Questions, answered.

Gears is a running coach app for Apple Watch and iPhone. It learns three effort gears from your own running (Easy, Steady and Hard, plus Walk), then coaches every run live in your ear, reacting to your pace, heart rate and the ground under you.

Your personal running zones: Easy (Gear 1), Steady (Gear 2) and Hard (Gear 3), plus Walk. Each has its own color and its own pace range, taken from your own running. Most of your running sits in Easy, some in Steady, a little in Hard. How the gears work.

From your running in Apple Health, a race time or your Cardio Fitness, so there's no fitness test to sit. Every run with heart rate then sharpens them, and the coach tells you when they move. You can set them yourself too.

Both: pace leads and heart rate guards. You steer by pace, and if your heart rate says the effort is too much on an easy or steady stretch, the pace eases. Heart rate can only ever make a gear easier. Indoors, heart rate leads.

No. Your iPhone coaches a whole run on its own, with its own GPS. Add an Apple Watch and you can leave the phone at home. Gears on Apple Watch.

Yes. The watch tracks, coaches and speaks into your Bluetooth headphones, with no phone and no cellular. The next two weeks of your plan live on the watch.

Yes. Bluetooth heart-rate chest straps work with the iPhone, and a Garmin with Broadcast Heart Rate turned on can give the iPhone its heart rate. With an Apple Watch, pair the strap to the watch. Heart rate sources.

Runs that Garmin Connect saves to Apple Health show in Gears and count toward your plan and training load. A run recorded by both is counted once.

An iPhone on iOS 26. The app and the coach are in English today, in kilometers or miles.

Yes. Every run works with no signal, on the watch or the iPhone. Only the extras need a connection: the weather line, describing a run in words, and syncing.

No. The coach is a set of pre-recorded voice lines, picked by rules on your device as you run, so nothing is improvised mid-run. You choose from three voices: Luke, Chris or Sarah.

Yes. The coach speaks over your own music, dipping it for a sentence and then handing it back. There's no music player inside the app.

Yes. How often it talks is Quiet, Normal or Talkative, and there's a one-tap Quiet button during a run. Toughness runs from Calm to Ruthless; the default is Honest. Safety lines always sound.

Gear changes and countdowns, corrections when you drift, breathing, posture and form, your cadence, hills, the day's warmth, and an honest word about how the hard parts went. Everything the coach says.

Yes, a personalized training plan with Gears Plus. It's built from your running and the days and minutes you have. Goals run from Start running to Marathon, plans run 4 to 24 weeks, and every run says why it's there.

Tap Sick, Sore or Can't today and the plan moves around you. A missed easy run is simply dropped, so there's nothing to make up.

Each morning, the hardest gear your body is ready for, read from your sleep, resting heart rate and heart rate variability in Apple Health. On an easy morning, the hard run waits. It's training guidance, not medical advice.

Yes. If you can't run without stopping yet, Gears starts with walking. Seven minutes is a real workout, and while you build up, your coach goes no harder than Firm. Start running.

Partly. Your first coached run is free, and recording runs stays free for good, with time, distance, pace, heart rate and route. Coached runs, the plan and Today's gear come with Gears Plus.

In the US, $9.99 a month, or $89.99 a year with a one-month free trial. Cancel in Settings at least a day before the trial ends and you pay nothing. The App Store shows the price in your country. Pricing.

It reads Apple Health on your iPhone and watch to tailor every run. It keeps data in your account only if you agree, encrypted, and never sells it or uses it for advertising. You can delete your account and everything in it from the app. Privacy policy.

You can do the first launch and your first run without one. To keep using Gears you sign in with Apple. There's no password and no email form.