The Release You Helped Debug

Virtual shifting only feels right if the trainer on the other end actually does what BikeControl asks it to. Most of 6.6 went into exactly that — and almost none of it would have happened without riders sending in what their trainers were really doing.

Your reports did the hard part

BikeControl has a resistance self-test: about a minute of steady pedalling, and it tells you whether your trainer follows power targets, follows gear changes, both, or neither. Under every verdict sits a Send result to support button, and a lot of you pressed it — along with the Send Trainer Feedback form, which quietly attaches the things I actually need: the trainer's Bluetooth name, its firmware, which FTMS features it claims to have, the control mode you were in, your gear ratios.

I can't buy every trainer on the market. Those reports are the only way a trainer I've never touched gets fixed. Here's what came out of this round:

ThinkRider XX Pro. Gears changed, the number on screen moved, and the legs felt nothing. The logs riders sent showed why: the trainer was never delivering its cadence to BikeControl — and without cadence, BikeControl can't work out what power your current gear should be asking for, so shifting had nothing to act on. 6.6 subscribes to the channel the trainer was actually publishing on, and adds a per-gear resistance step on top so every click is something you feel. A rider with the trainer confirmed it on their own bike before it shipped.

Zwift Ready and FTMS trainers in general. The easiest gears used to collapse into free-wheeling on some trainers — technically correct, useless to ride. There's now a floor under how light a gear is allowed to get, so shifting down still leaves resistance to push against.

If your trainer still does something odd: run the self-test, hit Send result to support, and tell me what it felt like. That's the whole process.

The compatibility database

The list of what's known to work lives on the virtual shifting page and it's split into two honest halves:

• Confirmed working — someone has actually ridden this trainer with BikeControl and said so.
• Likely supported brands — the manufacturer ships FTMS trainers that are used daily with Zwift and MyWhoosh, so the odds are very good, but nobody has confirmed that exact model yet.

Every entry links to a page for that trainer with the app you want to ride. If yours isn't listed, that's not a "no" — it's a gap in the database. Try it, then let me know via in-app support and I'll move it into the confirmed column with your name on the evidence, not a guess.

Two more trainer apps: FulGaz and Tacx Training

One piece of context first, because it applies to both: neither app supports controllers. Neither speaks OpenBikeControl, and neither pairs a Zwift Click, Play or Ride. What BikeControl can be to them is a trainer — the Bridge shows up as a smart trainer and the virtual shifting is entirely ours. That part works exactly as it does everywhere else, gears and all.

Tacx Training finds the Bridge on your network as a trainer, so your shifting comes from BikeControl. To change anything else mid-ride you use the Local connection method — BikeControl simulates a keyboard, mouse or touch on the device Tacx is running on, and your buttons drive Tacx's own keyboard shortcuts: pause and resume, quit, difficulty, switching screens, skipping a step. That shortcut screen is the whole list, which is why there's no shift, steer or menu action to map.

FulGaz is the stricter case: it reads no key or button input of any kind, so there is no shortcut for the Local method to press — and BikeControl doesn't offer you a connection method that provably can't reach it. FulGaz also only looks for trainers over Bluetooth. That leaves exactly one arrangement, and it's the one BikeControl sets up for you: run FulGaz on a second device, let it connect to the Bridge as its Bluetooth trainer, and let BikeControl do the virtual shifting. Your gears never leave BikeControl — which is fine, because FulGaz has none of its own. For anything else, you reach over and tap the screen.

A Help Center, in the app

New in 6.6: a Help Center that opens on your setup, not a generic FAQ. It knows which controller and trainer app you've got configured, lists the known issues that currently affect them, answers the pricing and account questions that keep showing up in one-star reviews, and links straight to the tutorials and videos for your combination. Contact and support chat are one tap away — and you can write to support in your own language.

BikeControl in your language

There's now a language switcher in the settings. BikeControl speaks English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Polish, and until now it followed your device and that was that. Pick a language directly, or leave it on System default if the old behaviour was what you wanted. Every screen that landed this cycle went out translated in all six.

Also in 6.6

• Rouvy: Zwift Ride D-pad up/down and left/right now navigate menus over the network, your gears are no longer overridden by Rouvy's own gear stream, and the trainer's FTMS service is back in Rouvy's device list.
• Zwift Ride: no more false "you may need to update firmware" prompt on a perfectly healthy unit.
• Zwift Click V2: one press triggers exactly one action in Zwift again.
• Android gear overlay: it closes when you close the app, keeps the screen awake during a ride, and re-tops itself when a trainer app comes to the front.
• Desktop floating overlay: a 20–100% opacity slider, so you can fade it over your trainer app instead of covering it.
• Networking: better recovery when your internal IP changes mid-session.
• macOS: a startup hang that left the app stuck on launch for some Macs is gone.

Get it

Update to BikeControl 6.6, run the resistance self-test on your trainer, and send me the result — even when it passes. That's what the next release is built from.

Happy riding! 🚴