Our health often takes the back burner when jam-packed schedules and responsibilities are looking us in the eye. But what we fail to understand is the road to fitness is not that difficult. Thanks to our Apple Watch, we can easily track our health, slip in some exercise, and make better lifestyle choices, whenever and wherever we want. While Apple’s stock apps & features like ECG, Noise, Cycle Tracking, and Breathe is quite helpful, you might need some additional tools in your arsenal. Well, worry not, as we have made a list of some of the best health apps for the Apple Watch.
1. Editors Choice – Calm: A Must-Try Meditation App
Stress & anxiety are amongst the biggest demons anyone could face. When you are not calm, you can’t be entirely happy, focused, or perform your best. Highly recommended by top mental health app, mental health experts and us, this app will help you put these demons to rest.
The mindful app helps the user to meditate, relax, and sleep. With unique programs for beginners, intermediate and advanced users, there something for everyone. Depending upon your schedule, you can choose guided meditation sessions of varying lengths.
Further, sleep stories incorporate soothing bedtime tales. Narrated by sleep gods(voice artists) such as Stephen Fry, Matthew McConaughey, and Jerome Flynn, they can lull you into a restful slumber.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Calm packs amazing knick-knacks to make each day better, most of which do come to the Apple Watch app.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases start from $14.99)
2. MyFitnessPal – Tracks your Food Habits & Calorie Intake
They say you are what you eat, which stands right in the world of health. A healthy diet is essential to any fitness regime. Whether your goal is to get healthy, lose weight, change habits, start a new diet, or tone up, MyFitnessPal could help.
Thanks to a pretty straightforward interface, you can keep track of what you are eating quite quickly. What gives this one a decisive edge over other diet trackers and calorie counter apps is its massive catalog of over 6 million foods.
Moreover, you can log foods by just scanning them with a super handy built-in barcode scanner. Depending on your goal, you can create a list of your foods and keep track of their calories, fat, cholesterol, vitamins, protein, carbs, sugar, fiber, and more.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases start from $9.99)
3. StepDog – Watch Face Dog
Here’s a unique kind of health app for your Apple Watch in the form of a virtual pet. Your goal is to walk StepDog every day so as to meet your own step goal and stay fit. Once the goal is met, your pet will sleep.
You can view your step count on your watch face, in a widget, or in the app. Additional options become available when you upgrade to the premium pack, such as the ability to choose your digital dog’s breed and watch him walk, sit, eat, run, and sleep.
Further, when you buy the Location Pack, you can see live weather backgrounds next to your pet and a morning forecast too. You can even get on the local leaderboards to compete with friends and win medals.
Price: Free (Premium Pack – $1.49)
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4. Map My Run – Makes Your Run More Fruitful
Dedicated to helping you be a better runner, the fitness app has tools and features that track & map your route and motivates you in your goal. And whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned runner, you will find a great companion in Map My Run.
With it, you can track your run directly from the Apple Watch and check real-time progress with visual, haptic, or audio feedback. Check data like distance, pace, calories burned, and more at just a glance.
Not just running, the app can also log over 600 activities, from cross-training to yoga. If you have Under Armour shoes, connect them for a more improved data collection on your run. Further, it integrates could with MyFitnessPal even tracks the calories consumed.
Price: Free (Monthly MVP – $5.99)
5. Nike Run Club – The Perfect Running Partner
To keep up our pace while running, we often blast pumping music that encourages us to run faster and one more lap, perhaps. Nike takes that adds its own twist to the tale with audio-guided runs.
When enabled, you will receive guidance, motivation, and inspiration throughout your run via the in-ear audio. The audio is designed by Nike coaches, elite athletes, and entertainers such as Kevin Hart & Mo Farah.
Packed with tools you need to run better, the app also incorporates GPS run tracking, customized coaching plans as per your goal, Custom or weekly/monthly distance challenges, in-depth analysis with details like pace, heart rate, elevation, mile splits, and more.
Price: Free
6. Strava: Run, Ride, Swim – Helps You Train Smarter
Developed by Strava Inc for health-conscious people, the app offers three ways to train and improve yourself. Firstly you track & analyze, keep an eye out for key stats like distance, speed, elevation & calories burned.
It offers new routes & maps with the world’s largest trail network to mix up your training. Lastly, it brings new challenges every month, wherein you can compete with athletes or fitness enthusiasts across the globe.
You can even share your activities on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram profiles. And not just outdoorsy activities like swimming, rock climbing, hiking, surfing, or kayaking, it can even track indoor activities like gym training, yoga, CrossFit, and more.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases start from $7.99)
7. Pacer Pedometer & Step Tracker – Count Every Step You Take
Very few pedometers and step trackers are as feature-packed as this one. The app works pretty much like a health coach who keeps a close tab on your activities. It records everything from steps, distance, flights, calories, and even active time.
By taking advantage of your smartwatch’s GPS, the app also tracks your outdoor activities such as walking, hiking, biking, and more. If you are on a mission to lose weight and get fitter, you can monitor your weight and BMI over time.
And if you ever feel the need to get some much-needed inspiration to shrug off disappointment or learn new ways to get fitter, there is a large community of health and fitness freaks to help you out. With the day-by-day goals, you can stay on track to achieve your target and motivate other people.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases start from $3.99)
8. Lifesum: Diet & Macro Tracker – Personalize your Diets & Meal Plans
A healthy lifestyle is more than just workouts; it also about eating right. However, most are stuck, confused, or wrongly informed at this step. Lifesum takes the guesswork out of the equation by providing step-by-step assistance and education.
