Sauce for Zwift (S4Z) is an app for Windows/Mac/Linux which, according to creator Justin Mayfield, “extends the Zwift cycling and running simulator with more stats and pretty things.”
It’s an incredibly powerful tool, and even though it’s still in beta, I’d like to introduce you to it today.
First, Some Background
Back in 2015 Justin Mayfield (no relation to Zwift co-founder Jon Mayfield) created the popular Sauce for Strava browser extension, bringing lots of extra data to your Strava browsing experience in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.
He turned his attention to Sauce for Zwift in late 2021, and posted this teaser in December. “There were two main motivations for writing it,” Justin told me. ”The first was that I just wanted average power on the screen. Honestly, just average power for races and I kept forgetting to charge or set up my Garmin in the basement to give me this during events. The second was wanting to know what was going on with groups in events. I found it really hard to know when breaks were going and other race craft that was obvious for IRL racing but pretty hard to extrapolate from the Zwift UI on its own.”
Every Zwift racer can echo Justin’s desire for more detailed power data and better visibility of other riders. But most of us don’t have the development chops to build a solution! Justin does.
The Workaround
Even though S4Z has been available in beta for several months, it’s only in the last month or two that we’ve seen usage really pick up among Zwifters. Why all the attention now?
Because in July 2022 Zwift rolled out necessary privacy changes which encrypted the data stream between your Zwift client and Zwift’s servers. This encryption broke add-ons like S4Z, ZwiftMap, and Zwift Activity Monitor, all of whom accessed that datastream and provided pretty visual displays of the data. It took a while for Justin to develop a workaround to restore S4Z’s functionality… but he did it.
What’s the workaround? Making S4Z into “a full encrypted game client that ‘watches’ your normal Zwift account like a 2nd instance of Zwift itself.”
Because of this, you’ll need to create a second Zwift account (a free trial account) in order to use S4Z. The S4Z client uses this second login to sign into Zwift in the background so it can see your stats and the stats of nearby riders, and even after the 14-day trial expires, this account will still work fine for S4Z purposes.
Paid Software
Before we get into the basics of using S4Z, I want to make it clear that this is subscription-based software. It’s super cheap, but it’s not free! Although Sauce for Strava began as a side project, Justin has been working on his Sauce projects full time since the end of 2019.
How much does it cost? Just $2/month gives you full access to Sauce for Strava and Sauce for Zwift. Sign up over on Patreon and show your support for Justin’s hard work. (You can also do a $5/month tier to show him extra support. That’s what I’m doing… because I’m super impressed with S4Z, and I want to see Justin continue building it out!)
Installing Sauce for Zwift
- To get started, download S4Z at saucellc.io/products/sauce4zwift/download
- Run the downloaded file, and run S4Z once it’s installed
- Click the “Link with Patreon” button to link your Sauce for Zwift install (assuming you’ve already created your Patreon account and joined as a Sauce member)
- Enter your main Zwift account login at the S4Z prompt
- Enter your second Zwift account login (again, this can just be a free/trial account)
That’s it! You’ll see the Sauce for Zwift interface windows pop up once you’re done with setup. Now the real fun begins…
Using Sauce for Zwift (the Basics)
S4Z is designed to run overlayed on top of your Zwift window, but you can reposition the various HUD elements and even place them in a second monitor if you prefer. Here’s what S4Z looks like on my PC after a few quick sizing/positioning tweaks to the three basic windows (which I’ve labeled):
- Current Watching: by default this shows power, HR, cadence, and drafting data for the rider you’re currently watching (which is yourself, usually). This includes that elusive average power number Justin originally built S4Z to display. This window’s fields are super customizable.
- Chat: scrolling in-game chat history. Messages automatically age off after 2 minutes by default.
- Groups: details of nearby groups of riders (up to 4 ahead, 2 behind, by default). Very handy for races (and the time gaps between groups are much more accurate than Zwift’s).
