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 is my widget showing the wrong station?

The iOS widget doesn’t let you pick a route when you add it - it chooses one for you, and which one depends on whether Auto-select Nearest Route is switched on:

Auto-select Nearest Route on, with “Always” location permission - the widget shows the route with the closest departure station. If you’ve got multiple routes with the same departure station, the first one you added is shown.
Auto-select Nearest Route on, with “While Using the App” permission - the widget can’t check your location on its own, so it shows the nearest route as worked out the last time you had the app open.
Auto-select Nearest Route off - the widget shows the route you were last looking at in the app, falling back to your first route.

So if the widget is showing a station you weren’t expecting, it’s usually one of those doing exactly what it was asked to do.

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.

There are a couple of things you can do to get fresher data:

Turn on the Optimise for Commuting Hours setting and set the times you really care about having up to date train times. The app will then concentrate its limited number of widget updates into those windows rather than spreading them across the whole day. The windows are UK time and can run past midnight - see How do commuting hours work?. On days you don’t commute the widget only refreshes every couple of hours, unless you’ve set On non-commuting days to Show train times.
Turn on notifications. When the app’s backend spots a cancellation, a delay or a platform change on one of your routes, it sends your phone a silent nudge to refresh the widget as well as the alert itself. That means the widget can update at the moment something actually changes, instead of waiting for its next scheduled slot. This only happens if you have notifications switched on - see What notifications will I get?.

Note that the app still can’t really control when widgets update - iOS has the final say. If you need train data that is right up to date, you can always tap the widget to open the app. On iOS 17 and later you can also tap the small circular arrow icon in the widget’s header to refresh it in place, without leaving your Home Screen.

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 anything beyond the Apple platforms. Sorry.

September 3, 2025

What about feature X?

Next3Trains is a hobby project I do in my spare time, and the design is deliberately limited in what it tries to do: present high level details on your train status, fast. There are a number of more fully featured apps released by both the train companies and other developers, and this app is not intended to compete with them.

In particular, Next3Trains is not a journey planner. It doesn’t do connections, it won’t route you around a closure, and it has no maps or ticketing. If you have a string of cancelled trains, you’ll want one of those fuller apps to work out what to do instead.