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Getting started

Sign in with Microsoft, Google or Apple, or create an account with a username and password. You then pick a username: that is your @handle, the way buddies find you.

• Under Settings › Profile you choose your language (English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish or Italian) and a light or dark theme.
• Logged dives before Nextdive? Enter how many under Settings › Dive settings, and your dive numbers continue from your real count.
• Add your e-mail address under Settings › Account to get notifications and to be able to reset your password.
• On a phone, add Nextdive to your home screen from the browser menu and it opens like an app.
• Curious about Nextdive Pro? Under Settings › Account you try it free for a month, once. It ends by itself: nothing to pay, and what you added stays. You hear three days before.
• In the Nextdive app you can buy Pro under Settings › Account, per month or per year, through Google Play or the App Store. It then works on the website and your other devices too. You cancel or change it in the store; on a new phone, Restore purchase brings it back.

Logging a dive

Press “+ New dive”. The form has a few short steps; only the date, time, duration and depth are required.

• Location: dive site, place and country, and a pin on the map. Save a site as a favourite and next time one tap fills it all in.
• Gear: your default configuration is filled in already. Add the gas (air or nitrox), tank size and pressures.
• Buddies and notes: tag your buddies and mark a training dive with its course, so it shows up under that certification.
• Not finished? “Save as draft” keeps the dive aside until you complete it.
• Changed something and pressed Cancel or back? Nextdive asks first before your changes are thrown away, on every form.

Under Diving you find all your dives, with search and filters by year and depth. Select several to change the site or buddies of all of them at once.

Importing dives

With “Import” above your list of dives you bring in the dives you already have. Dives already in your logbook are recognised and skipped, so importing again does no harm.

• Dive computer over Bluetooth: read Suunto, Shearwater, Oceanic, Sherwood and Apeks computers straight into your logbook, in Chrome or Edge on a computer or Android phone, or in the Nextdive app. iPhone and iPad can't use Bluetooth in the browser. The app remembers the computers you read: the sync button reads them again, and when you open the app the ones nearby with Bluetooth on are read by themselves.
• Apple Health (Nextdive Pro): in the Nextdive app on an iPhone, import the dives your Apple Watch (the Depth app) or another dive app saved in Health, with depth profile, water temperature and where you dived. Switch on “Add new dives by themselves” and new ones come in whenever you open the app.
• Files: exports from Garmin and Suunto (FIT), Shearwater, Scubapro and most logbook programs (UDDF), Subsurface, PDF and CSV. Subsurface reads many more computers, such as Mares and Cressi.

A dive that starts within 30 minutes of one you already have counts as the same dive, so a dive you logged by hand isn't added twice.

Diving with two computers, or a computer and a watch? The same dive from another computer is kept with that dive, so it counts once. With Nextdive Pro the dive page shows every computer's numbers and profiles side by side, and you choose which one is the main.

With Nextdive Pro you add up to five photos to a dive, on its page on the website or in the app. They're scaled down and kept without the location and camera data in the file; only you and the buddies tagged on the dive see them.

Buddies

Under Buddies you send a request to a buddy's @handle, or share a link that adds you in one tap. Once they accept, you can tag each other on dives.

• A dive you tag a buddy on shows up for them too. One tap adds it to their own logbook, where they fill in their own tank pressures and notes.
• Buddies without a Nextdive account can be tagged too; then only their name is kept.
• You decide who sees your profile: everybody, only your buddies, or nobody.

Overview and statistics

The overview shows your counts at a glance, your latest dives, a map of where you dived and the group dives coming up.

• Statistics: dives this year versus last year, time underwater, deepest, longest and coldest dives, dives per year and the depth distribution.
• Under Settings › Statistics you choose which tiles and charts the overview shows.

Gear and certifications

• Under Diving › Gear you save configurations: the suit, tank, BCD and weights you usually dive with. Your default fills in every new dive, and you note whether your weights were right.
• Under Certifications and documents in the menu (in the app: Diving › Certifications) you add, per agency, your diver number and the courses you did. Your highest certification follows from them.
• Staff of your clubs see your highest certification, so a divemaster knows how deep you may go.
• Under Certification cards you keep the date and number on each card. With Nextdive Pro, Documents holds the expiry dates of your dive medical statement, first aid, oxygen card and insurance, and Nextdive reminds you 60 and 14 days before one expires. Of a medical statement only the dates are kept.
• With Nextdive Pro, Your dive card shows your certifications and documents on one page, in the app also offline, with a QR code for a dive centre: it opens a page with your certifications and the validity of the documents you share. Staff of your clubs then see whether your shared medical statement is valid on the day of a group dive or lesson.
• Under Gear › My gear you keep your regulator, BCD, cylinder and more with their serial numbers. With Nextdive Pro you also see when each needs service, by date or by dives (for a cylinder its visual inspection and hydrostatic test), and keep a service log.
• Put your pieces in a gear configuration, or tick them on a dive: those dives count for their service, and with Nextdive Pro you get a reminder before it's due.