Not bad, right? But we’re just getting started…
Customizing Sauce for Zwift
S4Z offers the kind of customization many Zwifters have wanted from the game itself since early days. In fact, S4Z offers much more in terms of customization than just about any Zwifter could ask for! To wit:
- Mouse over the borders of a window and you can click and drag to resize
- Right-clicking any window makes its top bar visible, which you can then click and drag to move the window around. You can also click the gear to access window settings, or click to close the window.
- From the settings dialog you can change the theme (color scheme) of the window, as well as customize it in other ways
- Clicking on certain elements of certain windows does magical things. I can’t cover all the possibilities here, but I’ll give you two examples:
- Clicking the main power number in your Currently Watching window changes it from instantaneous power to 5s to 15s to… well, there is a whole pile of options. Just keep clicking. This works for all the numbers in this window!
- Clicking one of the groups in the Groups window “zooms in” to that group. You can click a specific rider to see their details, which includes such fun stuff as their FTP setting, a link to their ZwiftPower profile, and a button to hide all chat messages from that Zwifter.
Here’s a quick video I created to show you how to customize your S4Z displays in basic ways:
Adding New Windows
Clicking the settings gear in the main S4Z bar gives you access to your main S4Z app settings, including the option of adding new windows. Just for fun, I added a W’bal Gauge window:
Of course, you’ll want to shrink and reposition it.
(W’bal is a favorite metric of racers because it basically tells you how much oomph you’ve got left. It’s your anaerobic work capacity – read more about it).
There are lots of other pre-built windows you can enable. I won’t list them all here. The big idea, though, is that you can basically get any session data you’d like, displayed wherever you’d like, if you’re willing to poke around a bit and do some clicking and dragging.
Is This Cheating?
Some Zwifters are asking… is using S4Z in races cheating? Does it give you an unfair advantage?
I would argue no, since it’s software everyone has access to. (Sure, Zwifters using AppleTV, iOS, or Android won’t be able to use S4Z – but they could change to running Zwift on a PC or Mac if it was that important to them.) In this sense, it’s no more cheating than someone having a faster bike than someone else IRL. As long as the faster bike (or S4Z setup) is publicly available, the playing field should be considered level.
There will be those who disagree with my stance. And technically, S4Z, like every other Zwift community dev project, violates Zwift’s terms of service.
But most at ZwiftHQ seems to be supportive of what Sauce for Zwift is doing (as a developer himself, co-founder Jon Mayfield seems to love creative community projects), so I don’t see them shutting it down anytime soon.
Whether or not you support its use, expect more and more racers to get on the Sauce.
But Wait, There’s More!
There’s more to S4Z than the basics I’ve outlined above. For example: S4Z includes a web server that spits out data in standard formats to a local URL, which you could then feed into other apps to do amazing things.
Also, Justin Mayfield has lots of plans for improving S4Z. I asked him what he’s working on, and he said, “Stability and bug fixes (there are many). I’m sneaking in extra fields and fun features like themes here and there as I work on the core too. Feature-wise, I need to tackle segments next and I’d eventually like to tie this into WTRL and/or Zwift Power so real-time points are available.”
See… I told you this project was worth supporting. If you’re a Zwift racer using a Mac or PC, head over to Patreon, subscribe for at least $2/month, and support Justin’s work on this sweet project.
Questions or Comments?
Are you a Sauce for Zwift user? Share your tip and tricks below. Questions or comments? Share those too!
W’bal window on Zwift screen is what I have been hoping for long time.
Very nice to have it finally 🙂👍🏻
Is there a way to input/modify the starting W’ number? From where is S4Z pulling the initial value? Thanks!
Yes – under main settings for Sauce, click the icon next to your Zwift account, then click the W’ value to change it.
It defaults to 20000 for everyone, then you can change it up or down.
Quick question about the second Zwift account . . . the free version is only good for a week or two correct? Does that mean it has to be renewed each time to use the Sauce? I am interested, but also am a bit overstimulated with all the visuals on the screen at one time . . . lurking, but willing to try.
