Best OBD2 app?

December 30, 2023 1:27 PM

What is the best OBD2 car code app for ios, Macintosh, Linux, or Android? (preferably Android)

After a superfun week where both of our cars fell mysteriously sick, I splurged and bought a cheap bluetooth OBD-II scan tool. What is the best software interface you can recommend to pair with it?

(the device is one of a plethora of ELM 327 compatibles, so assume that much compatibility)

Free is fine if it pairs well with the device, and looking up codes isn't too cryptic. Full-featured is fine as long as it doesn't require a yearly subscription or something (this is the first time I've had to use a scan tool in my life).

Thanks in advance.

posted by ivan ivanych samovar to Technology (6 answers total)

Best answer: I use Car Scanner, which has an iOS app and an Android app. It works quite well, but be advised that the cheaper ELM dongles don't always support talking to all the modules or doing all the things the app can do. (Case in point: I had a cheap like $20 ELM dongle that read some ECU codes, but notably wouldn't talk to the transmission control module on the car I had.. which would have been a nice thing to have, since the transmission on it failed basically immediately after I bought it. I bought a better one after that - they also have a guide for the dongles they recommend on the site.)

App is free but has in-app purchases to unlock advanced features. Whether or not you'll want these depends on how deep you want to dive into things, but basic scanning works without payment. I think most of the advanced stuff is just being able to code things and support for specific modules for a given make so it's non-essential in most cases. If you scan for trouble codes, you can just tap them to Google the code and it provides a pretty good description of what the code is.
posted by mrg at 3:18 PM on December 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: ooh, promising!
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 4:33 PM on December 30, 2023

Best answer: I just bought "Torque Pro" from the google play store ($4.95) and I'm really impressed. It works reliably with my cheap ELM327 bluetooth dongle, which seemed to not work reliably or at all with the apps I tried from F-droid. It can read the usual OBD-2 codes, but also the CAN-bus extended codes on my Gen 2 Prius (like for instance, "what is the voltage of each cell in the hybrid battery"). It has a kinda silly user interface that's supposed to work as both a scan tool and a customizable dashboard replacement, but who cares?

Be aware that every cheap ELM327 dongle is different and they support different things and it's super hard to know what you're buying.
posted by fritley at 7:30 PM on December 30, 2023

If you're car is an FCA vehicle than alfaOBD is amazing and let's you program things too if you want. Only works on ram, dodge, alfa, fiat etc...
posted by chasles at 5:25 AM on December 31, 2023

Best answer: Torque pro on android has been around forever and has always worked for me to read and clear engine codes and it's not expensive. I agree with fritley the customizable dashboard thing UI is a little weird looking, but it has been useful for monitoring stuff like temperature on a car without a gauge or being able to see airflow sensors as a graph.
posted by samj at 6:49 AM on December 31, 2023

Response by poster: Thanks for the advice gang!

A neighbor came through with a much nicer code scanner, so I used that, but you've all given me some excellent ideas to be ready for next time.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 8:24 PM on January 6