the usual problems, and how to reach a human.

Getting started

1. Plug your OBD-II adapter into the diagnostic port, usually under the driver's side dashboard. It needs no pairing in iOS Settings.
2. Switch the ignition on, so the adapter has power and the engine control unit will answer.
3. Open OBDTrip and follow the short setup. Grant Bluetooth and location access when asked.
4. Wait while the app identifies the vehicle and learns which readings it supports. This happens once per car.
5. Drive. There is nothing else to press, now or later.

The adapter is not being found

Work through these in order — the first two account for most cases.

• Check the adapter is a sort OBDTrip can use. A Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) adapter works. Classic Bluetooth adapters and Wi-Fi adapters are not supported: if your adapter pairs in iOS Settings with a PIN such as 1234, it is the wrong sort.
• Do not pair it in iOS Settings. A BLE adapter should not appear there, and does not need to: OBDTrip connects to it directly. If you paired it there, forget it in Settings → Bluetooth and OBDTrip can find it again.
• Switch the ignition on. Many adapters sleep, and many vehicles cut power to the port, until the ignition is live.
• Reseat the adapter. Unplug it, wait ten seconds, plug it firmly back in.
• Check the connection log. Settings → Diagnostics → Connection log shows every device the scan saw and what happened next. If your adapter never appears there, the phone is genuinely not seeing it.
• Restart Bluetooth. Turn it off and on in iOS Settings — not in Control Centre, which only disconnects temporarily.

It connects, but no readings arrive

• The engine control unit may still be asleep. Start the engine and give it a few seconds.
• Some vehicles need the app to search for the right protocol rather than use the usual one; this happens automatically, but it takes a little longer on the first connection.
• Settings → Diagnostics → Protocol log shows the exact conversation with the adapter, which is the fastest way for us to see what your car is doing. It contains no personal data.

A trip is missing, or split in two

A drive ends when the phone and adapter part company, or when the vehicle has clearly finished moving. A brief Bluetooth dropout inside the grace period resumes the same session; a longer one starts a new drive. If a journey looks split, that is usually why.

If a trip is missing entirely, the most common cause is that the app had been force-quit — swiped away in the app switcher. Apple deliberately does not relaunch a force-quit app for a Bluetooth event until you open it again. Opening OBDTrip once restores automatic recording.

Battery and data

• Location is sampled at the coarsest useful setting and only during a drive.
• Polling slows automatically when readings stop changing.
• Recording never needs a network connection.
• If storage runs low, cached telemetry already safely in iCloud is released first.

Deleting your data

Settings → Privacy offers a complete erase: trips, vehicles, cached telemetry and the copies held in your iCloud. Deleting the app also removes everything it stored on the device. Because we never receive your trips, there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf.

Contact

Email support@obdtrip.com. It helps enormously if you say which vehicle and adapter you are using, what you expected to happen, and what happened instead.

For privacy questions specifically, privacy@obdtrip.com reaches the same place with the right label on it.