Nope it can just sit there for the rest of time, the 2nd account doesn’t need to be active (remember zwift runners get zwift for free!)
You can use a free account that has expired no problem.
I don’t understand this either. There is no “free account”. Even for the free 7-day trial, you have to give payment information which kicks in after the trial period. What am I missing?
Just don’t give it payment information. Go through the account creation steps but when you get to payment, just stop. The account exists at that point and can be used for Sauce
It’s one of those tools, if proven essential enough, Zwift will have to add the features on their own or buy the app. Honestly I’m baffled to hear no concern that a third party tool is deemed that valuable by the community. And it’s a paid-for service? That would be outrageous in pretty much any online game I’ve been part of and I’m very surprised that people who I expected to know better given their background and/or expertise seemingly do not mind it. In the Zwift Grand Prix they neutralize the in-game equipment, but paying for additional in-game data is… Read more »
“It violates the terms of service” says it all. Sure it’s available to everyone (for a price), but a better analogy would be using aero bars in a solo breakaway in a road race. Everyone can buy aero bars, but they’re against the rules.
That being said, S4Z looks awesome and I’ll be trying it out for myself very soon! I don’t race often so it’ll just be for my own amusement. Zwift should’ve added some of these features themselves ages ago.
It’s more like if someone used screen scraping software to fill out a web form to enter a race because the web form was poorly designed (and screen scraping is generally against TOS but as long as you aren’t trying to hack the website it’s not a problem). Aero bars have a material affect on the race. How you fill out a web form does not.
You can write your own app to do the exact same thing for free, does that make you feel better?
Do you think your comment addressed the issue that I raised?
Yes. Have a nice day.
It doesn’t .
It’s reminiscent of bakkesmod in rocket league. That’s become so ingrained once you get to a certain level it’s expected, all the pros use it and the developer is on board with it to the point of hiring the developer behind it. That is free though, so another point of difference besides being unquestionably ok to use. This S4Z is a weird grey area, it’s not cheating, but it is giving you data that gives you an advantage. But then there’s already pay to play elements like needing power meters and HR for various events. You can already pay for… Read more »
There is some absolute gold coming out of the community at the moment. If zwift embrace these projects it will take zwift racing to the next level. Exciting!
100% agree.
100% agree. Although Zwift have stepped up their game recently, new features are still being developed at a glacial pace. It would benefit everyone, incl. ZwiftHQ, if they worked with and supported people like Justin to integrate community-developed tools into the Zwift experience. Long requested features like new race formats (elimination races etc), a customizable garage, easier bike swaps or a ranking system for racers would be prime candidates. Zwift could focus on what they are good at – bulding new worlds and marketing. Elements like racing, which is clearly not a top priority for Zwift, would benefit a lot… Read more »
So with two screens, this would allow you to hide the HUD on Zwift and use Sauce for all the data on the second screen. Nice!
Funny enough I subscribed this morning. The draft thing kept me thinking if it was cheating or not, and debating with some Coalition colleagues we did not manage to come to a conclusion, so I have decided to test it to the bone. By the way incredible piece of add-on. Huge kudos to Justin. It is so easy to use and customize. Tons of things Zwift should take into account IMO
Before Zwift went with encrypted streams, I had access to the Draft effect percentage and was using it to better understand the draft envelope (area) in which you want to be positioned.
Letting Zwift steer made understanding difficult so I put batteries back in my unused Elite Sterzo and much to my surprised found out it is like a surgeon’s scalpel for positioning. That alone breathed new life into what Zwift has allowed to become a paper weight.
Give it a try while watching the Sauce draft percentage and you’ll likely be as blown away as I was.
What were you previously using to see the Draft ‘envelope’ thing? I’ve always liked seeing that when they randomly show it in some Pro races on Zwift etc.
if I were zwift; i would just implement this into the main program, with options to turn off parts of it.
You forget the best feature of Sauce for Zwift, and you don’t even need to subscribe to get it: if you ever have a race result that you find disappointing you can 100% fully blame Sauce of Zwift!
