We’ve all been there: you’re stopped on the side of the road because you heard an important text come in over your comm system and you need to respond. Or maybe you thought you knew where you were going, but now you’re not sure and you need to consult a map app. Perhaps you need to shoot someone a note to let them know you’re running late. Or that music app you loaded recently seems to have made some different choices and you’d like to reconfigure it. Maybe you just want to snap some quick photos.

Definitely Pull Over

In all of these situations, the correct thing to do is pull safely off the road and attend to your phone once you’re stopped, but let’s be fair. Some of us poke at the maps or music on our phones while we’re riding. And even when we’re off the bike, sometimes the weather is suboptimal enough that taking our riding gloves off will be a chore. Either our hands will freeze immediately, or sweaty hands make pulling gloves off, then back on again, a struggle.

New Gloves?

You can certainly buy riding gloves that are touchscreen-sensitive, but they are probably not your favorite. Maybe you already own so many gloves that yet another pair just isn’t in the cards. There are some products on the market that help, but none of them are perfect. One, however, is very simple to use, not messy, and plays well with any glove: GloveTacts.

Upgrade Your Existing Gloves

The creator of GloveTacts is an “inmate” here on ADVRider. The product is basically a set of oval stickers that you place on the outside of the finger of your glove, and this increases the conductivity of your glove finger. That’s what makes them touch-screen compatible. He sent me a couple of sets of these, gratis, for testing.

I put these contacts on three different pairs of riding gloves: 

• REV’IT! Mosca H2O gloves (recently reviewed on this site)
• Held Air N’ Dry all-season gloves
• REV’IT! Prime summer gloves 

GloveTacts on the index finger of all three gloves. Photo: Kate Murphy

Got A Screen Protector?

I also have a glass screen protector on my cell phone, which is exactly what the GloveTacts creator says not to do. Since I was leaving on a long road trip, I figured that I would leave the screen protector in place and see how the GloveTacts did.

They Worked Great, Sometimes

I’ll say right off: they worked perfectly on gloves that have no liner, or just a thin liner. If you own riding gloves that always almost, maddeningly, work with the touchscreen on your phone, these contacts are the answer to your roadside swearing. They worked perfectly with the summer gloves. They worked sometimes when I had my hands on the “Dry” side of the Air N Dry gloves, but with 100% success with my hand on the “Breezy” side. They did not want to work with the fully-lined Mosca H2O gloves; that was hit or miss.

There were times that I was roadside, trying to take some photos but also not wanting to hold up my riding companions, and GloveTacts made that a reasonable proposal. Knowing I can work my phone without taking my gloves off made quick stops so much easier.

There are a couple of tricks to application. First, make sure the glove is clean and dry. Since two of the three gloves I brought on this trip (everyone brings spare gloves on long road trips right?) were newish, I didn’t bother cleaning them. The Helds have a couple of seasons on them, but the leather looked just fine. I stuck the contact on, and it … held. I noted that the contacts worked better if I applied them so that they wrapped up over the fingertip just a skosh. That way, the contact patch on my touch screen was smaller and more precise.

GloveTacts on Held Air N Dry. Photo: Kate Murphy

Test Parameters

I tested these on my nearly 3,000 mile trip from New Hampshire to Ohio and back, with some messing around in the middle. It rained, and the weather was alternately chilly and warm. I never thought about the GloveTacts; they just stuck. 

They worked perfectly, even with the glass screen protector on my phone, on the Held and REV’IT! Prime gloves; the Mosca H2O didn’t want to play well at all. That might have something to do with the very soft full polyester liner in the Moscas; that is probably not even slightly conductive.

10/10 Would Buy

That all said: would I spend my own money on these? Yeah, I absolutely would. They’re not perfect (is anything?) but they make gloves that almost work, work, and that’s enough of a win for me.

If you’re interested they’re available on the GloveTacts website, RevZilla and Amazon.