Heala vs Apple Fitness

This is the comparison people mean when they ask whether they need another app at all — the phone already tracks so much of it.

Apple Health and Fitness+

• Stores steps, workouts, sleep
• Streams guided classes
• Rings to close
• Excellent on Apple hardware

Heala

• Reads all of that from Health
• Writes a progressive programme
• Logs food by photo or sentence
• Body composition in 3D
• Works on Android too

What Apple already does well

Apple Health is the best data store on the platform, and it is free. Steps, workouts, heart rate, sleep from a watch — it holds all of it and other apps can read it with your permission.

Fitness+ is a well-produced class library. If what you want is a trainer on screen for thirty minutes, it is a good answer.

The rings work. They are the most effective piece of consumer behaviour design in the category.

What neither one does

Nutrition. Apple Health has fields for it but Apple ships no food logger, so the numbers only arrive if a third-party app writes them.

A progressive programme. Fitness+ gives you a class; it does not track that you squatted 100 kg for five last Tuesday and should try 102.5 today.

Body composition beyond a weight field.

How Heala sits on top

It reads Apple Health rather than competing with it: workouts, steps, heart rate and sleep arrive automatically, and Heala writes its own back.

Then it does the parts Apple leaves out — food, the programme, recovery in context, and the body scan — and it does them on Android as well.

Questions