Support

Connecting a heart rate sensor

Running Companion works with any sensor that uses the standard Bluetooth Heart Rate Profile: chest straps, arm bands, and trackers that can share their heart rate. If your tracker has a setting such as "Share heart rate", turn it on in its own app first. Then open Settings, Heart Rate, Heart Rate Sensor in Running Companion. The first sensor that connects is remembered, and Forget Sensor lets you pick another one.

Using Apple Watch

Choose Apple Watch under Settings, Heart Rate, Source. When a workout starts, Running Companion opens on your watch, measures your heart rate and streams it to your iPhone every second. It needs watchOS 11 or later and the watch app installed (open the Watch app on your iPhone and install Running Companion if it is not there yet). The watch does not save a separate workout, so Apple Health keeps only the one your iPhone records.

Setting heart rate zones

Set your max heart rate in Settings, Heart Rate. Zones are a share of it: zone 1 starts at 50%, then 60%, 70%, 80% and 90%. Give any segment a zone, or start from the Zone 2 Run workout. If your recent runs show a higher sustained heart rate, Settings suggests raising your max.

Heart rate alerts

Once you have been out of your zone for 10 seconds, you hear "Slow down" or "Speed up" with a vibration, repeated every minute until you are back. At the start of a zone segment you get two minutes to warm up into the zone before "Speed up" plays. If no heart rate arrives for 30 seconds, you hear "Heart rate signal lost".

Apple Health

Tap Connect Apple Health in Settings. Each finished workout is saved with its distance, and outdoor workouts also get their route and elevation gain. The heart rate and calories your watch or tracker already saves appear on the same workout in the Health app.

Distance looks wrong

Outdoors, distance comes from GPS, so allow location access and give it a few seconds of open sky before you start. Indoors, distance comes from your step count, which is an estimate that depends on your stride.

Cues stop when the screen is locked

Check that location access is allowed for Running Companion and that Audio Cues is on in Settings. Workouts, timers and cues keep running with the screen locked.

Privacy

Running Companion has no account and collects no data. Read the privacy policy.