1. Directly contravenes Zwift terms and conditions.
2. Zwift HQ have explicitly told those racing in what was Premier League not to use it.
3. Additional cost = not available to all = Pay to Win
4. Clearly designed for sandbaggers
What’s not to love?
And 5. Not available to all platforms.
Imagine playing a cross-platform shooter and one platforms users are able to pay for a third-party tool that gives them in-game information that they can’t get otherwise so they can get a competitive edge on their competition and a vast part of the community is a-okay with it because that’s apparently how far their competitive integrity goes and streamers are using it and fansites/podcasts are promoting it and the shooters company let’s it happen (for now).
It’s really bizarre.
3 In any sports money can buy extra advantages. How is this different than the first WorldTour-riders to use a powermeter during a race?
Did in race use of power meter contravene UCI T and C and rules ? See Tiffer’s point no 1
100%, thanks.
FWIW, I use Apple TV and run S4Z on a separate MacBook. Works fine except you don’t have the option to overlay the data on your Zwift screen.
I Zwift on my iPad and have a Microsoft Surface. Do you think I’d be able to have S4Z on my Surface while I Zwift on my iPad?
I don’t see why not as long as S4Z can run on your Surface.
Thanks!
Can you reset / lap the average power?
Yes.
How? 🙂
(as in, how do you manually reset the average power at a moment of your choosing?)
Any chance Zwift looks to buy him out or hire him to integrate it for the whole community? This would benefit iPad users like myself, while providing an incentive for community members to attempt further innovations. And I’d happily pay $2/mth for this, but buying a computer and or new computer + New setup starts getting a little pricey. Either way, great article and this looks great!
While I’m impressed with the S4Z, it just keep sticking to me that one person pulls this kind of features off, and zwift still dont give you the tools to change your datafields or something. I cheer for the great progress that this product is giving, but it reveals Zwift’s slow developments over the years in my opinion.
I wanna add to that, that they seem to get their act together with the many features this season. I hope its not only because they saved those features for the Zwift season to start
What do you mean slow development? You have fancy dinos walking along the roads, bears falling down off trees, condors circling around above your bike, helloween masks, fire socks… It takes time to develop all those things. 🙂
LOL Zwift and all their useless “flare”
Hasn’t aged well that Zwift clearly doesn’t care what users want (I’ve been hearing users ask for average power for over 2 years!!)
Is Wahoo RGT gonna do it right?
Not ideal, but I just hit the “menu” button to view my average power at any given time. It doesn’t interrupt the race except temporarily flipping the screen into menu mode. I hit the back button to return to the game screen. Literally takes 2 seconds.
Wahoo RGT is actually doing a lot right – unfortunately not the one thing I can’t get over (and I’m thinking many others either) – to actually link their (admittedly beautiful) courses into some form of map. It just gets really tiring to ride a 10km circle, no matter how pretty…
LOL. Point well made.
Guessing you can’t run Zwift full screen and S4Z over it? Only windowed?
I think you are right. There are however “always on top” programms for windows. Very lightweight programs that put whatever you want always on top. Even if zwift is running full screen. I use this to watch some netflix etc. I personally reccomend deskpins.
I tried downloading deskpins, but it still wouldn’t let be put anything over Zwift full screen. Is there a trick to using it?
Yes S4Z offers a lot of cool stuff but I feel that at the heart of the matter it is unfair. It’s not available to all. Not everybody who uses ATV can necessarily afford a laptop to run this in parallel. Probably they can but that’s not the point. Also if you look at a precedent set by the UCI when they banned the use of glucose monitors in races, the reason was to protect those participants who couldn’t afford the tech. I think if there was a way to automatically disable during races it would be fine to have… Read more »
The app is a spectator, if they wanted to ban it for certain races they’d basically have to prevent spectators (or add some latency to make the intel less useful). The low tech version of this is to have a human “DS” watch your race as a spectator and give you intel.
