Tiiks vs Bicycle Garage: A Full Bike vs a Threshold Counter

Bicycle Garage is a tiny iOS utility that alerts when a part hits a number. Tiiks is the full bike around that number: catalog, history, and wear.

A threshold is a clean idea. You pick a number, the part walks toward it, the phone taps you when it arrives. For a week that feels like maintenance. Then you realize the alert does not know what the part is, whether the last action should have been a service, or how other riders' identical chains actually died. You were notified. You were not informed.

Bicycle Garage, by Maxime Tregaro, is an iOS utility built around that threshold. You add bikes and components. Mileage and age follow a part across the bikes it has been mounted on, which is the right arithmetic for a wheel that lives in two frames. Alerts fire at the replacement number you set. Distance can be typed or imported from HealthKit. There is no account. Their privacy label says they collect no data. It requires a recent iOS. The app is in English and French.

That is a small, private counter, and it should be judged as one. Tiiks is the full bike around the counter: native iOS and Android, automatic Strava sync, per-component mileage, a real parts catalog, verified reviews with real distance, a home-screen widget, service versus replace, and a history that keeps what you already removed. A threshold can live inside that. It cannot replace it. An alarm that only knows a number will fire on time and still leave you guessing which chain, which bike, and whether the last thing you should have done was a service instead of a purchase.

What Bicycle Garage counts

Bicycle Garage is a component odometer with an alarm clock. You create a bike, you hang parts on it, and each part accumulates mileage and age. If you move a wheel from the road bike to the gravel bike, the part keeps the total, which is the detail most casual logs get wrong. When the total crosses the replacement threshold you typed, you get an alert. That is the product, start to finish.

Input is manual or HealthKit. There is no Strava pipe. There is no account to lose or to recover. The privacy label is the feature for riders who do not want a garage in someone else's database. Recent iOS is required, so an older phone is not invited. English and French cover the language need they chose. Calling this a tiny utility is accurate, not dismissive. It does one arithmetic job and then gets out of the way. That is a compliment if you wanted a counter. It is a warning if you wanted a bike.

A full bike, not a threshold

Tiiks starts from Strava, on iOS and Android, without a HealthKit translation. Rides apply to the parts that were mounted. A part that moves between bikes still carries its kilometers — we care about that same cross-bike total — but the part also has a catalog name, a service-versus-replace history, and a place in the bike after it comes off. The threshold, if you want one, sits on top of an identity, not instead of one.

The rest is what a utility never grows. Verified rider reviews with real mileage tell you whether your replacement number was fantasy. The widget shows the bike without opening a counter. Twenty slots mean you are looking at a machine, not three rows you happened to add. We keep the full history because a replaced chain is still part of how this bike was ridden, not a deleted alarm. A threshold you dismissed in June is gone. A history you can open in October still knows what you installed, what you serviced, and what you threw away.

An alert at the limit vs service versus replace

A replacement threshold has one verb: replace. That is wrong as often as it is right. Chains want measurement and then a decision. Pads want a look. Sealant wants a top-up. A headset wants a service long before it wants a new one. Bicycle Garage's alert is honest about being a replacement alarm. It will not offer you the other door, because the other door is not the utility.

Tiiks keeps both doors. Service is work you log on the part you still have. Replace closes the chapter and opens a new part on the same slot. The mileage that led there is still on the bike. An alert that can only say 'buy' trains you to ignore it or to spend early. An app that can say 'service this' versus 'replace this' is closer to how a shop talks, and closer to how money actually leaves the account.

HealthKit or typing vs Strava-native mileage

HealthKit is a locker of workouts, not a bike. Importing it means you inherit Apple's types, indoor sessions, and the days the watch recorded a ride you did on a different frame. Manual entry is cleaner and slower. Bicycle Garage gives you both, which is correct for a local utility and still leaves you as the clerk. Nothing in that loop knows Strava gear. A private counter that you have to feed is still a counter you will underfeed the week the weather turns.

Strava-native mileage is the clerk we automated. The activity is a ride with a distance and, usually, a bike. Tiiks applies it to mounted parts. You are not mapping Health samples on a Sunday. You are not typing Tuesday's loop because the watch file looked like a walk. If you refuse accounts and refuse Strava, Bicycle Garage's pipe is the one that matches your constraints. If you already upload every ride, the constraint is self-inflicted.

The same part on two bikes vs a catalog identity

Following a part across bikes is the sharpest idea in Bicycle Garage. A wheelset or a crank that migrates should not reset to zero. Tiiks agrees with that arithmetic. We then name the part. A catalog model plus reviews with real kilometers turns a bare total into a specific rim and hub, and into a set of riders who already wore that model. A threshold on an unnamed row cannot do that, no matter how correctly it sums two frames. Six thousand kilometers on 'rear wheel' is a number. Six thousand kilometers on a named rim, with reviews next to it, is a decision.

A tiny utility vs widget, reviews, and history

Tiny is a virtue when you want no account and no data leaving the phone. It is a ceiling when you want a widget on the home screen, reviews from riders who actually rode the part, Android, and a history that is more than an alert you dismissed. Bicycle Garage should stay small. Tiiks should stay the full bike. Forcing the utility to become a catalog would ruin the utility. Pretending the utility is already a catalog ruins the decision. Keep the counter if the constraint is privacy and a recent iPhone. Open the full bike if the constraint is knowing what you are actually riding.

Who each tool is for

Pick Bicycle Garage if you want a private iOS counter, you will type mileage or import HealthKit, and you care that a part keeps its total when it changes bikes. You do not want an account. You read English or French. You have a recent iOS. A replacement alert is enough. You are not looking for a catalog, reviews, a widget, or Android.

Pick Tiiks if the counter is only the first sentence. You want Strava to feed the parts, a catalog to name them, reviews with real distance, service versus replace, a widget, and a history that survives a phone change on iOS or Android. You still want cross-bike mileage. You also want to know what the part was.

Questions we get

Does Bicycle Garage collect your data?

Their privacy label says they collect no data, and there is no account. That is the point of the utility. The cost of that point is everything that usually lives behind an account: another platform, a recoverable history, a catalog, a community of reviews. Private and tiny are the same design.

Does Tiiks work in French?

Tiiks ships with localization for the languages we support in the app — including English and others we maintain — on iOS and Android. Bicycle Garage's English-plus-French pair is specific to that utility. If French UI is the reason you opened Bicycle Garage, check Tiiks's current language list in the store listing rather than assuming a one-to-one match.

Do you need the latest iOS for Tiiks?

Tiiks follows the iOS version our current release supports, which is listed on the App Store and is not the same sentence as Bicycle Garage's 'recent iOS' requirement. We also ship Android. If an old iPhone is the only device you have, read both listings. If you have a current phone on either platform, the constraint is not the OS. It is whether you want a counter or a bike.

If a private threshold on iOS is the whole job, Bicycle Garage already does that job without an account. If you want the full bike — Strava wear, catalog, reviews, widget, history — that is the record we keep. Track the parts in Tiiks and let the counter stay a counter.