How to use Apple Fitness Plus with your Apple Watch - and a guide to the major features and workout levels

• Apple Fitness+ offers many different types of workouts including HIIT, yoga, and cycling.
• You must have an Apple Watch to sign up, but you can work out without it using an iPhone or iPad.
• Apple Fitness+ workouts track details like heart rate, calories, and duration.

Though they have similar names, Apple Fitness+ is very different from Apple Fitness. While Apple Fitness is a simple health and fitness app that tracks your move, exercise, and stand statistics, Apple Fitness+ is a subscription service that offers a wealth of guided exercises, workouts, and meditations. Workouts include treadmill, stationary bike, strength training, yoga, and more.

While you can perform your Fitness+ workouts on any iOS device - including an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV - you need an Apple Watch Series 3 or later to start a subscription, and Apple clearly designed the service with the Apple Watch in mind.

Here's what you need to know to use Apple Fitness+.

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What is Apple Fitness+?

Apple Fitness+ is Apple's subscription fitness and workout service. It offers workouts and activities in categories like High Intensity Interval Workouts (HIIT), yoga, core, strength training, treadmill, cycling, rowing, dance, and cooldowns (which combine stretching with guided meditation).

It features workouts led by physical trainers in recorded, guided sessions which you can play on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. It also tracks data like the duration of the workout along with your heart rate and estimated calories burned through your Apple Watch.

Apple Fitness+ costs $9.99 per month (or $79.99 annually), or you can get it bundled with other services in Apple One for a discounted price. The Apple One Individual plan, for example, is $14.95 per month and includes Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+ and iCloud+.

To begin the process to subscribe to Apple Fitness+, start the Apple Fitness app and tap the Fitness+ icon at the bottom of the screen. For complete instructions, see our article on how to sign up for Apple Fitness+.

Apple Fitness+ compatibility

To use Apple Fitness+, you need an Apple Watch Series 3 running watchOS 7.2 or later (though to get all of the latest features, you should be running watchOS 8). The watch needs to be paired with one of these devices:

• iPhone 6s or later with iOS 14.3 is required, but you need iOS 15 to get all the latest Fitness+ features.
• iPad with iPadOS 14.3 is required, but you need iPadOS 15 to get all the latest Fitness+ features.
• Apple TV with tvOS 14.3 is required, but you need Apple TV 4K or Apple TV HD with tvOS 15 or later to get all the latest Fitness+ features.

Quick tip: As long as your iPhone or iPad is running iOS 14.5 or iPadOS 14.5 or higher, you can also stream the workout to an AirPlay 2-compatible device like your television, Mac (if it's running MacOS Monterey), or a streaming media device like Roku.

How Apple Watch works with Apple Fitness+

Apple designed Apple Fitness+ to work with both your Apple Watch and an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV simultaneously during the workout. The watch tracks your movements, activity, and bioanalytics (like heart rate and calories burned), while the phone, tablet, or TV displays the workout and trainer.

You can refer to your watch during the workout to see your progress and stats, though the information is also displayed in a window on your iPhone, iPad, or TV. Milestones (like closing an activity ring) also appear both on your watch and on the screen of your display device.

Without Apple Fitness+, to track your heart rate when you are in a workout you would need to start a workout within the Workout app on your watch - tap the Workout app on your watch, find the workout activity and then select it. Once the workout is running, you see your heart rate on the watch.

When using Fitness+, however, you don't need to start the heart rate monitor manually. Instead, just find the workout you want in the Fitness+ app on your iPhone, iPad, or TV and then start it. The app automatically syncs the activity with your watch and you'll see details including your heart rate appear both on the watch and in the app on your device. Heart rate data from your Apple Watch isn't just displayed on the screen; some workouts are interactive in that they're able to read that data and use it to motivate you to push harder.

How to use Apple Fitness+ without your Apple Watch

While Fitness+ is designed to be used with the Apple Watch, the app will let you perform workouts without the watch. This is handy if you forget your watch or the battery is dead when you're ready to start exercising. To use Apple Fitness+ without your Apple Watch, just select the workout you want to perform as you normally would and tap Let's Go.

When the app senses there's no Apple Watch in range, it'll warn you.To proceed anyway, tap Continue Without Watch. The workout will start, but you won't see details like heart rate and calories.

Quick tip: While you can start a Fitness+ workout on the iPhone or iPad, you don't have that option using Apple TV. You'll need your watch to start an Apple TV workout.

Workout levels on Apple Fitness+

Apple doesn't offer a lot of customization for your Fitness+ workouts - you can't choose among beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes, for example. Even so, there are two main ways to tweak your experience:

• You can filter your workout search by trainer, length of workout, music, and equipment required. To do that, tap on the kind of workout you want at the top of the Fitness+ home screen and then, on the workout page, tap Filter. You can now narrow your search and tap Done.
• Within most workouts, you should see three trainers on-screen. The trainers that flank the primary trainers typically demonstrate modifications, such as a different range of motion or slower pace, so you can choose the one that suits your body or fitness level.

Quick tip: Some workouts require special equipment like a yoga mat, treadmill, exercise bike or dumbbells - but not all do. If you want to search for a workout that requires specific gear -- or no equipment at all - use the Filter button within any workout type, scroll to the bottom and choose the equipment requirements.

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