During the course of your adventure, you will receive a device called the C-Gear. Once you receive it, the touch screen of your DS will display the C-Gear screen whenever you are not viewing your X menu.

Where do you get the C-Gear?

After getting your first gym badge, go to Fennel's house to get your C-Gear. She will give you a task, and after you complete it, you will get the C-Gear.

Turning on Wireless

When you first receive the C-Gear, you will be asked if you want to turn on Wireless communications. Be sure not to do this if you are in an airplane or hospital or other location that prohibits wireless communication devices like cell phones. (The game will display a warning about this each time you turn it on.)

Then next time you start your game, it will ask you if you want to turn on the wireless before you start. If you say no, you can always turn it on later via the C-Gear screen on your touch screen. Just press the Power button in the lower-right corner of the C-Gear.

Tag Mode

Tag mode allows you to see information about any Pokémon players who are nearby and also using their C-Gears with wireless turned on. Tap the horizontal bar at the bottom of the C-Gear to see a list of players nearby.

From the list of players, you can tap the chat bubble to bring up a keyboard. Type and send a message to show the message to the players in the list. You can also tap the smiley face to send a thank you to everyone in your list.

If you tap on a player in the list, you can see his or her trainer card. You can also tap a button at the bottom of the screen to see a map of Unova with that player's current location marked on the map.

Your appearance to other players in Tag Mode depends on your settings in your Trainer Card. If you want to change your appearance and message in Tag Mode, go to your own Trainer Card from the X menu and tap on different attributes to cycle through them. Tap on your message to change it. You have to turn off the C-Gear and turn it back on before other players will see the changes.

Tag Mode is not region-locked: a player with a game of a different region from yours will still show up in your tag list. For example, a player with a North American cartridge will appear in the tag list of a player with a Japanese cartridge, and vice versa.

Surveys

If you tap on the pie chart in the bottom-left of the C-Gear, you go to survey mode. In a survey, you can choose from pre-set questions, and whenever you pass by another player, that player's answer will automatically be submitted to your survey. For example, if your survey asks how many hours a player has been playing the game, the other player's game will automatically submit that information to the survey based on what is automatically put into that player's trainer card.

When you view your survey screen, you can tap on the question at the top to scroll through the different questions that are available. You can tap Check Survey Results at the bottom of the screen to show the latest information in the pie chart. You can also tap on the pie chart itself to refresh the survey data. You can see more specific data for each answer by tapping on the box at the top-right, below the survey question.

Customizing your C-Gear

You can customize the display of your C-Gear in a number of ways.

To change the shape of the C-Gear "cells," tap the C-Gear logo at the top. Keep tapping it to cycle through all of the options, which include ribbons, hearts, Pikachus, hexagons, and more.

To change the locations of the cells, first you must tap on the wrench icon at the bottom-right. Then tap on a cell to cycle through the different cell settings. You can remove a cell this way, or you can turn it into an empty, inactive cell.