Clubs and group dives

Under Clubs you find your club by name or place and ask to join it; its staff accept you. A club that is invitation only invites you itself. Only members see what's inside a club.

• Members sign up for group dives, ask each other as buddy, rent gear and see what they have to pay.
• The day before a group dive you signed up for, you get a reminder with your buddy and the gear you rent. You switch it off under Settings › Notifications.
• Staff (owners, instructors and divemasters) plan group dives, form buddy pairs and trios, check certifications against the planned depth and print the rental list, with discounts for paying members.
• Rental (in the club menu) is the club's rental on one page: rent gear out at the counter to a member, or by name to someone without an account, and see what is planned to rent and what was rented, also with group dives.
• Planning a group dive fills in its location as when you log a dive: known dive sites and places, your favourites and a pin on the map. Members who log the dive from it get the pin too.
• Members say for how many days they rent, for example a diving weekend; the club sets a discount per item for every day after the first (Settings › Prices).
• Your group dives, booked trips and lessons in your own calendar (Settings › Calendar): Apple Calendar, Google Calendar and Outlook subscribe to a private address and keep up by themselves.
• The club page has a ranking for its members: who made the most dives this month and who got a new certification in the last 30 days. Every 25 dives you get a bigger sea animal next to your name, from a guppy to a blue whale at 375 dives. Don't want to be in it? Turn off “Show me in club rankings” under Settings › Profile.
• What a club pays for course planning, group dives and Pro licences, and how paying and stopping works, is on the prices page. The logbook stays free for divers.
• Trips: staff promote dive holidays the club goes on, with dates, price and a link to the organiser where you book. Members say whether they're interested or booked, so the club sees who's coming; the trip also shows on your overview.
• A club can give its members Nextdive Pro (Settings › Nextdive Pro): all paying members, or members one by one. The club pays per licence per month; everyone with a licence on any day of a month counts once.
• A club has a timezone (Settings › Timezone): the times of its group dives are in that time, so a club in Portugal or Greece plans in its own clock and members abroad see the time at the club.
• Each role has its rights (Settings › Roles and rights): invite members, plan group dives, the rental sheet, trips, courses, the roster, the website links and the settings. The owner may do everything; the owner sets what instructors and divemasters may do and makes roles of their own, such as an assistant, then gives people a role under Members. By default instructors plan dives, trips and courses, divemasters keep lessons, and only the owner has the roster, the website links and the settings. A club can make up to 20 roles.
• Club owners manage the subscription and the billing details under Settings › Subscription and invoices. Course planning costs €29.99 per club per month; group dives and trips cost €1.00 per active member per month, excluding VAT. The first month is free and the club pays one monthly invoice by direct debit.
• Without course planning a club keeps every course, lesson, student and roster entry it made; they come back the moment the subscription runs again.
• A course booked on the club's own website (its web shop or a form, through Links under Courses) puts that person on the course at once. Whoever isn't a member yet gets a welcome e-mail with the lessons and the club's invitation to join it on Nextdive. Links work with any website: a WooCommerce shop on WordPress, or a form on WordPress, Wix or Jotform. Other site builders, such as Squarespace, go through Zapier or Make. Trying a link out first? Switch off “E-mail customers” in its settings: sign-ups come in without an e-mail, and you send the invitation from the student's page when you're ready.
• A student who completed a PADI Open Water or Scuba Diver course gets the PADI Record and Referral Form on their page, filled in with the lessons they took and who taught them (each instructor's number under Certifications and documents, the club's dive center number under Settings › The club). Staff download it for 30 days after completing and keep it in the club's own records; Nextdive stores no copy.
• The PADI Open Water template gives a course the skills on that form; what you tick at a lesson goes onto the form with when it was and who taught it. Instructors can add the phone and e-mail address for the form next to their number, and a student's address comes from the web shop order or their details.
• A student's page shows what they did in the club's earlier courses: attendance, skills, the remarks and the instructors' notes per lesson, so whoever teaches them next knows where they stand. Earlier courses are found by their Nextdive account, or else by the same name and e-mail address.
• Under Settings › The club, a club ticks the agencies it teaches for: it then sees only their standard course templates, so a PADI school sees the PADI ones. A template knows which certification its course leads to, so a course planned with it gets that certification without asking. Look at the standard templates under Courses › Templates.
• An open invoice can also be paid at once from there (iDEAL, a card or a transfer through Mollie), and the owner can stop the subscription at any time: it stops at once and nothing more is invoiced.
• Don't have a club in Nextdive yet? Create one with “+ New club” and invite your members.

The Android app

The Nextdive app for Android has the same logbook. It also works without a connection, on a boat or abroad: dives you log or delete are synced as soon as you're online again.

The app reads your dive computer over Bluetooth and signs in with the same account as the website.

Privacy and security

• No ads and no tracking. Your dives are kept in the EU.
• Under Settings › Security you turn on two-step verification, add a passkey (fingerprint, face or screen lock) and see which devices are signed in.
• Under Settings › Account you export all your dives as CSV, or delete your account with all your data.

More in the privacy policy and the terms of use.