In an email sent to users Monday evening, Peloton announced that starting February 27, it will begin transitioning Apple Watch users from GymKit to the Peloton One-Tap tracking system.
GymKit integration was once marketed by Peloton as an exclusive perk of the more expensive Bike Plus, but it’s become less of a draw in recent years. The company launched Apple Watch integration in 2022, which brought Apple Watch calorie and heart rate tracking to any Peloton machine, like many other fitness apps.
As a result, if you’ve recently connected Peloton to your Apple Watch, you might not even notice the change. It was a company guide users To use GymKit only if they do not have the latest software updates installed on their machines.
Like GymKit, Peloton’s app integrates data from each workout into Apple’s Health app. As with GymKit, you can still track distance and pace and see heart rate measurements on the screen. It just doesn’t use Apple’s proprietary fitness equipment API, so if you have the latest updates installed, things shouldn’t change much. However, it’s still understandable that people who bought the more expensive Bike Plus for the now-defunct GymKit integration are upset about the change.
As Victoria Song explains here, metrics like calorie burn can vary widely depending on the user and type of exercise, so changes to the accuracy of the data presented may not be significant. While users can input their weight, gender, activity level and other variables that affect the number of calories burned, wearables like the Apple Watch provide educated guesses at best.
But some fitness enthusiasts still enjoy tracking their workouts over time and seeing general health information in Apple’s Health app — and now the only way to do that will be with Peloton’s app.