Oh, this a tough one! Really like the idea that someone in the community is actually creating the stuff that people have been asking for years! Stuff that Zwift should have done a long time ago. Probably hindered by their own decision to grow the Zwift userbase by branching out to smartphones and allowing “potatoes” to run Zwift,
On the other hand, violating ToS and creating a somewhat unequal playing field for races isn’t all that good. At times like this I really miss the @ZwiftCast, for a proper analysis and lengthy and well-worded discussion!
in b4 this app gets banned
First, big kudos to develop such a versatile training & racing tool. But I don’t understand the following fact : some updates ago, Zwift stops the support for all 3rd-party-software-options like the “Activity Monitor”. And now we have a new 3rd-party-software which is not denied ??? Could we please get an official comment from ZHQ if this spectacular software is allowed to use or if they plan to deny this, too ???
Many thanks in advance and ride on.
It’s only a matter of time as people indicate Sauce has broken TOS. An easy way for Zwift corporate to kill Sauce would be to neuter data access to all 7 day expired accounts as a second account is essential to Sauces functionality. On the other hand Sauce is an ingenious method of accessing Zwift live ride data to get around their move to encrypted network data streams while not supporting a registered API for FOSS developers. Zwift is supported by a house of cards as they use open standards for all sensors (e.g. ANT+), so do not have exclusive… Read more »
Average watts for the race. Seems like every sandbaggers wet dream…
If only sand baggers had access to “Garmin” technology, but as yet it is out of their reach. But installing some Windows software is within their reach.
that made me laugh…. Thanks
I use SuperCycle app on my phone displaying watts, average watts and cadence. Sandbagging would be no fun to me, trying to improve FTP, fitness and beat previous pr’s is main goal.
Even though I absolutely love the extra information this offers, I do consider this Pay2Win.
No, it won’t get you from spot80 in races to 100% guaranteed wins all the time, but it is a competitive edge over others that don’t have the information available.
My opponents in real-life races have better equipment then I have, they probably have power data and I don’t. Money is always a factor to get advantages in any sport, pro or hobbywise.
Of course. Another question could be if you want it to play a big factor.
I, personally, would like that factor to be as small as possible.
Zwift can take a stance here. Question is if they will. Time will tell.
Money drives innovation. All innovation is only available to a few at first and becomes more mainstream and affordable in time.
Okay, so lets say in your theorhetical world zwift takes a stance. Then you would be happy if a similar app came around that was free to use?
Yeah, those $2 a month is really going to be the deciding factor in determining placement in races in a platform that requires $15/month subscription, requires you to buy a thousand dollar trainer, requires you to buy a multi thousand dollar bike, requires you to have enough leisure time to train hard. But yep, that $2/month for a little extra info is going to be the breaking point. Thanks for standing up for the little guy, this is where he really needs you! And definitely not in some other area where equality is taking a much bigger hit. Thank you… Read more »
It’s more than just that, there’s also a platform requirement. I’m just pulling it outta my butt here, but I’d guess only about half, or less, of the Zwifting community are on PCs. That means everyone who wants this advantage needs to not only pay $2/month for it, but that they must also go buy and set up a Gaming PC, all the associated A/V interface hardware, ANT+ dongles, and all that crap I’m sure you’re very familiar with. If you’ve already got that stuff hanging about then great, but I’d say a very not insignificant proportion of users don’t.… Read more »
I would actually prefer the option to switch some of the elements off.
Not the all or nothing zwift currently has but options to select which elements are shown
Show power, HR time etc. Switch the rest off.
Definitely not add more…
With the software author charging a fee I’ll say it is fairly certain Zwift will eventually cut off the method used to collect the display data. If Zwift only provided a registered API like so many other services, wonderful add-on features would be created for free by the usual FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community. Instead they cut the legs off so many valuable projects. Zwift seems to be blind to industry trends and the opportunity to enhance their product at little cost to themselves. A real short sighted management team. This morning I tried their new “HoloReplay” feature… Read more »
Well said!
Definitely the best Zwift UI upgrade since 2015!
I’m hoping he can dig out laps to go information so we can turn off the Zwift UI HUD entirely, and just use Sauce 4 Zwift.
