Lime adds an App Clip to make instant scooter hire more instant-er

Lime Scooters (Image credit: Lime)

What you need to know

Lime has added an App Clip to its iPhone app to make it easier to hire a scooter.
Users won't need to have the Lime app installed to hire their ride.

Scooter hire company Lime has added a new feature to its iPhone app that makes it easier and quicker to pay for a scooter than ever before. By adding an App Clip to its app, Lime now allows users to pay for their scooter hire without actually having the app installed on their iPhone.

First spotted by The Verge, the feature makes use of iOS 14's App Clips feature. That allows users to scan a QR code on a scooter and have the App Clip spring to life. From there, everything behaves like a real app – including payment processing. App Clips are great because it means users don't need to download huge apps just to get whatever they're trying to do, done.

Customers who don't have the Lime app on their phone can still ride by taking a photo of the scooter's QR code and paying through Apple Pay or Google Pay. Lime says it will be a useful tool for first-time riders who don't want to commit or don't have space on their phones. The functionality works by temporarily downloading a portion of Lime's normal app. It uses the Instant Apps feature on Android, while on iPhones it makes use of the new App Clips feature, which arrived last year as part of iOS 14.

Users will need to have an iPhone running iOS 14 or later in order to enjoy this new feature, of course. Any of the very best iPhones available today will do the job, as will whatever Apple announced later this year, too.

The latest Lime app update also adds support for reservations as well as recommendations for scooters based on their battery levels, too.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.