Booking a ride

Step 1

At the bottom of the map is “Where to?”, with Home, Work and the places you have been to recently.

Step 2

Tap it and type a place or an address. MageRide will not take a bus route number here — a destination is always a place, and the app works out afterwards what can take you to it.

Step 3

The suggestions are places found by MageRide’s own search, mixed in with your saved and recent addresses. If the search is unavailable the app offers to let you pick the spot on the map instead.

Step 4

Saved places save you the typing. Home and Work are set by dropping a pin on the map, and any other place can be saved with three address lines and a label of your own — “Gym”, “Mum’s house”.

Step 5

There is a fourth way to set a location, and it is the useful one when somebody has sent you a spot on WhatsApp: paste a Google Maps link. MageRide reads the coordinates out of the link itself, resolving short links on its own servers, and shows you the pin and the address it worked out before you commit to it. If it cannot read the link it says so and offers the map.

Pasting a link is offered where you are setting a location for somebody else — the pickup when you book on another person’s behalf, and both ends of a package.

Step 6

Your pickup starts as where you are standing and can be moved. The booking screen shows the two points on the map, a For me or For someone else toggle, and a Person or Package toggle.

Step 7

Below them are the ways of getting there: public routes first where there are any, then the on-demand vehicles with their fares. Chapter 8 is how to read those.

Step 8

Book Now begins the search for a driver, and what happens then is chapter 9.