Tire pressure

Checking the pressure of each wheel, running the sensor discovery and fixing swapped readings.

The TPMS screen shows the pressure of each tire read straight from the car's ECU. Not every vehicle makes that information available through the OBD port, which is why the screen starts with a support check.

The readings stay on your phone.

  1. Check whether the car supports it

    Connect the adapter with the ignition on. The first time the screen opens, Check TPMS support explains that the profile needs tire sensors covered by the catalog and offers to start the discovery; Not now puts it off. Tap Start discovery, and the app looks for the sensor of each wheel and works out which one answers for each position.

    If no sensor answers, the No tire sensors found screen offers Search again. If the result repeats, the car does not make TPMS available through the OBD port and there is nothing to set up.

  2. Read the four wheels

    The positions appear as FL, FR, RL and RR, for front left, front right, rear left and rear right. When the car reports a fifth sensor, the Spare appears as well.

  3. Refresh the reading

    Refresh now asks for a new reading. Without that request, the screen keeps the last value received.

    Tire sensors save their own battery and transmit at intervals, or when the car is moving. With the vehicle parked for hours, an old reading is the expected result.

  4. Fix swapped wheels

    If the screen warns that more than one sensor answered for some wheels, tap the value and choose the right position. This happens on cars that answer with the readings without saying which wheel each one belongs to.

  5. Choose the vehicle

    The picker at the top switches cars. Each vehicle stores its own sensor mapping, so the discovery has to be run once on each of them.

If something goes wrong

Many cars have TPMS but do not make the readings available through the OBD port: the dashboard warning works, and the values never come out. In that case there is nothing to adjust.

Before settling on that conclusion, make sure the ignition stayed on and the adapter connected for the whole discovery. It is worth installing the manufacturer's advanced profile in Sensor Profiles and trying again, because on several models TPMS only shows up that way.

Tire sensors transmit at intervals to spare their internal battery, and many only wake up with the car moving. Tap Refresh now and, if the value is still old, drive for a few minutes and come back to the screen.

Tap the value of the wrong wheel and choose the right position. If the app showed the ambiguous sensor warning, this is exactly that situation: the car answered without saying which wheel each sensor belongs to.

After a tire rotation, run the discovery again.

The temperature of each tire is a paid plan feature. Pressure stays available on any plan.

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