Gentler Streak - The Replacement for Your Apple Watch Activity Rings

Most Apple Watch users I know are actively using the activity rings feature to keep up streaks and reach the three daily goals (activity kcal, training minutes and standing hours). But the activity rings are actually too basic and keeping up the streaks isn’t even always good. And there is a much more intelligent alternative available: Gentler Streak.

In general, I really enjoy beautiful native iOS/macOS apps. And Gentler Streak is one of them. 10/10 design, smooth animations and perfectly integrated into Apple Health including the Apple Watch app that features recording of many more training types, beyond the ones available in Apple’s Training app.

The Apple Watch app even became „Apple Watch App of The Year 2022“ and a few more Apple awards were issued for the app.

Why You Shouldn’t Use the Activity Rings

Together with the Apple Watch, Apple introduced the activity rings in 2014. And now, in 2023, they are still working the exact same - a little to basic - way. Every single day you have to close (complete) the three rings. No matter what. If you're really sick and should definitely not be active, if you ran a marathon yesterday and need to take a rest, the activity rings don't care - and your streak or possible achievements will be gone if you don't close them.

However, breaks and rest days are really important for your health, not only when ill. I’m not an expert in health or fitness, but it’s common sense that it is advised to do one or two rest day(s) after doing an intense workout. Especially when starting and your overall fitness is not at its peak yet.

The Gentler App’s Approach

In Gentler Streak your fitness level is calculated from all recent trainings and your personal performance. As you can see in the image above, one day I did a more intense workout than usual (or bike ride in my case) and hence overreached the suggested „area“. The goal is to keep your activity within the suggested range. If you do a workout but don’t have the energy or time the next two days to be active, your streak might still be active (depending on your previous level). The calculation is based on your heart rate levels during your workouts. So shorter intense workouts might also have a greater impact on your activity than longer moderate activities. This is also different from the training activity ring, which just counts the minutes you were active - if you casually walked for 30 minutes or did a HIIT (high intensity interval) training for 30 minutes results in the same.

Moreover, you can set your current status in the app - whether you’re healthy and active, taking a break, sick or injured.

So good news; You can keep your streak up, even if you’re infected with a disease and need to rest a week or two.

Smart Workouts

Besides the streak itself and the activity level, the app also features intelligent training suggestions based on your current level. So both on your iPhone and on your Apple Watch the app suggest different trainings (based on your history) with duration and intensity.

It’s also possible to slide in the bar visible and the app calculates a training that can get you to that activity level.

Activity Overview

The app has built-in overviews and details for all your Apple Health activities. Including maps, stats and cumulated heart rate zone times for your trainings. Not a unique feature but the weekly/monthly/yearly overview and training details are looking really well and a little better than in Apple’s own Health/Activity apps.

The tab bar item „Insights“, you can see in the screenshot, offers nice yearly and monthly activity recaps with graphics and summaries you can share. And there are many articles and stories about health, fitness, healthy eating, etc.

More to Come

With a recent update a new tab „Health“ has been added. Currently, there’s nothing but an info text that the developers are working on a new „Personal Health Hub“ visible. I am really looking forward to see what’s coming - maybe the app can become a full-featured health app alternative. As the developers suggest wearing the Apple Watch most of the time, including nights, I suspect that we can see detailed health and sleep analysis there in the future.

Pricing

The „Gentler Streak“ app uses a freemium model. The free version only has limited features - you’ll have to choose between the yearly, monthly or a (pricy) life-time plan. There’s also a plan available that supports family sharing (via iCloud families). The pricing is unfortunately not very transparent and varies as there are discounts available for a limited time after using the app the first time. At least that was offered in my case and I got the family subscription for 29,99€/year (~30$). According to the in-app purchases overview in the App Store, yearly prices are somewhere between 25 and 50€ as of this writing. The monthly prices (~8€) are much higher in relation to the yearly ones, so I can’t recommend using them.

Thanks for reading this app review! Please note that I am not affiliated to the app developers - I am just really happy to have discovered this app and happy to make more people aware of it.

More details are on the app’s website (www.gentler.app) or jump right into the app store with this link.