Peloton Is Dropping Apple Watch GymKit Support

[MacRumors]

Peloton is dropping support for Apple GymKit in favor of Peloton One-Tap tracking, the fitness equipment company revealed to users in an email on Monday.

The change is most likely to irk existing Bike+ owners who originally purchased the $2,495 stationary workout bike based on the premise that GymKit was an exclusive perk. While GymKit has become less important since Peloton rolled out Apple Watch integration to all its fitness equipment in 2022, GymKit offered additional integration with Apple Health that isn't available with Peloton's solution.

Peloton's app does most of the things that GymKit offers, including tracking things like distance, pace, and heart rate metrics, and showing them live on Peloton screens. Only a subset of that data will, however, now sync to Apple Health in the absence of GymKit support.

Apple introduced GymKit as part of watchOS 4.1, which was released back in October 2017.

Update: As noted by forum member Eradik and others on Reddit, Peloton's app syncs only basic data to Apple Health. Data like cadence and average speed and power are not synced, meaning that the loss of GymKit support may have a substantial impact for some users.

Article Link: Peloton Is Dropping Apple Watch GymKit Support

 

[Eradik]

That is NOT the only difference. GymKit syncs cadence, speed, and power to Apple Health and allows you to see trends over time with that data. With the basic syncing they’re going to it will not sync it to Health.

This is a huge step backwards and I hope a class action comes out of it. Many of us got the Bike+ for this feature and them taking it away is unacceptable.

 

[Radin.Y]

Apple has completely given up on GymKit. It haven’t seen any mention of it since the initial Keynote announcement.

And device manufacturers never advertised it. It was one of those cool features that Apple introduced and then forgot to do anything with it.

 

[koil]

I would very much appreciate something like CarPlay but for gym equipment with touchscreens. My gym has machines with screens, but for some reason they refuse to actually tune them to TV channels, it's really infuriating, and even if they did, I'd have to get a Bluetooth to AUX dongle to use my AirPods Pro...

If Apple built "GymPlay" then eventually they might end up with machines that support it and I could just be my own provider of infotainment at the gym!

I don't know if thats what GymKit was, haven't really kept up with it (hard when Apple doesn't seem to either).

 

[philstubbington]

Apple has completely given up on GymKit. It haven’t seen any mention of it since the initial Keynote announcement.

And device manufacturers never advertised it. It was one of those cool features that Apple introduced and then forgot to do anything with it.

Ah, thanks.... I thought I'd missed something! Is it supported by anyone - Garmin, for example? I was wondering whether I could add some Garmin sensors to our indoor gym gear.

 

[contacos]

Apple has completely given up on GymKit. It haven’t seen any mention of it since the initial Keynote announcement.

And device manufacturers never advertised it. It was one of those cool features that Apple introduced and then forgot to do anything with it.

Just like App Clips. I am surprised this was not used more during the pandemic.

 

[nicho]

And device manufacturers never advertised it. It was one of those cool features that Apple introduced and then forgot to do anything with it.

I wonder if it was less “Apple forgot” and more “Apple received very negative - but private - feedback from manufacturers/the industry” and gave up.

 

[svish]

Not good news for anyone who got the Bike+. Hope they reconsider

 

[maczaddy]

At my NYSC they randomly one day had Apple Watch support on its treadmills. They never advertised it because all the other locations have different treadmills which I assume didn’t support the update. Funny thing was the treadmill wasn’t even super new yet it got this upgrade. It works very flawlessly just tap your watch next to the nfc logo and it connects to the watch and says start treadmill. I find it so cool to see my heart rate appear on the machines display. Had all the info recorded on my activity app. My friends who pay a ton to go to an equinox were jealous that my basic gym had this feature. My fear is when they do a refresh to my gym they will replace the treadmill with the models that don’t have the feature. When shopping for my own home gym I was annoyed I couldn’t find a reasonably priced one that had gym kit. Apple please don’t abandon this 😢. I wanted to see it on more machines like the rower and stair master. I do agree with the idea of upgraded gym play having the treadmill Apple fitness videos pop up on the systems display. I find gyms gave up with allowing you to connect your device physically so many gyms in nyc still have the 30 pin Apple iPod connector just hanging unused lol.