In Zwift Run, would S4Z allow me to move & re-size the gradient field? If so, that alone would be worth the fee. One of my biggest treadmill-Zwift irritations is not noticing gradient changes unless I spend the whole run squinting at the top right corner.
I hacked my treadmill a few years back to allow a microcontroller to control the speed and gradient, and an ultrasonic distance sensor to allow an auto-speed function that speeds up if you run towards the front half of the belt and slows down if you drift towards the back half of the belt. At the time I was playing with the unofficial api to get my altitude and distance and calculate gradient to auto-change treadmill gradient every few seconds too, but I didn’t finish the integration because the microcontroller didn’t have a micropython port of a needed library and… Read more »
That sounds like a super cool project. Just having auto controlled gradient would improve the experience no end. Any pointers for where a non-techie such as myself could learn how to do this?
Try this forum thread
https://forums.zwift.com/t/auto-incline-on-treadmills-fully-working/555791
Captain Obvious says: Zwift should just pay the man.
Buy the software and integrate it.
And/or hire him.
Zwift should have just implemented some or all of features years ago, several of which were heavily requested by beta users from the racing community. Notably, average power.
Any serious club involved in ZRL who wants to race in the fairness of the competition & being transparent should not allow any member to use this as it is an unfair advantage, never mind if its used or not. Whether or not Zwift bans it for races each club should ask their members not to
Why is it unfair? Anyone can use it? Is lubing up your chain with the most expensive lubricant also an unfair advantage? Should we ban that?
Tim its not the same thing at all though is it? & if you believe that then probably little point in having a decent discussion. However fact remains that whether its available to all or not its an unfair advantage & anyone or any team serious about their racing & transparency (same with weight doping & dual power meters) wouldn’t entertain this. of course this is the area which Zwift racing then gets cloudy.. the game element of the platform Vs real racing … for those who want it for what they want to use it for, its not as… Read more »
So chain lube is not the same thing as Sauce for Zwift, but then you put Sauce for zwift in the same category as weight doping? It does not seem like you are committed to having a rational discussion. How can something that everyone in the race has access to be an unfair advantage? You haven’t explain that still, you just re-iterated it without explanation. What does Sauce have to do with transparency at all? What does Sauce have to do with “Seriousness”?
Being allowed to see your own details is fine, just like you see your own data on your Garmin / wahoo in a real world ride . However, the ability to know how many watts that your opponent is ridding is an invasion of privacy and just flat out wrong. Again, in a . Real race you won’t know the stats of your opponents . The screen already tells you how many seconds up the road they are .
Comparison to lubricant is ridiculous , not to mention the most expensive always being the best .
Its just data… it doesn’t impact your performance at all.
i have no issue with being able to see your own data . Just like you would on the road with your Garmin . It’s issue that you will be able to know what watts another rider is doing at a given time , that is the issue . As for your comment , lol . A huge reason why we don’t see too many contenders for a stage in TDF etc fully blowing up is because nowadays they pay attention to their data in the race and just stay within their limits and hope the race will come back… Read more »
This is 100% cheating and in any normal game would result in an IP Ban. (In zwift I assume it won’t).
You could write the same article for aim bots in FPS games. Or speed/claim hacks in MMOs. The most obvious advantage is riding at the minimum power to stay connected based on draft feedback, information that is unavailable to others. I don’t see how this differs from someone calibrating their power higher or weight down.
Using information that any one has access to is cheating equivalent to faking your weight or power? Wow, that’s a pretty extreme stance. By that similar logic it would be 100% cheating to read an article about training because it could improve your performance.
Those are not logically similar. Preparation and training are distinct from reading previously hidden input/ouput from the game to get an advantage (hence the aim bot comparison). Improvement can become a grey area when you consider training vs drug use but there is a clear line in the sand by sporting regulations and in this case, the Terms of Service. Here are two other tools that I can build using the same packets. Would you use them? 1) Read your positioning information and draft from the packets and then tell the game to move you into a better position. 2)… Read more »
They are logically similar good sir. Both are using information to improve.
