Sooner or later it happens. You’re locking up outside a library, or waiting for someone at a station, and there it is on the wall: a bike charger nobody has written down yet. It’s not on the map because no one has stood where you’re standing and taken two minutes.
Those two minutes are the whole app. Here’s what they look like, and the handful of things worth thinking about first.
Start by checking it isn’t already there #
The most common mistake isn’t a wrong answer to a question. It’s adding a point that already exists, which leaves two pins where there’s one charger and quietly makes the map worse.
So zoom in and give it a second. Denchargi only asks OpenStreetMap for chargers once you’re zoomed in far enough, and the pins land a moment after the streets do, so a map that looks empty sometimes just hasn’t finished loading. If a pin turns up where you’re standing, you’re done: tap it and check the details still match instead.
Two more checks worth ten seconds each:
- Is it actually for bikes? Everything you add through the app is tagged as a bicycle charging point and explicitly not a car one. A car charging post is a real thing worth mapping, but not here.
- Can anyone else get to it? The socket in your own shed is technically a charger. On a shared map it’s noise. Chargers for a limited group are fine, and there’s a question for exactly that, but something nobody can reach isn’t useful to the next rider.
What the flow actually does #
Tap the + in the middle of the tab bar.
If you’re not signed in yet, you get a short explanation of what OpenStreetMap is and where your contribution goes, then a sign-in in your browser. The account is free, it isn’t a Denchargi account, and everything you add is filed publicly under that name, permanently. That’s the deal, and it’s worth understanding before you agree to it rather than after.
Then the map goes into placement mode. The tab bar gets out of the way and a marker sits fixed in the centre while you move the map underneath it, until the marker is on the charger. Press Place here and the questions start.
There are nine of them, one per screen, and a review at the end. Every single one is optional. You can tap straight through to the review and submit a charger with nothing but a location, and that is still a useful contribution: it says there is a charger here, which is the hard part. Everything else can be filled in later by you or by someone else.
Get the pin right, then relax about the rest #
The position is the one thing that’s genuinely awkward to fix afterwards. A wrong capacity takes ten seconds to correct from your sofa. A pin in the wrong courtyard needs somebody to go back and look.
So place the marker where the charger is, not where you are. If you’re across the road, drag the map across the road. The test to imagine: someone arrives with 2% left, follows the pin, and should be standing at the socket without having to hunt around the block for it.
What the questions are really asking #
The wizard is deliberately plain, but a few of the questions catch people out.
- Who can use it? Public means anyone. There are options for customers only, visitors of a place, and so on. One thing to know: chargers marked private are hidden from the map by default, so if you tag it private, don’t be surprised when it disappears.
- Who runs it? The café, school, or council responsible for it, not the brand printed on the box. “Gemeente Utrecht” is an operator. “Bosch” is not.
- How many bikes can charge at once? Count the sockets or the bays. A rough number is genuinely fine.
- What can you plug in? A standard wall socket, a Bosch 3-pin, a Shimano STEPS 5-pin, USB. Tick only what you can see with your own eyes. If the sockets are behind a locked flap, leave them all off.
- Is there a fee? Free means free. A card reader, a coin slot, or an app you have to install all mean yes.
- Open around the clock? Only if it’s reachable at three in the morning. A charger inside a shop that closes at six is not open around the clock, even though the charger itself never sleeps.
- Can the charger be locked? This is about the charger having a lock so it can’t be walked off with. It isn’t about whether the bike shed has a gate.
- Is it covered? Is there a roof over it.
- Does it have a name? Almost nothing does. A name is for a real, signposted one, not a description like “the one by the door”.
Underneath most of these sits the same instruction: leave it blank if you’re not sure. That is worth taking literally. A blank field is an honest gap that the next person can fill in. A guess looks exactly like a fact, and it can sit there for years. “Free” on a charger that costs two euros sends someone across town with no way to pay.
After you submit #
Your contribution goes to OpenStreetMap immediately, in your name, and the new pin appears on your map right away. Within a day or so it starts turning up elsewhere: other cycling apps, other maps, other people’s route planning. You didn’t add it to Denchargi. You added it to the map that Denchargi reads, which is a much better place for it.
If you later realise something’s wrong, nothing is stuck. You can edit the point on openstreetmap.org, or use Report a problem in the app to leave a note for local mappers, which needs no account at all.
Not in the mood to add one? #
Confirming is the smaller favour that helps almost as much. When a point hasn’t been confirmed by anyone in about six months, the app stops vouching for it and shows a Verify button. If you’re standing in front of the thing and it’s still there, one tap tells every other rider so.
Adding a charger is a couple of minutes of your life for something that outlasts the app, works in tools you’ve never heard of, and quietly saves a stranger a very slow ride home.
Happy charging. 🚲⚡