Biting Point support

How to get help

Email us directly

Biting Point is made by Patient Thread Ltd. For help with the app, a question about the beta or a privacy request, email us and a real person will reply. We aim to answer within two working days.

chris@patientthread.com We will never ask for your Apple Account password, a verification code or payment details. The beta is free and there is nothing to pay for.

1. Getting started

Create an account. Install the beta from your TestFlight invitation, open Biting Point and sign up with your email address. Everyone in the family needs their own account; one account per person.
Pick your role. Choose learner, new driver, parent or supervisor. The role sets which screens appear first. You can change it later.
Create or join a family. The first person creates the family and gets a 6-character code. Everyone else taps Join a family and enters the code. Only share the code with people you want in the family circle.
Allow Always location. When iOS asks, choose Allow While Using App, then when it asks again choose Change to Always Allow. Drives cannot be recorded in the background without Always. You can check this in Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services, Biting Point.
Add emergency contacts in Medical ID. Open the iPhone Health app, tap your picture, then Medical ID, and add your emergency contacts. The crash countdown offers a 999 button; Medical ID is how the phone and emergency services can reach your family if you cannot use the app.

Not an emergency service

The crash countdown and SOS send alerts to your family. They do not contact the emergency services for you and nobody is dispatched. In an emergency call 999.

2. Drives are not recording

Drives are detected from the phone's own motion and location sensors. For that to work in the background two things must be true:

Location must be set to Always. Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services, Biting Point, then choose Always. Keep Precise Location on. With While Using, the app only knows where you are while it is open on screen, so drives are missed.
Low Power Mode must be off. Settings, Battery, Low Power Mode. iOS slows background work in Low Power Mode and drives stop recording. If your phone goes into Low Power Mode partway through a drive, that drive may end early or not be saved.

Other things to check:

Your sharing mode is not Paused. In Paused mode nothing is recorded or sent. Drives only, Approximate and Everything all record drives.
Background App Refresh is on for Biting Point (Settings, General, Background App Refresh).
The phone has signal or Wi-Fi at some point after the drive. Drives are stored on the phone first and uploaded when there is a connection.
Very short trips (a few hundred metres) and very slow trips may not be counted as drives.

If drives still do not appear, email us with your phone model, iOS version and the date and rough time of a drive that was missed.

3. Who is driving

Biting Point never guesses whether you were the driver or a passenger.

At the start of a drive the app asks: driver or passenger? Pick one. If you miss the prompt the drive is still recorded and you can set it afterwards.
On the drive itself there is a toggle between driver and passenger. Open the drive from the Drives list and change it at any time.
Drives marked as passenger are kept but do not count towards the coaching score or the learner practice hours.

A learner's supervised practice should be logged as a drive by the learner (driver) and, if the supervisor also has the app, as a passenger by the supervisor. Only the learner's drive counts towards their hours.

4. Pausing sharing

Every member chooses their own sharing mode from the Me tab:

Mode	What the family sees
Everything	Live location, places, arrive and leave alerts, drives.
Approximate	A rounded location rather than an exact one, plus drives and alerts.
Drives only	Drives when they happen. No location between drives.
Paused	Nothing. No location and no drives are sent until you unpause.

A Bubble is a timer that hides your exact location for a set period, for example two hours, and then returns you to your previous mode automatically. Drives are still recorded inside a Bubble.

The family can see which mode you are in, but cannot change it from their phones. Check in and SOS still work in every mode, including Paused, because you send those yourself.

5. Leaving a family

Open the Me tab and choose Family.
Tap Leave family and confirm.

Once you leave, the family no longer sees your location or drives, and you no longer see theirs. Your own drives and practice log stay in your account. You can join another family with a new 6-character code, or create your own. If you are the last person in a family, leaving removes the family.

To remove someone else from a family you created, open Family, choose their name and tap Remove. They are told they have been removed.

6. Deleting your account

Email chris@patientthread.com from the email address on the account with the subject "Biting Point account deletion". We confirm by reply and delete the account and everything linked to it within 30 days, apart from records we must keep for legal reasons. Deleting the app from your phone does not delete your account.

If you want a copy of your data first, say so in the same email. Drives can also be exported from the app before you delete.

7. Reporting a bug

Email chris@patientthread.com with the subject "Biting Point bug report" and as much of this as you can. You can also use the Send Beta Feedback option in TestFlight.

App version and build (shown at the bottom of the Me tab) Device model (for example iPhone 13) iOS version (Settings, General, About) The screen you were on and your sharing mode What you did, in order What happened, and what you expected instead A screenshot if you have one. Please blur other people's names and locations.

Never include passwords or verification codes. Because this is a beta, some problems are expected; every report helps.

8. Privacy and terms

The privacy notice explains what the app collects, where it is stored (UK) and for how long, and your rights. The terms of use set out what you can expect from a beta app and what we ask of you.

Biting Point has no adverts, no analytics software and no data brokers. We do not share drive data with insurers.