You two other theoretical tools are not logically similar (to use your phrase). First of all Sauce does not do that, so they are 100% not relevant here. But I’ll bite. Both of those a computer program modifies your input to the game, so it’s actually a bot, very different from showing information to the user.
Cheating is defined by the ToS rather than by an individual user’s moral sense of right vs wrong. The ToS calls out extracting data from the platform being against the rules of the platform and by extension events on it.
So yes technically “anyone could get the information” if they break the ToS, or pay someone else to for them. Whether you think it’s morally ok to cross that line doesn’t really matter.
Reading about training isn’t mentioned in the ToS.
Well then I guess you should ban this website because zwift insider breaks the TOS every time they use a bot to get their timing information. So it seems you get to decide when its okay to break the TOS and when its not hey?
And if you want to define cheating by the TOS then you are giving a huge green lit to weight doping, as that is not mentioned anywhere in the TOS. Please don’t give every zwift the license to weight dope as they see fit.
Though re: draft feedback, I do sort of wonder how much of an advantage one would actually get in a race. It is pretty easy to draft as is. We all know there is an advantage, but I think it is probably less than most think (assuming one is already decent enough at sitting in the draft during race events).
I’d love to see a test of this and other draft metrics while on different bikes/wheels, but it seems that level of testing is beyond the capability of Zwift influencers at this time.
It changes how you ride. If you get pushed to the side you are better off dropping back and working into a full draft position again. There is a weird spot at the back of the pack where you get a bonus draft (something to do with rejoining the pack). Consistent management of draft position varies on pack size but can be a 5%-10% reduction in power used. Being able to ride at 285w vs 300w is a huge benefit.
It’s really interesting to read the discussions here. I’m quite indecisive if S4Z is cheating or not. One of the unanswered questions that could help me to decide: Do you really think, things like the draft gauge are such a big advantage? It is widely known where in a group the draft is high and we’re it is not. And it’s not easy to hold the advantageous position in general. In my opinion a tactically talented and experienced rider won’t need S4Z (to take advantage of a – by the way: built-in – Zwift feature). What is your opinion?
This seems a fantastic tool, kudos to Justin! I do not have a position on cheating or not (I’d say it’s not cheating anyway—and I am on Apple TV) but the most important thing seems to be that there is plenty of information that Zwift is not using and should let other creative minds use. Clearly innovation and user-friendliness are not Zwift’s current strengths. ZHQ should allow and actually encourage the development of new gadgets for its own benefit: the more people like Zwift, the more money ZHQ will make!
This makes me irrationally angry, just like Zwiftpower does, and having to manually upload dual power recordings for races does. Why do we constantly have to go outside Zwift to get things that make it useable? Zwift clearly can’t do anything useful on their own, but how hard is it to throw money at the people who are making things better and just incorporate it into the official product? I know they threw some money at Zwiftpower, but it still exists outside of Zwift.
The average watts function and the “what is the gap, how big is the group?” functions seem the most helpful….kinda wonder why this isn’t in Zwift naturally.
It is poor judgement of Zwift to be this customer un-centric that one need to buy 3rd party stuff for basics.
It’s like they know better what you and I need instead of simply just listening and deliver great UX
waste of time! can’t get the thing on zwift!! junk!
Very nice tool, Zwift should take this example to improve its poor GUI almost same as 5 years ago. Compliments to the programmer!!
The only data that i don’t get currently that S4Z provides is draft% that is ok though as i’m not always on the tron bike and i watch for the toon changing position. How? I have a Hammerhead Karoo2 with a busy data screen with all my data from the Kickr Bike and my Xert relevent fields. I also have a Wahoo elemnt setup this way (but without the Xert fields). You can’t stop anyone doing this at all. S4Z is a nice addon that does what Zwift should be doing in the companion app so everyone can take advantage… Read more »
Where does SfZ take the w’bal numbers from? I feel mine is higher then what the app is showing but can’t find where or how to adjust it. Thanks! (I couldn’t find a Reddit or discord relating to Sauce for Zwift explicitly which is why my question ends up here😅)
In user setup you can add your own CP and W’ information
Zwift needs an App Store ecosystem so badly. Shift some feature dev cost to willing community players and take a clip. Zwift can focus on the underlying platform, APIs, security, and major release capabilities.
