Peloton ditches Apple Watch GymKit support | Top Vip News

In an email sent to users on Monday evening, Peloton revealed that starting February 27, it will begin transitioning Apple Watch users from GymKit tracking to Peloton One-Tap tracking.

Peloton once marketed GymKit integration as an exclusive benefit of its more expensive Bike Plus, but it has become less attractive in recent years. The company launched an Apple Watch integration in 2022 that brought Apple Watch calorie and heart rate tracking to any Peloton machine, similar to many other fitness apps.

As a result, if you linked your Peloton to an Apple Watch more recently, you may not even notice the change. The company has been direct users Use GymKit only if you have not installed the latest software updates on your machines.

Like GymKit, Peloton’s app integrates data from each workout into Apple’s Health app. As with GymKit, you can still track distance and pace and see your heart rate metrics on the screen. It just doesn’t use Apple’s proprietary Fitness Equipment API, so if you have the latest updates installed, things shouldn’t change much. However, it’s still understandable that people who bought the more expensive and now-disappearing Bike Plus integration for GymKit are upset by the change.

As Victoria Song explains here, metrics like calorie burn can vary widely depending on the user and type of exercise, so changes in the accuracy of the data provided may not be significant. Although users can enter their weight, gender, activity level, and other variables that affect the number of calories burned, wearable devices like the Apple Watch provide, at best, an educated guess.

But some fitness enthusiasts still enjoy tracking their workouts over time and seeing their health data aggregated in Apple’s Health app, and now the only way to do that will be through the Peloton app.