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An app for car and motorcycle enthusiasts to find people to drive with. You post a Ping when you are free, and drivers near you see it and can respond. You can also schedule Drives with a date and a meeting point, and save Routes worth taking. It replaces the group chats and forum threads most of this currently happens in.

Sarthe is launching first in Cyprus, anchored in Limassol. The app itself has no country lock, but a matchmaking app is only as good as the people already on it, so it is worth using where there is a crowd. We will open other markets once Cyprus is working properly.

No. Sarthe is free to use, with no ads and nothing to subscribe to.

Yes — you must be at least 18. Sarthe arranges meetings between strangers who then drive on public roads, which is not something we are willing to put minors into.

You can create an account and look around without one, but a vehicle on your profile is what most people look at before agreeing to meet you. You can add as many cars and motorcycles as you own.

It expires on its own, based on the window you chose:

• Now — four hours
• Later today — until the end of the day
• This week — until the end of the week

You can also take one down yourself at any time.

Because alerts are off by default and switch themselves off again quickly. Flip "I'm free to drive" on the Home tab and you will be told about new Pings near you for the next 30 minutes, then it stops. That is deliberate — an app that notified you every time a stranger fancied a drive would be unbearable within a week.

If the toggle is on and nothing arrives, check that notifications are allowed for Sarthe in your phone's settings, and that your radius is not set too small.

Probably not — widen your radius on the Home tab, up to 60 km. Cyprus is small enough that a 60 km radius covers a large part of the island. Early on there are genuinely fewer people to find, which is the honest answer rather than a bug.

There are no private messages in Sarthe. Coordination happens in the comments under the Ping or the Drive, where everyone involved can read it. It keeps plans in one place and means nobody turns up at the wrong petrol station because the details were in somebody's DMs.

No, and on purpose. One tap hands the route to Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze — apps that do turn-by-turn far better than we would, and that you already trust.

Removing a vehicle archives it rather than erasing it, because Pings and Drives you already posted refer to it. It disappears from your garage and you can no longer pick it, but past posts stay readable instead of turning into blanks.

In the app: Profile → Settings → Delete my account.

This is a real deletion, not a hidden flag. Your vehicles, Routes, Drives, Pings, follows, ratings and alert windows are removed with it, in one transaction.

If you cannot get into your account to delete it, email [email protected] from the address you signed up with and we will do it for you.

Less than you would expect, and this is the part worth reading.

When you post a Ping, your position is rounded to a grid of roughly 1.1 km before anything is written down. Only that rounded square is stored; the exact position is discarded. So the "4.2 km away" other people see is measured from an approximate square, not from your driveway.

When you search for what is nearby, your position is sent along with the query to answer it and is not saved. Location is never read in the background. A Drive's meeting point is stored precisely, because it is a public place you chose and published — so pick meeting points accordingly.

The full detail is in the Privacy Policy.

Yes. Under GDPR you can ask for a copy, a correction, a deletion, or for your data to be handed to another service. Most of it you can do yourself in the app; for the rest, email [email protected] and we will respond within one month.

A few things worth trying, in order:

• If you signed up with Google, use the Continue with Google button rather than an email and password — there is no password on that account.
• Check you are using the same address you signed up with.
• Make sure you are on the latest version from the App Store or Google Play.

Still stuck? Email [email protected], tell us the address you used and how you signed up, and we will sort it out.

In your phone's own settings, under the Sarthe entry — iOS: Settings → Sarthe. Android: Settings → Apps → Sarthe → Permissions. The app keeps working with location revoked, it simply cannot show you who is nearby.

Email [email protected] with the username and, if you can, a screenshot. We read these the same day. Accounts that harass people, drive dangerously on a Sarthe drive, or misrepresent who they are get removed.

After a drive you actually attended, you can leave a thumbs up or thumbs down for the people who were there. Your profile shows that balance alongside the number of drives you have completed. There are no written reviews and no star ratings of people — the aim is a quick trust signal, not a reputation economy.

Use common sense, the same as with any app that arranges meetings between strangers:

• Meet somewhere public for the first time — a marina car park, a fuel station, a café. Never a home address.
• Tell somebody where you are going and when you expect to be back.
• Drive your own drive. Nobody on Sarthe is entitled to set your pace, and anyone pressuring you to keep up is someone to leave behind.
• Everything on the road is your responsibility and yours alone — see the Terms of Service.

No, and it never will. Sarthe does not record how fast you went, time you between two points, or rank you against anybody. There are no lap times and no leaderboards, and there is no version of this app in which there will be.