Help & Support

Stratus calculates the travel time from your current location to each nearby stop or station based on your selected pace (slow, medium, or fast). It then compares that travel time plus any buffer you've set against each bus and train's estimated departure. The departure time appears in green when you can comfortably reach it, orange when you'll need to hustle, and red when you've already missed it.

Buffer time accounts for the time it takes to leave your building, wait for an elevator, put on shoes, etc. You can set a global buffer in Settings (0-15 minutes) or use Saved Locations Setup to time your actual exit and save it as a per-location buffer that applies automatically when you're nearby.

Long-press any departure row to open the context menu, then select "Favorite." You can also swipe right on a row to favorite it, with an Undo. Favorites sit at the top of your dashboard, even when you're nowhere near them. Free includes one favorite trip; Premium includes unlimited favorites.

Tap any departure row to track it. Tracking starts a live countdown on your lock screen and Dynamic Island, and can optionally send you a notification when it's time to leave. You can set the alarm threshold when you start tracking.

Once a trip is tracked, updates continue arriving even while your phone is locked or the app is backgrounded — Stratus's server watches the trip on your behalf and pushes each phase change (boarded, approaching next stop, arrived) to your Live Activity.

See Stops shows every remaining stop on the route, for the bus or train you're tracking. View it as a list with live ETAs for each stop, or switch to Map view for the route polyline, the vehicle's current position, your dot, and markers for where you'll board and get off. Free for everyone.

Long-press any departure row and choose "See Stops," or open it straight from the Track confirmation sheet.

Stratus includes an "Accessible Stations Only" toggle in Settings that filters the departure list to show only stations with working elevators. When a CTA service alert is delivered indicating an elevator is out of service, the wheelchair icon disappears from affected rows and the alert surfaces in the dashboard banner.

Stratus also ships with full VoiceOver coverage, Dynamic Type up to extra-extra-extra-large, Reduce Transparency, and Increase Contrast. Haptics respect Silent Mode and Reduce Motion.

Free: Live CTA departures (rail + bus) with travel-adjusted times and catchability, line / mode / direction filters, tap-to-track any departure, See Stops + Map, real-time alerts, the accessibility filter with elevator-outage warnings, Saved Locations Setup, and one favorite trip.

Premium: Everything in Free, plus Live Activity, Dynamic Island, Apple Watch, departure alarms, the live ride companion, widgets, unlimited favorites, saved locations, and offline rail schedules.

Premium is available as a monthly ($1.99/mo) or annual ($19.99/yr) subscription with a 14-day free trial.

Open your device's Settings > [Your Name] > Subscriptions, find Stratus Transit, and tap to manage or cancel. You can also access this from within the app via Settings > Manage Subscription. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

Stops and stations appear based on your travel radius, which depends on your pace setting. Try a faster pace or expand your travel radius. Also check that the Lines or Modes filter isn't hiding what you're looking for.

Departure times come directly from CTA's Train Tracker and Bus Tracker systems and are estimates. Buses and trains can be delayed, rerouted, or cancelled without notice. If you're consistently seeing inaccurate data, pull down to refresh or check CTA service alerts within the app. If the issue persists, let us know.

No. Your GPS coordinates stay entirely on your device and are never transmitted. When Stratus fetches departure data, it sends only stop or station IDs (public CTA identifiers) to our server.

When you track a trip, we send a small set of trip details and a push token so updates can reach your device while it's locked. These records are short-lived — deleted when the trip ends, and in any case within two hours. None of them identify you on their own, and we don't combine them with anything else. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Stratus is made by CloudPath, LLC, an independent software company based in Chicago. We're not affiliated with the Chicago Transit Authority. We built Stratus because we ride CTA every day and wanted a better way to catch the bus and train.