Subsurface-mobile is a limited mobile version of Subsurface aimed at Android and iOS smartphone and tablet devices, allowing viewing, entering, sharing, and storage of dive information at dive sites where a desktop computer is not useful. While the desktop version of Subsurface shows much more detailed information for each dive, the mobile version allows a more accessible dive log on a dive trip, useful for proving dive experience to dive shops or to review previous dives. Subsurface-mobile also allows the gathering of GPS locations where dives are performed.

Users of Subsurface-mobile typically use the mobile app as a companion to the laptop/desktop version of Subsurface, sharing dive information between the mobile and the desktop versions. However Subsurface-mobile can also be used independently of the desktop version and does not require the use of cloud storage.

Subsurface-mobile allows:

These items are discussed in greater detail in the following text. Subsurface-mobile does not support download of dive data from all the dive computers that the desktop/laptop version can. This limitation is mainly caused by the inability of accessing some types of devices on the two mobile platforms. On Android, a subset of dive computers that use a FTDI USB interface or a Bluetooth / Bluetooth LE interface are accessible by Subsurface-mobile. On iOS, only Bluetooth LE based dive computers are supported.

Find Subsurface-mobile in the Google Play Store or the iTunes Store and install it. Please note that both stores also contain the older Subsurface companion app (used only for tracking GPS positions) - make sure you actually install Subsurface-mobile.

When you start Subsurface-mobile for the first time, a Subsurface splash screen is shown while the program loads. On some devices this may take several seconds. After loading, the Cloud Credentials screen appears (see image below on left).

The best place to get support is the Subsurface User Forum. Additionally, Subsurface-mobile allows you to send a support email by tapping on Ask for support in the main menu. This will open an email to our in app support address in the native email client, including the relevant logs.

At the bottom of many Subsurface-mobile screens is a round button that provides for several actions (see image below). The most common choice is indicated in a round colored action button (in the case below, edit a dive). Alternative actions are indicated in a white action bar. On Android devices, use the Android Back button for "cancel", "discard" or "back" actions. For example, when editing dive information, tapping the action button saves the changes while the Android back button can be used to cancel the edit without saving changes.

On iOS devices, on screens where a "back" action is enabled, a back arrow is shown in the top left corner of the screen.

For a consistent experience between iOS and Android, Subsurface-mobile on Android does not use the traditional "hamburger" menu button in the top left or right corner of the screen to open menus. Instead, Subsurface-mobile uses a different user interaction philosophy based on the Kirigami framework developed by the Plasma developers. There are three ways to open the main menu:

The image above indicates some of the important features of the menu system. On the left is the main menu, activated as described above. On the right of the image are the items of all the sub-menus accessible.

All screenshots in this user manual are currently from the Android version. The iOS screens look similar.

Most of the actions of Subsurface-mobile center around the dives on the dive list. While the dive list is loading from the cloud, a message appears at the bottom of the screen, indicating that the cloud is being accessed, after which the dive list is shown. Once the list is loaded you can scroll up and down through your dive history. To upload dives from a dive computer, tap the blue action button. If you wish to add a dive manually, tap the + button in the action bar (described below). Tapping an existing dive on the list brings up a display of the Details View for that dive including the dive profile, notes and additional information.

You can view other dives by swiping the Details view to the right (for the previous dive) or to the left (following dive). Using the Action Bar, it is also possible to delete the dive (tap the dustbin on the Action Bar) or to view the dive location on a map viewer (Google Maps on Android, the Google Maps web site on iOS; tap the GPS icon on the Action Bar.).

Use this action button:

at the bottom of the dive list to perform filtering of the dive list (see image on left above).

By default, all the dives in the dive log are shown in the dive list. After several years your dive log can become quite long and, sometimes, you might like to list only the dives of a particular type, e.g. those at a particular dive site or those with a specific buddy or dive master. Use the Filter to achieve this. The filter mechanism searches through all the information for each dive, looking for one or more key words. Only the dives containing these key words are listed in the dive list. In the Settings screen there two options that affect the way the filter searches for appropriate information. Firstly, you can select Match filter case sensitive which causes the search of key words to be case sensitive. Secondly, you can select Include notes in full text filtering. If this option is not selected, the filter does not search through the dive notes for key words. Selecting the Filter action button brings up a text box at the top of the dive list. Type the key words to be searched for. In the image on the left, the dive list has been filtered for the word "Nitrox" and 265 dives were found containing this word as a tag. For each trip in the dive list the number of dives containing "Nitrox" as a tag is shown. To clear the filter, remove the key words from the text box and select the Filter action button to switch off filtering.