 

[SAIRUS]

As a Bike + owner…this sucks. That said Peloton/Apple dropped the ball on its implementation. Hate having to clip in and then get up and lean over to the top of the screen to get it to connect.

 

[iZac]

I’m being intentionally hyperbolic, but it’s kinda sad that at launch in 2014, fitness/health was just one of the many tentpoles of the Apple Watch experience.

Now it’s a wind sock.

I know they’ve drilled down on what the users want out of the device, but a lot of potential has dwindled as devs just give up on watchOS and left Apple to just make their own software for it. I guess we should be happy Peloton actually makes an app at all!

 

[karranz]

Oh wow peloton still exists in 2024! thanks MR for reminding me.

 

[phgreer]

I heard Apple was buying Peleton anyway

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

That is NOT the only difference. GymKit syncs cadence, speed, and power to Apple Health and allows you to see trends over time with that data. With the basic syncing they’re going to it will not sync it to Health.

This is a huge step backwards and I hope a class action comes out of it. Many of us got the Bike+ for this feature and them taking it away is unacceptable.

Just curious so your thought process here is to start suing because a company makes a decision to do something that doesn’t align with what you want the company to do? Seem entitled.

 

[icanhazmac]

Too bad, gym kit had potential but never took off.

 

[txscott]

Peleton, like every other company wants your data. Apple GymKit, HomeKit etc allow you to collect data on your devices and store it with end to end encryption in the Appleverse and not shared with anyone. This is why there are fewer devices that support HomeKit and GymKit. The manufacturers are not content with the profit they make selling the devices. They want to monetize your data too.

 

[randyhudson]

Peloton. The fitbit of biking.

 

[DavidLeblond]

Didn't realize this was a thing, I only have a normal Peloton bike. The equipment at my neighborhood gym all "support" gym kit but I never got it to work for any of them. I'm assuming additional steps had to be taken by my neighborhood to get the feature working correctly that they never bothered to do.

 

[idrewuk]

Article is factually lacking as the GymKit integration does offer more data than whatever crap Peloton are trying to replace it with.

As a Bike+ owner I’m seriously ****ed off with this decision. It’s unacceptable and feels petty and disrespectful to customers.

 

[mfm77]

I have the Bike+ and am a little ticked off, but I don’t blame Peloton for this. As others have said, GymKit never took off - unless you count Apple Fitness+, which is pretty bad. The writing was on the wall when Peloton released the rower (which I also have) last year without GymKit support. That said to me that it was only a matter of time before the Bike+ lost it. The worst part is that Peloton’s watch app has been unreliable when connecting and disconnecting during a workout. Sometimes, it connects in no time and automatically disconnects when your workout is over; other times, it takes forever to connect and then stays connected even after a workout ends (so you have to disconnect). I hope Peloton puts more effort into making it work better; otherwise, it’ll lead to a LOT of pissed off members.

 

[xander49x]

I am glad I found this out now as I am shopping for new equipment, now I will be looking for equipment with gymkit.

 

[brianj922]

I have the Bike+ and am pretty upset about this. GymKit I believe provided more accurate active calories burned then Peloton's total calories - just from a pure accuracy standpoint this is a big loss - especially since the NFC hardware is obviously in the Bike+ to work with GymKit why not just keep it? I wonder if Peloton is going to try to work better with NFC enabled machines generally with their watch app? Either way - the email they sent was simply a broken link for me so not a good sign.

 

[babalougots]

My Lifetime Fitness has GymKit on bikes, treadmills, etc. Works great. I do not own a Peloton.

 

[t0rqx]

GymKit, Dynamic Island, Siri they all sound great at first then the support drops like a brick in the water.

No wonder their products dont sell that much like they did.

 

[TTTedP]

Peleton, like every other company wants your data. Apple GymKit, HomeKit etc allow you to collect data on your devices and store it with end to end encryption in the Appleverse and not shared with anyone. This is why there are fewer devices that support HomeKit and GymKit. The manufacturers are not content with the profit they make selling the devices. They want to monetize your data too.

...and CarPlay