Tiiks vs My Bikes: Live Wear vs a PDF You Export and Forget

My Bikes is a records app with PDF export, a widget, and optional Strava. Tiiks is live wear: the parts keep moving after the ride, with a catalog and mileage reviews.

January, and you finally do the grown-up task. You export a PDF of the bike for the insurance folder, or for the listing you swear you are going to write. The file looks complete. Serials, services, a tidy inventory. You file it. By March the chain has done a season of commuting you will never add to that PDF, and the folder is still congratulating you for January. That is the aftertaste of a records app: the document was perfect the afternoon you made it.

Records are not a vice. A bike that gets stolen, sold, or crashed is easier to explain with a file than with a memory. The mistake is treating the file as wear. Wear is what happened after you closed the document. If the app’s best day is the export, it will feel finished when the riding is not. You will trust a date you typed. The cassette will keep counting without you.

My Bikes and Tiiks both understand that a phone can hold a garage. They disagree about whether the garage is an archive you generate or a bike you still inhabit. One is built like a records office with a convenient widget. The other is built like a rider product that expects you back tomorrow. If you came here because a PDF felt like safety, stay long enough to ask whether you will open the app between exports.

A live bike versus a file you export

My Bikes is an iOS app from Atomic Softwares, the same people behind bikerepairapp.com. Strava is optional. If you connect it, wear is calculated after the download, not while you are still on the road pretending the phone is clairvoyant. Auto reminders exist. There is a home widget. You can stay anonymous with no signup, which is a sincere privacy stance. The headline trick is PDF export for insurance and resale. Lifetime PRO is an in-app purchase, not a monthly companion. The whole thing feels like a records app, because that is what it is.

Optional Strava is a real fork in the road. You can keep a manual garage and never connect an athlete account. That is freedom, and it is also how records freeze. Anonymous use means the bike can live only on that iPhone. Fine until the phone is not. A lifetime unlock is attractive if you hate subscriptions. It still buys you a records product. The widget will show what the records know. It will not invent a catalog review you never asked the app to hold.

Wear that updates when you ride

We built Tiiks so the document never becomes the bike. Native iOS first, Android as well. Automatic Strava sync. Each fitted component takes the kilometers from the ride you just did. The catalog is there when you name the part. Verified reviews carry mileage. The home-screen widget is the bike, not a shortcut to a folder. Service versus replace sits on top of a history that remains after you swap the chain. We assume you have an account, because the bike should survive the handset.

We do not sell a PDF-for-insurance workflow as the reason to download the app. If you need a file for a broker, you can still keep records — we are not going to mock a grown-up task. We will not pretend the file is wear. Wear is the Strava ride that landed while the PDF slept in Downloads. That is the entire argument, and it does not require a speech about disruption.

A PDF you forget versus wear you see tomorrow

My Bikes is at its best the hour you export. Insurance, resale, a tidy inventory you can email. That hour is useful and rare. Most hours are not insurance hours. They are “is this chain still honest” hours. A records app will let you schedule a reminder. It will not, by temperament, live in the Tuesday. If you are disciplined, reminders are enough. If you are a rider, you already know how many reminders you have dismissed this year.

Tiiks is at its best the morning after the ride. The parts have moved. The widget is stale only if you did not ride. You open the bike because it changed, not because a calendar said you should generate a document. That is live wear. It is a worse insurance clerk and a better riding companion — and we mean companion in the old sense, the thing that comes with you, not a chat.

Anonymous records versus a bike you live with

No signup is a feature Atomic Softwares is right to be proud of. Some riders will not create an account for a cassette. The cost is portability and continuity. Anonymous records are local courage. They are also how a garage disappears when a phone does. If that risk is acceptable, enjoy the silence of no email. If the bike is worth more than the inconvenience of an account, do not romanticize disappearing.

Tiiks wants the bike to be yours across the life of the app, on the phones we support, with Strava as the ride spine. That is more commitment up front than an anonymous iPhone list, and we will not pretend otherwise. It is also how the history stays attached when you replace a part instead of exporting a snapshot and calling the job done. We are not anonymous, and we will not market amnesia as elegance, even when elegance photographs well in an App Store grid.

A widget of records versus a widget of the bike

Both apps can sit on a home screen. Do not let that sentence end the comparison. A widget is only as alive as the data behind it. In My Bikes, the widget is a window onto records and reminders — useful, static in spirit, honest about what the app is. In Tiiks, the widget is the bike after the last sync: wear from rides, the state of the parts, a reason to open the catalog or the history. Same rectangle. Different pulse. If you already have their widget and never look at it, the problem is not pixel size.

Lifetime unlock versus a rider catalog

Lifetime PRO is a clean offer: pay once, keep the records features. We are not going to invent a price or call that a trap. It is a good deal on a records app. It does not purchase a living catalog or verified mileage reviews. Tiiks spends its product energy on those objects, and on service versus replace, and on Android as well as iOS. If your question is “what is the cheapest way to generate a PDF,” they already answered. If your question is “what is this chain doing this month,” the checkout is answering the wrong exam.

Insurance folders versus Tuesday rides

My Bikes fits the rider who wants an iOS records office: optional Strava, anonymous use, auto reminders, a home widget, a PDF for a broker or a buyer, and a lifetime unlock if they want PRO. If you will export twice a year and ignore the app in between, that may still be the correct tool — the folder will look finished. Just do not call the PDF a maintenance practice, and do not be surprised when March’s commute never made it into January’s file.

Tiiks fits the rider who will be back tomorrow. Live wear from Strava, catalog parts you can name, reviews with miles, a widget that is the bike, service or replace, history that stays when the chain comes off, iOS and Android. We are a rider product, not a file generator, and we will not compete on who can produce the tidiest insurance packet. If that is what you wanted when you searched this comparison, you already knew the folder was not enough.

Questions we get

Can I export a PDF of my bike from Tiiks?

We do not treat PDF export for insurance or resale as a headline feature the way My Bikes does, and we are not going to invent a button in this paragraph to look complete. If you need a document, keep a document — a records app can sit beside a rider app without a fight. What we will not do is let an export become the definition of being organized. Organization is the chain still being true in April, after the file has stopped changing.

Do I need an account to use My Bikes?

No. Anonymous, no-signup use is part of their design, and Atomic Softwares is right to treat that as a feature rather than a missing login. That is a legitimate reason to pick them if an account is a deal-breaker in your house. Tiiks is built around a bike that lives with you across phones, which means we are not trying to win the anonymous contest. Decide how much the garage is worth if the phone is not, because anonymous courage and a dead handset feel the same from the outside.

Both apps have a widget — what is actually different?

My Bikes can put records and reminders on the home screen. Tiiks puts the bike’s live wear there after Strava syncs. Same rectangle, different job. If your widget is a badge you never read, neither product is failing in software. You picked an archive and then asked it to nag you into opening a folder. Try a widget that changes when you ride, the morning after, without generating a document. That is the test, not a screenshot from a store page.

If the PDF is already in the folder and the chain is still on the bike, let the folder be the folder. Insurance can have its afternoon. Resale can have its file. Riding still has a Tuesday that will never appear in January’s export. Track this bike in Tiiks so the next month of rides updates the parts you did not remember to print, and so the widget is stale only when you actually stayed home.