Setting up the driver app

Step 1

Open the driver app for the first time and three slides across the top introduce what it does — registering a vehicle, the fifteen-second ride offer, directional travel, and the in-app wallet the daily fee comes out of. Swipe them or let them advance.

Step 2

Under the slides, choose your language from three boxes stacked one to a row — Sinhala at the top and already selected, then Tamil, then English — and the city you drive in.

The cities in that list are the ones MageRide has launched in, and the app loads them when you open it. A new city appears on its own; you never update the app for one.

Step 3

Sign in with your mobile number. The field already carries +94, so you type the nine digits after it, then the six-digit code that arrives by text. If it does not come, ask for another after sixty seconds. There is no password, no email address and no Google sign-in — your phone number is how passengers and MageRide reach you.

Step 4

Profile setup comes next, and it is about you rather than about a vehicle. Add a photo of yourself — it is required, and passengers see it — and your name. Save and continue stays greyed out until the photo is there.

Step 5

Then photograph your driving licence, front and back. The app reads four things off it and shows them back to you: the licence number, its expiry, your NIC number, and the vehicle classes you are licensed to drive.

Whatever it could not read clearly, you type in yourself — and anything you type is marked for someone at MageRide to check before it is trusted. That makes a clear photograph worth a second attempt, which chapter 3 is entirely about.

Step 6

Grant the permissions on the following screen — chapter 5 goes through what each one is for — and the dashboard opens.

Step 7

You are now in the app with no vehicle registered, which is how it is meant to go. Registering one is the next chapter and you can do it whenever your paperwork is ready. You can also be assigned a bus or a van by a fleet and drive that without registering anything at all.