About
Who builds RideSentinel, and what it does
RideSentinel is an Android app for rideshare drivers. It reads each Uber Driver ride offer on your phone, checks it against rules you set and shows a verdict, TAKE or PASS, with the reason in plain words, before the offer runs out.
Who builds it
RideSentinel is made by bidew.io, operating from Québec, Canada. It was built by a driver, for drivers. bidew.io publishes both apps, RideSentinel Lite and RideSentinel Pro, and runs this website and the RideSentinel server.
RideSentinel is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Uber Technologies Inc. “Uber” is a trademark of its owner and is used here only to describe compatibility.
What it does
The app reads the Uber Driver screen through Android accessibility. When an offer card appears, it reads the fare, the pickup and trip distances and the area. When the text of a card cannot be read, it takes a screenshot of the card, reads it on your phone and discards the image at once.
It then works out what the offer really pays per hour and per kilometre and checks it against your floors: the minimum fare, $/hour, $/km and the longest pickup you accept. Pro also weighs the areas where you do not want to be stranded. Lite is free; Pro is an APK from this site.
What it does not do
Out of the box, RideSentinel never taps an offer. Lite can never tap at all: its Android manifest declares canPerformGestures=false, so Android itself stops it. Pro taps Accept or decline only after you switch automatic taps on yourself; until then it only suggests, and its observe mode logs where it would tap without tapping. Pro also shows a report button over Uber, on by default: when you pick a report on it, Pro files the report through Uber’s own report panel.
Automatic taps are automation, and Uber’s driver terms prohibit it: if you switch them on, the risk to your account is yours. The accessibility service binds only to the driver apps RideSentinel supports. It does not read your other apps, your messages or your keyboard.
Privacy
RideSentinel is built so that we know as little about you as possible. Neither app asks you to create an account. What the app reads off your screen is processed on your phone and stays there. Some of it leaves the phone only for optional features you turn on yourself; the privacy policy lists each one, what it sends and how long it is kept.
Crash and error reports stay on your phone until you choose to send them. The privacy policy describes exactly what the apps, the server and this website do with data, and it matches what the code does.