Apple’s watchOS 10 is an authoritative health tracker by itself. It powers every Apple Watch to detect falls, monitor heart rate, check for abnormal temperature, count steps, measure blood oxygen, send medical alerts, and so much more.
Add to this some of the best third-party health apps, and you can make your Apple Watch the most powerful health and fitness device you own.
Don’t worry if you have no idea what apps to install. Check out the options I’ve shared below, as they just might be what you need right now.
Key Takeaways
- The health and fitness apps I’ve included in this guide are Calm, Happier, Headspace, Strava, MapMyRun, Lifesum, Pocket Yoga, Cardiogram, and Nike Training Club.
- These appsare free to download and use, but they do offer paid plans for access to premium features.
9 Best Apple Watch Health and Fitness Apps You Should Have Installed
The following is a list of watchOS apps that can help you take your health and fitness game to the next level:
1. Calm
Calm is a mindfulness app that helps you to keep calm through guided meditations, mindful sessions, guided stretching, and breathing exercises.
It has emergency, sleep story, quick mindful walk, and daily calm sessions, which you can customize these based on your preferred duration.
With Calm, you’ll find it easier to integrate mindfulness into your lifestyle, one day at a time. Plus, the freedom to meditate with seasoned experts will help you to develop a calm and a more relaxed lifestyle, even under stressful situations.
Bedtime stories may not be a thing for you, especially if someone never told them to you when you were young. But their inclusion in Calm, both for adults and children, can help you to fall asleep faster than you probably ever have.
Calm is available for free download, but you can upgrade to premium if you want additional features and in-depth data analysis.
The premium subscription costs $14.99 a month and $69.99 a year respectively. There is a free trial for first-time users, so you can use this period to test and see what the Calm has to offer.
2. Happier
Happier doesn’t have a huge fan base, but it’s still a decent health and fitness app to download to your Apple Watch nonetheless.
The app focuses on helping you to live a healthier and a more productive life by giving you insights you can use to discover healthy life strategies, boost your happiness, gain self-knowledge, and build healthy habits.
Something that stands out about Happier is its ability to track your lifestyle and habits. It will monitor your exercise, meditation, reading, consumption, journaling approaches, and even how often you find time for relationships.
Happier app costs $7.99 per month or $75 per year, but you can try the free version to determine whether it’s worth upgrading.
3. Headspace: Sleep & Meditation
Headspace builds on reliable data published in at least 40 research papers. And its primary focus is on helping you to manage stress, get more sleep, and become a happy, healthy person.
There are currently 51 studies in progress, all aimed at making Headspace the very best iOS and watchOS health app it can be.
Headspace teaches you how to meditate and inhale across a range of categories, with the overall target being stress management, stress relief, and happiness.
The app even has Touch and SOS workouts, which can get you relaxed faster, especially when you feel as if you’re under too much pressure.
Headspace is free to download and use, but free accounts have limited features. The premium membership option, which costs 12.99 per month or $94.99 per year, gives you access to all the cool features built into the app.
4. Strava: Run, Bike Hike
Strava sits right at the top of my list of watchOS cycling apps, mostly because its developer have and continue to fine-tune its GPS technology for accurate tracking.
As you run, bike or hike, Strava will track your average heart rate, the number of calories burned, elevation, pace, speed, and distance traveled.
The app even allows you to share photos of your activities with other Strava members and to participate in challenges that enable you to build a social community on the platform.
Strava offers free and paid membership options.
A free account gives you access to basic features, which should be enough if you’re just starting out.
Paid membership costs $11.99 per month or $79.99 per year. With a premium account, you get access to all features, so you can discover anywhere, record everything, build a support community, and train smarter without limits.
5. Map My Run by Under Armour
Map My Run is part of UA Connected Fitness family apps built to help you stay on track.
With Map My Run, you can monitor your workouts, set plans for your training, and learn about new workout routines that can help you meet your fitness goals.
I love Map My Run because it gives a detailed breakdown of every run. It also gives audio, haptic, and visual progress of a running exercise in real time.
You can get started with Map My Run for Apple Watch right now without subscription. Or you can upgrade to premium for $5.99 per month to get heart rate zone analysis, live tracking, and specialized training.
6. Lifesum: Healthy Diet Plan
Lifesum health app’s focus is 100% on healthy diet plans.
By helping you focus on clean, healthy eating, Lifesum can make it easier for you to do away with bad eating habits and adopt nutritious eating.
With Lifesum, you can monitor how much calories you eat, discover new recipes, and write proper meal plans.
So if you want to lose weight and build a healthy lifestyle by tuning up what you eat, get this app installed on your iPhone and Apple Watch.
You can log progress towards your healthy eating goals and see improvements displayed on the Apple Watch screen in the form of a cartoon character.
The Lifesum app will limit your access to certain features if you stay on the basic plan. You’ll have to pay $4.17 per month or $45 per year to access all features.
7. Pocket Yoga
Get Pocket Yoga, which costs only $2.99, if you’re looking for a yoga app with clear, highly instructive, and well-timed instructions.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a yoga teacher, a student who frequents a yoga class or just an average person wanting to workout and stay fit. The app features 27 sessions of varying duration and difficulty levels to get you up and running.
There’s even the option to play music from the built-in library as you exercise.
You’ll love Pocket Yoga because it’s incredibly easy to use. Install it, roll out your mat, and follow the different poses you see on your Apple Watch’s display. Then, you can log your workouts to track your progress.
8. Cardiogram: Heart Rate Monitor
Get Cardiogram if you need a heart rate monitor app that can detect and report instances of chronic health condition.
The app uses the heart rate information collected by the Apple Watch sensors to tell if your heart is working fine or otherwise. And it does this based on a minute-by-minute algorithm that reports how your heart reacts to certain workouts and foods.
Cardiogram even connects to Apple Health to pull blood pressure and ECG readings, which are vital for analyzing your health condition and generating a comprehensive report that you can share with your doctor for analysis.
9. Nike Training Club
No matter what your goals are, the Nike Training Club will give you the tools and the motivation you need to achieve them.
The app has over 300 workouts for all levels, from endurance and mobility to strength training and everything in between. These workouts let you target your arms, legs, glutes, abs, and shoulders.
With Nike Run Club, you can schedule workout, track your progress, analyze your performance, and even prioritize rest and recovery.
