Apple Fitness+

About Apple Fitness+

Apple Fitness+ is a subscription library of guided workouts and meditations, filmed in a studio and streamed to an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV. Twelve workout types run from strength and HIIT through yoga, pilates, rowing and dance, with sessions between five and forty-five minutes and new ones added every week. What separates it from the rest of the category is what appears on screen. If you are wearing an Apple Watch, your heart rate, your calories and your closing Activity rings are laid over the video as you go, and the session counts toward the same rings the watch has been tracking all day. It costs $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year, and it is included in the larger Apple One bundles.

What you actually need to use it

For the first stretch of its life Fitness+ required an Apple Watch. That requirement is gone, and Apple's own answer now is that an iPhone is all you need. The watch is no longer the gate, it is the upgrade. Without one you get the video, the trainer and the music. With one you get the metrics on screen and the workout credited to your rings.

The floor is still an iPhone, and that matters more than it sounds. There is no Android version and no web player, and the iPad app will not run unless an iPhone signed in to the same Apple Account exists. The supported devices are iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Watch, and nothing outside that list.

How the library is put together

Sessions are short by design and grouped so that you do not have to plan. Custom Plans builds a schedule out of the activities you already pick, with variations for people trying to hold a habit and people trying to push harder, plus a starter plan for anyone new to it. Stacks let you queue several workouts and a meditation to run back to back without stopping in between. Audio Focus shifts the balance between the trainer's voice and the music, which is the difference between following instructions and simply moving to a playlist.

New sessions arrive weekly and the trainer roster runs to roughly thirty people, which is large enough that most subscribers settle on two or three they follow and ignore the rest.

Where the library stops

Everything is pre-recorded. There are no live classes, no leaderboard and nobody to compete against inside a session. That is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight, but it removes the thing that keeps a lot of people coming back to the alternatives.

The equipment ceiling is low. Nothing asks for more than a mat and a pair of dumbbells, and no session runs past forty-five minutes. For somebody following a barbell programme, or training toward a race time, that is not enough, and reviewers who lift seriously have said so. The strength content is built for a living room, and it is good at being that. It is not a substitute for a gym programme.

What to weigh against the Peloton App

Peloton is the comparison most buyers reach for, and its app tiers cost more per month than Fitness+. In exchange it carries more workout categories, and it runs almost everywhere: Android, Fire TV, Roku, Chromecast and Android TV as well as Apple's devices. It also has live classes and leaderboards, and if you already own Peloton hardware then the app is the software that came with it.

Fitness+ answers with price, with an Apple Watch integration nothing else can match, and with family sharing at no extra cost, which changes the arithmetic in a household where everybody carries an iPhone. Decide on those two questions, ecosystem and whether live classes motivate you. They settle it more reliably than counting classes does.

Who should subscribe to something else

Subscribe to something else if anybody who will use it is on Android or Windows. There is no version for them.

Subscribe to something else if you train with a barbell, are working toward a race time, or want programming that progresses across months rather than weeks. Fitness+ is not built for that, and a dedicated strength or running plan will serve you better and usually for less.

Subscribe to something else if live classes and a leaderboard are the thing that gets you off the sofa. Peloton is built around exactly that, and Fitness+ has no equivalent to offer.

And try the free options first if you are new to exercise and not yet sure it will stick. Structured beginner programmes and well made instructional videos cost nothing. The trial period is the honest way to find out whether the production quality is worth a monthly fee to you.