Peloton announced in an email sent to users Monday night that it will begin transitioning Apple Watch users from GymKit to Peloton One-Tap tracking starting February 27th.
GymKit integration was once touted by Peloton as a special perk on its more expensive Bike Plus, but it’s become less appealing in recent years. The company began integrating his Apple Watch in 2022, giving his Apple Watch’s calorie and heart rate tracking capabilities to his Peloton machine, as well as many other fitness apps.
As a result, if you recently linked Peloton to your Apple Watch, you may not notice the change. The company tells users to only use GymKit if they don’t have the latest software updates installed on their machines.
Similar to GymKit, Peloton’s app integrates data from each workout into Apple’s Health app. Like GymKit, you can track distance and pace and see heart rate metrics on-screen. It’s just not using Apple’s proprietary fitness equipment API, so things don’t change much if you have the latest updates installed. However, it’s still understandable that people who bought the more expensive Bike Plus for the now-defunct GymKit integration would be upset by this change.
As Victoria Song explains here, metrics such as calories burned vary widely depending on user and type of exercise, so the accuracy of the data provided may not vary significantly. Users can input their weight, gender, activity level, and other variables that affect how many calories they burn, but wearables like the Apple Watch can, at best, provide an educated guess.
But some fitness enthusiasts enjoy tracking their workouts over time and seeing aggregated health data in Apple’s Health app. Currently, the only way to do that would be using his Peloton app.