Hi. I currently cannot get the sauce screen to overlay in the zwift screen although they are both running
please help
Maybe you’re in Full Screen mode on PC? Switch to windowed mode and it should work.
Does anyone know how the draft number equates to watts?
ie 100 draft units = ??? watts
That’s the big mystery! It’s not as simple as X draft units = Y watts. Nobody’s been able to figure it out, as far as I know.
Just hit @Tim Grose up…he’ll buy you a new PC system and pay your monthly S4Z subscription, because it’s all just negligible extra $$ to him.
That message was not supposed to tag “Tim Grose”…that got inserted after I hit send…I was referring to our buddy Tim in this thread!
I don’t think Zwift will ever show all this data. All of us here are just the tiny fraction of Zwift’s subscribers who actually care about this kind of data and the marginal gains with different bikes and all. The vast majority of users just want to have fun, lose weight, pass time.
@Eric Schlange great article and overview of the software. In your discussion of whether using the software was cheating or not you wrote, “…it’s no more cheating than someone having a faster bike than someone else IRL.” I’d say the Currently Watching window is more analogous to a rider having a higher-end head unit on their handlebar than the other riders, which gives them more customizable data about their own performance. The Groups window, though? The correlation to an IRL race is more like allowing everyone who rides a Cannondale the ability to pay off the the moto official (on… Read more »
Exactly. Glad we’re on the same page. 😜
The chat window sometimes does not works. Any idea how to fix it? It just not showing conversations happenig, it does work randomly for few seconds but then crashes again.
What’s the impact on frame rate when running this?
If It violates the terms of service its irrelevant if its available to all, you could argue the same for PED’s , like any one that cheats its all good till you get caught and disqualified. If its that benign get the TOS changed, simple 🙂
I’m not able to see Sauce in Zwift, I can open Sauce and configure, but not see it in Zwift – how can I do that?
I think this should be a natural upgrade within the Zwift subscribtion. Not an add on. If you see other e-cycling today they are better of giving a good feeling on screen (better draft view and the like). So dear Zwift step up – not by adding more to pay.
Very little is clear cut on this whole “cheating” front. There’s a book “The Sporting Gene” basically looking at nature vs nurture and one of the takeaways is that it’s impossible to draw one line and things be “fair.” (People naturally are way out on the curve on say their hemoglobin level…but that’s the not “doping” was one example). This data “sauce” program is a targetable thing it’s cheap and it’s something people can see and understand. Over the past few years I’ve learned and studied as it shifted how to best ride efficiently on zwift how the game works… Read more »
Regardless of whether it’s cheating or not, Zwift needs to clarify whether it’s Terms of Service are actually enforced or not. If it allows, as it clearly does, people to routinely break it’s ToS — and e.g. to post how tos and videos of them doing it on pseudo-official Community sites, then I suspect the ToS are utterly unenforceable and not worth the ‘paper’ they are written on. It probably should matter to Zwift because their desire to arbitrate outside a ToS clause like the other ones they don’t especially seem to care about. If probably should matter, in particular,… Read more »
*”their desire to arbitrate dispute outside any courts is a ToS clause”
(All of this is entirely foreseeable.)
Hi
I run Zwift from a cabled 4g router with a decent PC setup – works great in full screen mode. Love sauce 4Z but when I run windowed zwift with S4Z overlay it causes some stuttering and the odd drop out. I also cannot get rid of the task bar in the zwift window despite auto hide etc etc. I was wondering if I could run another screen open S4Z on monitor 2 then run zwift in full screen ? Guessing this won’t work ? Would love borderless but not sure if this would effect performance too much