Somebody watches the back of the group too.

Live tracking usually means watching the leader pull away up front — which tells you nothing about whether the group behind you is still together. A sweep rider fixes that: a second live marker, tracked the same way the leader is, for whoever's closing out the back.

• Assignment

  The leader designates a sweep

  Any time after the ride starts, the leader can promote a rider to sweep straight from the participants list — no need to end the ride and start over. The same list lets the leader remove the sweep and go back to no-sweep directly, without reassigning to someone else first.

• Visibility

  Tracked the same way as the leader

  Once designated, the sweep's position streams to every follower just like the leader's does — a second live marker on the map, not a status you have to check separately. If the group stretches out, you can see it.

• Group size

  Needs a real group to make sense

  With just a leader and one follower, that follower is definitionally the only possible sweep — so the option only appears once your ride has at least two followers alongside the leader. Nothing to configure; it shows up on its own once the group is big enough for the role to mean something.

Why the leader picks, not the app

"Whoever's currently furthest back" sounds like it should be automatic, but doing it accurately would mean either every rider streaming their position to everyone else so it can be ranked — which reintroduces exactly the cost live tracking is designed to avoid — or a heavier server-side process for a role that, in practice, rarely needs to change mid-ride. A manual "promote sweep" action from the leader gets the same outcome without either cost.

If the sweep drops off the ride

Unlike the leader, there's no automatic replacement for a sweep who disconnects or leaves. The group simply rides without a sweep marker until the leader designates a new one — a deliberate difference from what happens when the leader loses signal. Read about leader failover to see why that one path is automatic and this one isn't.