The locations of all dives in the dive list can be viewed from the Main Menu by selecting the Map option. A satellite image of the world is shown. At that scale no dive sites are shown. If you zoom into a particular region of the world the dive sites appear, indicated by red flags. Zooming in even closer indicates the names of each of the different dive sites.

In the Details View, the Action Bar at the bottom has a GPS pin on the left hand side. Tap that pin and the dive site is shown in Google Maps. Close Google Maps by using the Android Back button or tapping on the Subsurface-mobile link in the top left corner on iOS.

Alternatively, the Details View has a button at the top right hand marked Map it. Tap this button to open Google Maps showing the dive site (image on left).

When you tap on a dive in the Dive List, a new screen with the dive profile and many important details about the dive is opened. You can use a pich gesture to zoom into the profile, and tapping with one finger, waiting briefly until the profile becomes translucent, and then dragging the finger around allows you to pan the profile so the interesting parts are shown.

At the bottom of the Dive Details screen the action button is a pencil. Tapping the pencil button changes the page and enables edit boxes that allow modifying the existing dive information, e.g. adding text to the dive notes or changing the names or values of some of the information (see image on left). It may be necessary to scroll the window to access all the information. At the bottom of the edit screen is a Save action button. Tap this to save the new information, after which the dive list screen is updated and shown. To cancel any edits, tap the Android Back Button or the application back button at the top left of the screen on iOS.

You can manually add a dive to the existing dive list. On the dive list tap the "plus" sign in the action bar, or use the main menu and tap Dive management → Add dive manually. This opens a screen that is identical to the editing screen discussed above. When a dive is added manually, you cannot directly add a dive profile from a dive computer. However, if you do not use a dive computer, the duration, depth and several other bits of information about the new dive can be entered. The Action button at the bottom of the screen contains a disk symbol. Tap this to save the new dive. To cancel any edits, tap the Back button. The left-hand image below shows a screenshot of a dive being created and the right-hand image shows the same dive in Details View.

When editing dives it is possible to transfer information from one dive to another. For instance, when diving with the same buddy and the same equipment configuration during a particular dive trip it can be efficient to simply copy all this information from the previous dive into the dive that is being edited. Currently a standard list of dive information is copied to the clipboard:

Divemaster, Buddy, Suit, Tags, Cylinders, Weights.

Copy and paste dive information is performed on the Dive List. Long-press on a dive. A panel with three icons appears on top the selected dive :

To copy the above information to the clipboard, select the leftmost of the three icons. A "Copy" notification briefly appears on the screen. Now long-press the dive into which the copied information needs to be pasted. The same three icons appear on the target dive. Select the middle icon. A "Paste" notification briefly appears on the screen. This completes the copy-and-paste action. Continue by reviewing this new (pasted) information by manually editing the target dive.

To choose what dive details to copy, long-press the copy button. This will open up a configuration page where you can toggle the details you want to copy over to the destination.

Delete a dive from the dive list by long-pressing a dive until a red dustbin appears on the right-hand side (see image above). Tap the dustbin. The dive is deleted without asking any confirmation because Subsurface-mobile assumes that the combination of a long tap on the dive with another tap on the red dustbin is an unambiguous instruction to delete the dive.

To choose what dive details to copy, long-press the copy button. This will open up a configuration page where you can toggle the details you want to copy over to the destination. By default, the following fields are copied:

From the main menu, tap Manage dives → Download from DC. A screen is shown requiring that the user specify the names of the vendor and model of the dive computer. For instance, when using a Shearwater Petrel dive computer, the vendor is Shearwater and the Dive computer name is Petrel(see image on the left, below). Caveats: The download feature in smartphones supports only a limited number of dive computers. On Android devices these are typically dive computers using an FTDI interface using a USB OTG cable (but this is blocked on some Android devices by OS settings). Android devices also support Bluetooth dive computers that are supported in Subsurface on the desktop. Both Android and iOS devices allow direct download of dive data from a handful of Bluetooth LE enabled dive computers. Use the Vendor name and Dive Computer drop-downs to pick the correct dive computer. When downloading from multiple different dive computers, shortcut buttons appear below the drop-downs to easily switch between them. In the Settings menu you can remove these buttons, a useful feature for removing buttons of dive computers that are not used any more. Achieve this by selecting the option Forget remembered dive computers in the Settings menu. After all these caveats, let us proceed with download.

