The Two Most Surprising Things About Apple’s New ‘workout Buddy’
Did you know you can customize Google to filter out unwanted results? Follow these steps to improve your search results, including adding Lifehacker as your preferred source for tech news .
This week, I did over a dozen workouts with Apple’s new Workout Buddy app. I ran, walked, did strength training, and even rode a stationary bike for a bit. I learned a few things, but the weirdest thing is, I didn’t need my Apple Watch even once.
Workout Buddy is an AI-powered feature that sends a voice-activated greeting to your headphones to motivate and encourage you during your workout. Apple advertised Workout Buddy as a feature of watchOS 26 and promoted it among the new Apple Watch Series 11 features, so you might think it’s a feature specific to the Apple Watch. But I discovered something quite different.
How to use Workout Buddy without an Apple Watch
But as I discovered when I took a supported Apple Watch for a run with an older iPhone (12 Mini), Workout Buddy requires an Apple Watch-enabled phone , so I couldn’t access it. Okay, fine, I need a new watch and a new phone. (Or so I thought.) Eventually, I bought the 16 Pro and, yes, I was able to turn on and use Workout Buddy.
But this week, with an Apple Watch Series 11 and watchOS 26 installed on my wrist, I discovered something new. I could turn off the watch or even leave it at home, and the Workout Buddy app would still work . Here are a few methods I tried, all of which helped me get Workout Buddy working:
-
Start a workout with Apple Watch Series 10 or Series 11
-
Start a workout from the Fitness app ( now you can! ) with your Powerbeats Pro 2 headphones connected
-
Start a workout from the Fitness app when there are no other Apple devices nearby, just the Coospo heart rate monitor and Shokz headphones.
-
Starting a workout from the Fitness app with only the Shokz earbuds connected (no heart rate monitor, as this was a GPS walk)
The only configuration that prevented me from using Workout Buddy was using the Fitness app without paired headphones. Headphones are indeed required, but they can be paired with either the watch or an iPhone.
Workout Buddy is more of a cheerful assistant than a trainer.
I was hoping Workout Buddy would offer some training tips or recommendations, but I found that wasn’t quite what it was designed for. The main difference between having Workout Buddy on and off during a run is that Workout Buddy reads your splits in a more conversational voice.
The main benefit of Workout Buddy is that at the beginning and end of your workout, it lets you know where you are in achieving your goals and progress for the day and week, and points out any notable recent achievements.
For example, at the start of almost every workout this week—whether running, walking, or strength training—he congratulated me on running the fastest 5K of my life on Tuesday. He also informed me that I’d completed at least 16 workouts every week for the past four weeks, which is very consistent for me.
The workout counter seems accurate (I log a lot of short workouts to test the device), but the 5K entry is incorrect. I earned a 5K badge last Tuesday, but that was only for runs over five kilometers, not for my fastest 5K run. According to the Fitness app (the same app that has Workout Buddy), my fastest 5K run was in July 2021.
Aside from these hallucinations, the information seems perfectly reasonable. Workout Buddy’s overly enthusiastic voice always tells me where I am at the start of each workout by closing a ring. I need 22 more minutes to close the Exercise ring, it might say, or 37 more calories to close the Move ring. At the start of a run, it will display how many miles I’ve already run this week. And if music is playing, it will say the band’s name—presumably just to let me know it can read this data. “Get in the groove with Fleetwood Mac!” it once said to me, just as a Fleetwood Mac song was fading.
Overall, I find goal checks helpful: knowing I have 22 minutes left to complete my workout goal makes me more likely to extend my workout, even if I only planned for 20 minutes. A voice alert telling me my mile splits is a little more pleasant than a generic, robotic voice. And if I’d recently run my fastest 5K, I’d probably want to be reminded of it at every opportunity.