SmartGym for iOS 15 and watchOS 8

Matt Abras
6 min readSep 8, 2021

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Launch Details

Recap

Five years ago I launched SmartGym. My goal was simple. To make an easy to use, gorgeous and simple gym app, that had an amazing Apple Watch app. After all, to me, Apple Watch is by far the best gym companion.

Since then, amazing things have happened.

  • #1 most downloaded Health and Fitness app for iPad in the US.
  • #4 most downloaded Health and Fitness app for iPhone in the US.
  • #1 most downloaded Health and Fitness app in over 30 countries.
  • App of the Day in the US and worldwide.
  • Featured in Apple’s Apple Watch Series 5 Ad!
  • Pre-installed on every iPhone in display on every Apple Retail Store.
  • Featured at apple.com.
  • One of Apple’s favorite Apple Watch apps for two years in a row.
  • Developer Spotlight story on the US App Store.
Apple’s Apple Watch Series 5 Ad featuring SmartGym

New Update

This is a huge update! iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 opened up many possibilities, allowing us to create awesome new features and even better experiences.

Always On Display (and a SwiftUI rewrite)

This is by far the feature I’m most excited about.

SmartGym on the Apple Watch is no baby app. It’s actually a pretty robust app, with lots of different screens, and pretty much every feature from the iPhone app. It even has our entire AI model running locally, right from your wrist.

So, rewriting the app in SwiftUI is no simple feat. But it’s worth it. SwiftUI is amazing! It opens up so many amazing possibilities. And one of them is taking advantage of Apple Watch’s amazing Always On display.

Sometimes it’s really hard to rotate our wrist to turn the display on, while working out. And these are the times we need the most. We may need to check the remaining time of an exercise, like Plank; glance at our heart rates and calories while doing some pushups; check what’s the proper execution of an exercise by glancing at the animation; or just check our resting timer.

With watchOS 8, the display will be always on. Your information will be always up to date. And this changes everything.

Some amazing features SmartGym already had, becomes even more powerful. For example, the animation of how to perform an exercise. Or our predictive actions button, that also shows the user the next step on their workout. All these features will always work, no matter the position of your wrist.

All these screens have been completely re-written in SwiftUI and takes advantage of the amazing Always On display. Timers, health data and even the exercise’s animation update in the background with the screen dimmed.

SmartGym on the Apple Watch is extremely powerful, fully featured, independent, with AI, ML and a lot more. If you want to learn more about everything that can be done with SmartGym on the Apple Watch, just tap here.

Focus and Notifications

This year, there are powerful new set of tools that gives you more control over how you prioritize your time and attention. SmartGym will implement this in two ways.

Fitness Focus

If enabled, starting a workout session with SmartGym will automatically enable your Fitness Focus.

Time Sensitive Notifications

SmartGym sends notifications to indicate when your rest ends, or when a timed based exercise ends. These are extremely important notifications. No one wants to hold their Plank position for 10 minutes, right? So SmartGym uses the new Time Sensitive property to ensure the user gets these important notification at the appropriate time.

This is a great addition, specially because of Do Not Disturb while Working out.

New Widgets

Widgets on the Home Screen are awesome! And with iOS 14 SmartGym brought many options. Now, with iOS 15, we have even bigger Widgets on the iPad. And we’re taking advantage of this amazing large canvas!

Up Next Widget

One of our biggest request, is for a widget that shows which routine is coming up. Many users like to have a proper mindset when going to the gym. Others like to know how to prepare (maybe a different shoes or equipment). Knowing beforehand can be extremely important. So, we’re adding a brand new Widget to every iPhone and iPad.

New SwiftUI Complications

SwiftUI is simply amazing. And SwiftUI complications are incredible. Last year we created some gorgeous complications for watchOS 7. We were even able to bring the workout charts as one of them.

This year we are adding amazing new ones. As a way to motivate our users, they will be able to add complications to track how many workouts they’ve done in a specific week. And even our amazing charts, showing how many calories they’ve burned and their average heart rate during workouts!

And of course, all these complications will also work on the new gorgeous Apple Watch Series 7! Users can even combine two large complications on the new Modular Duo watch face.

Quick Note

A great addition to iPadOS 15 and macOS Montrey is Quick Note. With a simple drag and drop from the bottom corner on the iPad (or moving your cursor to a corner on the Mac), you can add quick notes from anywhere in the system. These notes can also include links that will take you straight to where you were, when you added that note. Which is amazing!

Users can already add a note inside each exercise or routine on SmartGym, but now, they can also add reminders, changes they want to make, or anything else they want. Personal Trainers can add all their observations on their students, upcoming changes they want to make, maybe some posture they need to correct and much more.

Shortcuts on the Mac

Shortcuts are great. They speed up so many actions. And SmartGym takes fully advantage of them. On the Apple Watch, iPhone or iPad, users can create amazing shortcuts that with just one tap will get the routine of the day, start a workout session, and even put the first exercise of the routine in the screen for you. We’re now bringing this to the Mac!

All Tech Features

Supported Devices

  • iPhone
  • iPad (iPadOS)
  • Apple Watch
  • Mac (Catalyst)

Features

  • ARKit 3
  • CoreML and CreateML
  • Artificial Inteligence (AI)
  • App Clip
  • Dark Mode
  • HealthKit Integration
  • Workout Integration
  • Interactive Notifications (including iOS 12 Notifications)
  • Focus
  • Haptic Feedback
  • iPad Split View and Slide Over
  • iPadOS with Multi Window Support
  • iPad Drag and Drop
  • State Restoration
  • Context Menus
  • IAP and Subscriptions
  • iPhone 12, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max
  • New iPad Pros Support
  • Accessibility APIs
  • SiriKit
  • Siri Shortcuts
  • Siri Shortcuts with Parameters
  • Custom Intents
  • Includes “Add to Siri” button in the app
  • iOS Files Integration
  • Widget
  • Background App Refresh
  • Wide Color
  • Voice Over for HIIT Workouts
  • 3D Touch with Peek and Pop
  • Icon shortcuts

Apple Watch Only:

  • Full Independence (doesn’t require an iPhone to work — watchOS 6+)
  • Custom UI Gestures
  • Vertical Pagination
  • Now Playing Info
  • watchOS 5 Workout Builder API
  • Complications
  • SwiftUI Complications
  • SwiftUI Interfaces
  • Background Update APIs
  • SceneKit
  • Siri Shortcuts on the Siri Watch Face

For more details on all our technical features: https://abras.medium.com/smartgym-tech-features-45f3f258daec

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Matt Abras
Matt Abras

Written by Matt Abras

Christian, iOS Developer, Designer, Product Guy. Creator/CEO at SoundShare and SmartGym.

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