A guided run that answers to your body

How does a guided run in Gears work?

In four steps: Gears finds your gears, gives you today's run, talks you through it live and learns from it afterward. Every run with heart rate makes your gears a little more yours.

1. 01

   Your gears are found

   Gears reads your running in Apple Health (pace with heart rate), a race time, your fastest recent run or your Cardio Fitness, and places three effort gears from the best of them: pace ranges you can see and steer by. Nothing to read yet? It starts from an estimate, says so, and sharpens with every run that has heart rate.

2. 02

   You pick a run, or get today's

   With Gears Plus, your personalized training plan sets today's run and gives each morning a gear from how you slept and what the last days asked of you. Or open Find a run, answer “How long have you got?” and choose from 108 run types. Or start an Open Run and shift when you like.

3. 03

   The coach talks you through it, live

   The coach calls each gear, counts you into the hard parts and corrects you when you drift: “You're creeping up. Ease off, this is meant to be easy.” It calls hills, coaches your steps and breathing, says how warm the day is, and eases your pace when your heart says it's too much. Your music plays on underneath.

4. 04

   After the run, it learns

   You get a grade for how well you ran the run you set out to run (speed has nothing to do with it), up to three lessons for next time and a short run story of facts. When your gears move, the coach tells you: “Your gears have moved. Same effort, faster paces. That's fitness.”

What are the three gears?

Three personal efforts and a walk. Easy is relaxed: full sentences. Steady is working but in control: short phrases. Hard is strong but controlled: a few words at most. Most running is Easy, some Steady, a little Hard. As the coach puts it: “Mostly one. Some two. A little three.”

They're yours, not a chart's. For a new runner, Easy can be a brisk walk and Hard a quick jog; for an experienced one, easy, steady and fast running. Pace leads, heart rate guards: you steer by pace, and heart rate can only ever make a gear easier, never harder. More on personalized running zones and the running physiology behind them.

What does voice-guided running sound like?

Direct, dry and honest. Every line is pre-recorded and chosen by rules on your device as you run. A blunt line plays only when the numbers back it, and the coach is never harsh about what it can't see.

Three voices, Luke, Chris or Sarah: same lines, same rules. Set how often it talks (Quiet, Normal or Talkative) and its toughness, from Calm to Ruthless; the default is Honest. One tap on the run screen quiets it for the rest of the run. Safety lines sound at every setting. More on the voice coach.

Does Gears work on Apple Watch, iPhone or both?

All three. You pick a device, never a mode: Start on Watch, with Start on iPhone beneath it for the day the watch is charging.

• Watch alone. The watch senses, coaches and speaks into your Bluetooth headphones. No phone, no cellular. More on the Apple Watch running app.
• Watch and iPhone. The watch coaches. With no headphones connected to the watch, the iPhone speaks for it.
• iPhone alone. The iPhone runs the whole coached run with its own GPS, step counter and barometer. Heart rate comes from a Bluetooth chest strap or a Garmin's Broadcast Heart Rate; without either, it coaches by pace and never pretends otherwise. More on heart rate.

Nothing in a run needs a signal. Coaching, your gears, the voice, hills on your known loops and the save to Apple Health all work offline.

What happens before the first run?

A short first launch. Try an example run (“The coach calls a gear. You match the color.”), say how long you could run without stopping today, pick a goal and say what gets in your way. Gears reads your running so far from Apple Health in one step and shows what it found, for you to answer “That's me” or “Not quite”. A few safety questions shape the plan. It's training guidance, not medical advice.

What is the first run?

Meet your gears: a short session that teaches all three gears. “Fun, not a test.” Up to ten minutes, never longer than the time you said you have, on the watch or the iPhone. Your first coached run is free, whatever run it is. After it, recording runs stays free (time, distance, pace, heart rate and route, with safety alerts), and coached runs, the plan and Today's gear are part of Gears Plus.

What Gears doesn't do

• It doesn't generate speech during a run. Every line is pre-recorded: fewer things said, all of them things it can stand behind.
• It has no music player. The coach dips your music for a sentence, then lets it back up.
• It doesn't diagnose or predict injury. Readiness and training load are guidance for today's run. Read the health disclaimer.
• It's for iPhone and Apple Watch only, needs iOS 26, and speaks English today, in kilometers or miles.
• It doesn't count speed in the grade. A slow run in the right gear grades well.