For USB FTDI dive computers: This feature is not supported on iOS and on most newer Android devices. It still works on some older Android devices (typically Android 7 and older) and is kept enabled for this reason. Note: USB cables "normally" used for uploading dives to a desktop/laptop computer do NOT work; these cables usually have a full-sized ("Type A") male USB plug on one end which plugs into the USB port of a desktop/laptop computer. For downloads to a mobile device one needs a USB OTG (USB On-The-Go) cable.

Subsurface remembers the settings for dive computers that have been successfully used (image on right, below). These appear as buttons under a heading "Previously used dive computers". Select the appropriate button. Having connected the USB dive computer to the Subsurface computer and having selected the appropriate vendor and dive computer, ensure that the Connection text box shows "FTDI".

For BLUETOOTH/BTLE dive computers: The process for Bluetooth download is slightly different between Android and iOS. In our testing we got the best results on iOS when the dive computer was in Bluetooth mode before Subsurface-mobile is started. On most dive computers this is done through a menu entry, others (like the Suunto models) always respond to BTLE requests. However, on Android devices, you should first establish a link between the Bluetooth or Bluetooth LE dive computer and the mobile device using Android utilities. See below for more details.

For Bluetooth-equipped dive computers and Android devices, establish a Bluetooth connection between the dive computer and the mobile device. Use the tools on the mobile device to achieve pairing between the Bluetooth dice computer and the mobile device. For many Android devices, the Settings → Bluetooth tool of Android is probably appropriate. Subsurface-mobile performs communication using both Bluetooth and Bluetooth-low-energy (BTLE). The appropriate choice of Bluetooth communication is often made by the software and the user need not be concerned with this. For dive computers with both Bluetooth and Bluetooth-low-energy (BTLE), a separate button is presented on the download screen for each mode of communication, allowing a choice. Use the Connection value to distinguish between the two options. In the image on the right, below, there are three buttons labeled "Shearwater Petrel 2". These represent two Shearwater Petrel dive computers, one of which can communicate in both Bluetooth as well as BTLE. The Connection information indicates that the Petrel with no BTLE is selected.

DOWNLOAD: With communication between dive computer and Subsurface-mobile having been set up, tap the Download button. Be patient because the download can take a few minutes. As a matter of fact, a complete first download from some dive computers can take 45 minutes or longer. The downloaded dives appear in the bottom part of the screen, the most recent dive at the top (see image on right, below).

Each dive has a check-box on the left hand side, used for selecting which dives you want to be added to the Subsurface-mobile dive list: dives that are not checked are ignored. With the appropriate downloaded dives having been checked, tap the button at the bottom left labeled Accept. All the selected dives appear on the Subsurface-mobile dive list. The downloaded dive information can now be edited as described in the section above Edit a dive.

A central part of Subsurface-mobile is the ability to store the dive log using the Subsurface cloud storage. This provides security against loss or damage of the dive information in a local copy and allows the desktop version of Subsurface to access changes made using the mobile device. This ability is accessed through the main menu (by tapping the "Hamburger" icon at the bottom left of the screen). Tap the option Dive management, enabling a number of options:

The fact that most smartphones have GPS facilities allows Subsurface-mobile to record the locations of dives. IMPORTANT: GPS-derived coordinates on a smartphone are not always accurate and can have an error greater than 1 km. GPS accuracy is determined by the hardware and software of the smartphone as well as by the GPS settings selected within Android/iOS. As of Android V6 select Android Settings → Communication → Location → High accuracy. If the smartphone is taken on the boat during a dive, locations will be automatically recorded at regular intervals. These locations can then be applied to dives in the dive list. Here is how it’s done:

The Settings screen allows the customization of Subsurface-mobile. Many of the settings involve dragging a slider switch to activate or deactivate a particular setting.