Please review the Frequently Asked questions below. If these don’t answer your question, or if you have a different bug or behaviour, please send me feedback via the Contact link above.

September 3, 2025

Why doesn't my train show up?

Next3Trains uses the publicly available departure board data to source the data in the app. This is a free resource that has a number of limitations:

The app only shows direct trains - ie trains that leave from the station you specify, and either stop or terminate at the station you want to get to. It doesn’t show connections - if you need to connect you can either put each of the legs you need into the app
The app only shows departures that leave in the next 2 hours. If there aren’t any matching direct trains in the next 2 hours, the app won’t show any trains.

September 3, 2025

Why is my widget showing the wrong station?

Widgets should show either:

Auto-select Nearest Route enabled, and “Always” Location permission - the widget should show the route with the closest departure station. If you’ve got multiple routes with the same departure station, the first one you added should be shown
Otherwise - the widget should show the route that you were last looking at in the app.

Note that the location aware widgets depend on the “Always” permission. iOS will at some point ask you whether you want to change to this if you use widgets because apps can’t ask for this permission by default. If you want to force this behaviour, you will needs to change the location permissions for the Next3Trains app in your iPhone settings (Settings -> Apps -> Next3Trains -> Location on iOS 18)

September 3, 2025

Why aren't my widgets updating?

Widgets can’t be updated in real time by the app, so these will usually show data that is recent but not totally up to date. This is normal - to conserve battery life, iOS only allows widgets to update about 40 to 70 times a day.

If you turn on the optimise commuting hours setting and set the times you really care about up to date train times, the app will attempt to update the widget data more frequently.

September 3, 2025

What about Android?

Next3Trains is a hobby project, and I intend to keep this as a free app with no ads or subscriptions. As such, I don’t have the bandwidth to maintain any more than the iOS app. Sorry.

September 3, 2025

What about feature X?

Next3Trains is a hobby project I do in my spare time. As such I’m going to try to avoid implementing too much more in the app, and concentrate on working on bug fixes and keeping up with changes in iOS (like the liquid glass changes in iOS 26). The design is also deliberately limited in what it tries to do (present the user high level details on their train status, fast) - there are a number of more fully featured apps released by both the trains companies and other developers, and this app is not intended to compete with them.

September 3, 2025

What about iPad, Watch, Mac, Vision Pro etc?

Next3Trains is a hobby project I do in my spare time. As such, while I haven’t prevented the app from running on iPad or Mac, I don’t have the bandwidth to support this across multiple platforms and sizes. Equally I don’t plan on expanding to other apple devices (eg Apple Watch) at this point.