It broadens your knowledge, so you make more conscious nutritional choices. Learn about food preferences, which to consume more & which one’s less. And don’t just learn about calorie counting; understand the concept of healthy eating.
Along with support for various diet & meal plans, you also avail detailed exercise tracking and reminders for water intake. It tracks your daily habits and accordingly gives a basic rating, whether you are meeting your daily goals or end targets or not.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases start from $8.99)
9. Adidas Running App Runtastic – Track Activities and Every Burnt Calorie
This app by Runtastic could help you achieve your goals, whether you are training for a marathon or aiming for weight loss. With a built-in GPS analyzer, it easily tracks your activities in real-time and brings all stats & progress reports in one place.
You can decide the data that is important to you and customize the dashboard accordingly. So, the information you need is always handy. Along with Voice Coach, the app also sports a live tracking and cheering function, wherein you receive custom cheers from friends & family.
Further, it smartly adapts to your end goal! Whether the aim is for distance, duration, frequency, or to have different daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly goals, it will be all about you.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases start from $0.99)
10. Pedometer++ – Track Steps Without Compromising battery life
What we particularly love and enjoy about this app is its intuitive and straightforward interface. Pedometer++ promises to help you track your activity from your wrist, and that’s precisely what it does.
It integrates with the Health app to collect and display the data collected by the watch & accompanying iPhone. Check your step count, walking distance, active calories, and heart rate data at just a glance.
Moreover, it plots a graph for daily and weekly steps to better understand the rise or fall in step counts. And one of the significant benefits of this app is that it doesn’t drain much of your battery life.
Price: Free (Remove Advertisements – $1.99)
11. WaterMinder – Get Your Water Intake in Order
Experts across the globe emphasize the importance of water for our overall health. And despite all that knowledge, we forget to take those necessary regular sips. WaterMinder takes charge of reminding and charting your daily water intake.
The water reminder app intuitively sets a goal according to your body weight or personal preference and reminds you to drink water throughout the day. To make things a bit fun, 50+ characters are incorporating that shows your hydration level at a glance.
You can also log other drinks consumed through the day, from juices to coconut water. What’s more, it embraces both iOS and watchOS quite well, with multiple Home Screen widgets & Apple Watch compilations, Siri Shortcuts, Apple Health Sync, Dark Mode, iMessage Stickers, and more.
Price: $4.99
12. Streaks – Develop Good, Healthy, & Fruitful Habits
Whether learning a new skill or losing weight or inculcating a new regime, it doesn’t happen in one day. You have to work at it & make it a habit to improve and reach the set goals. Streaks is a habit-forming & to-do list app to help you form and maintain better healthier habits.
It helps you track up to twelve tasks each day. Accordingly, it sends reminders, encourages you, created timed tasks, and even creates negative tasks to break bad habits. All tasks are synced across the device, and if a specific habit is linked to the Health app, it will automatically update the status.
Customizability is what makes the app stand tall amongst its competitors. Whether it’s Home Screen widgets, complications, colorful themes, or task icons, there is plenty of options to choose and make this app truly yours.
Price: $4.99
13. Pocket Yoga – Practise Yoga At Your Own Pace
Your yoga guru now resided in your Apple Watch. A soothing detailed voice accompanied by visual instruction will guide you through every pose. So, simply roll the mat, place the iOS device in front of you, and start the session.
What’s the role of the Apple Watch? Well, thanks to it, you get a host of extra information on your wrist. From the visual of the current pose, time remaining, and vitals such as heart rate, calories burned, etc.
Moreover, you can control the practice directly from the watch. You can avail up to 27 different sessions of varying duration and difficulty. And even learn the correct posture & benefits of each pose with a built-in dictionary.
Price: $2.99
14. Lark Health – 24/6 Personalized AI Health Coach
Leading chronic disease prevention and management platform, Lark employs a cutting edge AI that monitors and helps you maintain your health. While great for keeping fit & weight loss programs, it is particularly great for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, etc.
The AI coach tracks your sleep, exercise, medication, weight, food intake, moods, and feelings in real-time. Further, it chats with you like a counselor, advising and motivating you to make healthier choices.
It behaves as your chat buddy and cheers on your small accomplishments and eggs you perform better. Depending upon your condition and need, you can opt for specialized programs catering to particular health criteria.
Price: Free (In-app Purchases start from $9.99)
15. SmartGym – Streamline and Monitor your Workouts
Can’t keep track of your fitness regime, when is cardio, legs, or core-centric days? SmartGym helps you organize all this and more. A built-in AI assistant can create personalized workouts for you & suggest updates as you progress.
The Apple Watch app allows you to be phone-free during activities while keeping the monitoring and assistance on point. Use Siri to start a workout or modify exercises right from the watch. It will also track heart rate, distance, and calories burned during the session.
Over 260 pre-installed exercises are explained in detail with images & animations. So, you will never run out of new things to explore. Plus, it offers full support for HIIT, Home Workouts, & weight lifting.
Price: Free (User Account Monthly – $6.99)
Signing off
Apple has been particularly inclined towards health-care for quite some time now. It has even launched Fitness+, a subscription service for home/gym workouts. The app will also available on your Apple Watch, making it handier than ever. It’s astonishing how much the small gadget on your hand could help you stay fit, all thanks to some native and some amazing third-party health apps.
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