How can we help?

Gears asks a few quick questions (how long you can run today, your goal, your week), shows you your personalized training plan, then reads your running so far from Apple Health. After a short safety step it asks for each permission, one at a time, explaining each one. Then you're ready for your first run.

It's Meet your gears: a short session, up to ten minutes and never longer than the time you have, that teaches you Easy, Steady and Hard. It's fun, not a test. Your first coached run is free, and you can run it on your Apple Watch or your iPhone.

Not for the first launch or your first run. After it, Gears asks you to Save this run with Sign in with Apple. There's no password and no email form. If signing in ever fails, tap Keep using Gears for now and try again later.

Your running history, heart and sleep are how Gears places your gears, builds your plan and gives you a gear for each day. It's asked once, on its own page, and read on your iPhone and watch. It's kept in your account only if you say yes. See our privacy policy.

Open the Health app, tap your picture at the top, then Apps under Privacy, then Gears, and turn on what you'd like Gears to read and write. Or go to iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Gears.

An iPhone on iOS 26. An Apple Watch is optional: the iPhone can run every coached run on its own. For the watch to speak to you, pair Bluetooth headphones with it. Gears is in English, in kilometers or miles.

Yes. The watch senses, coaches and speaks into your Bluetooth headphones, with no phone and no cellular needed. Your plan's next two weeks live on the watch, so you can leave the phone at home.

To hear the coach from your watch, yes: Bluetooth headphones paired with the watch. Without them, if your iPhone is with you, it can speak for the watch. Otherwise the watch coaches by haptics alone.

Either. On your iPhone, tap Start on Watch, or Start on iPhone beneath it for a day the watch is charging. On the watch, open Gears and start from Today or Open Run. You never choose a mode, only the device.

Open Gears on your iPhone first, then open it on your watch, so the two can catch up. Make sure both have the latest version of Gears, and that your iPhone and watch software are up to date. If it still won't start, write to us and tell us your watch model.

Your first coached run is free; after it, coached runs come with Gears Plus. The watch sells nothing itself: subscribe on your iPhone and the watch learns it. You can always record a run on the watch.

Yes. With your iPhone alone, any Bluetooth heart-rate strap that uses the standard heart-rate profile works. Set it up in You → Settings → Run. Straps that only speak ANT+ can't connect to an iPhone. Wet the pads, wear it snug, and close other apps that might be using it.

Yes. Pair the strap with the watch in the watch's Settings → Bluetooth, and the watch uses it. A strap often reads more steadily than a wrist.

Yes, on a run with your iPhone. Turn on Broadcast Heart Rate on the Garmin. On most Garmins: hold the menu button, then Settings › Sensors & Accessories (or Health & Wellness) › Wrist Heart Rate › Broadcast Heart Rate. Then set it up in Gears in You → Settings → Run.

Yes, if Garmin Connect saves your runs to Apple Health. They appear in Runs under From your other apps and count toward your plan and training load. A run recorded by both is counted once.

Wrist readings can slip with a loose band, cold skin or a lot of arm movement. Wear the watch a finger's width above the wrist bone, snug. In Gears, heart rate can only ever make a gear easier, never harder. If a number looks wrong, go by feel. See Health and safety.

Yes. In You → Settings → Coach → How often it talks, choose Quiet (gear changes, countdowns, controls and safety only), Normal, or Talkative, which keeps you company and walks you through the warm-up. On the watch, it's Talks in Settings.

Yes. Choose Luke, Chris or Sarah in You → Settings → Coach → Voice. They say the same lines by the same rules. The voice you choose on your iPhone reaches your watch too.

Yes. Toughness, in You → Settings → Coach, runs from Calm to Ruthless; the default is Honest. It changes the wording only, and safety lines sound at every level. While you're building up, the coach goes no harder than Firm.

Yes. The coach dips your music for each sentence, then lets it back up. There's no music player in Gears: play music from your own app. To open it from a run, choose it in You → Settings → Run → Music app.

Tap Coach quiet: on the iPhone it's in the run screen's Sound sheet, on the watch on the controls page. The coach then says only the run's blocks and safety lines. Tap Coach talks to hear it again.

Three efforts, Easy (Gear 1), Steady (Gear 2) and Hard (Gear 3), plus Walk. Each has its own color and its own pace range, from your own running. A good week is mostly Easy, some Steady and a little Hard. See the gears.

It places them from the best source it has: your running in Apple Health, a race time, a fast recent run, your Cardio Fitness, or an estimate. Then every run with heart rate refines them, and the coach tells you when they move.

Yes. In You → Your gears, choose Automatic, From a race time, or Manual; nudge a range five seconds at a time; or tap Lock my gears or Reset to automatic. After a run, telling Gears how each gear felt also tunes them. On the watch your gears are read-only: set them on your iPhone.

Plans come with Gears Plus. Pick a goal, from Start running to Marathon, then your days and how long a normal run can be. Plans run 4 to 24 weeks, and every run says why it's there. See the training plan.

Nothing to make up. A missed easy run is simply dropped, and a key run moves to a day that suits it. Your plan carries on.

On Today, tap Sick, Sore or Can't today, or Make it easy on a low morning. Gears shows what will change, and nothing changes until you tap Accept.

Each morning, with Gears Plus, the day gets a gear, read from your sleep, resting heart rate and heart rate variability in Apple Health. On a Gear 1 day the hard run waits; tap Keep the plan to run it anyway. It needs about a week of those readings in Health. It's guidance for today's run, not a medical reading.

Your first coached run. After it, recording runs stays free for good (time, distance, pace, heart rate and route, with safety alerts), and so do browsing runs, your gears and your history. Coached runs, the plan, Today's gear and In your own words are part of Gears Plus.

In the US, $9.99 a month, or $89.99 a year with one month free. The free month is on the yearly plan only. Prices in other countries are shown in the App Store. See pricing.

On your iPhone, open Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions → Gears → Cancel Subscription. Or in Gears, open You → Settings → Gears Plus → Manage subscription. Cancel at least 24 hours before the renewal date. During the free month, cancel at least 24 hours before it ends and you pay nothing; the Subscriptions page shows the date.

Apple handles all payments, so refunds come from Apple. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple Account, and choose to request a refund for Gears.

Open You → Settings → Gears Plus and tap Restore purchases, signed in to the same Apple Account you bought it with. If a payment didn't go through, Apple's Manage subscription page shows why.

You can still record runs, and your gears, runs and history stay yours. Your plan is kept but stops adapting; subscribe again and it picks up where it was.

It's read on your iPhone and watch. It's kept in your account only if you say yes, encrypted with a key unique to you, and it's never sold or used for advertising. The details are in our privacy policy.

Open You → Settings → Account and turn off Keep health data in my account. When you confirm, everything from Health kept in your account is deleted. What's on your iPhone and in Apple Health stays.

Open You → Settings → AI and tap Turn off and delete. Your words stop going to the AI model, and those kept in your account are deleted. Gears keeps reading what it can on your iPhone.

Yes. Email privacy@gearsrunning.com and ask for a copy. We'll check the account is yours and send it within 30 days.

Open You → Settings → Account → Delete account. Your account and everything kept in it are deleted, and Gears is disconnected from your Apple Account. Diagnostics expire on their own after about 3 months. What's in Apple Health stays on your iPhone for you to manage in the Health app. Deleting your account doesn't cancel Gears Plus: cancel it in your Apple Account.

Open the run and tap Delete run. Its workout in Apple Health stays until you delete it in the Health app.

Start in the open, away from tall buildings and trees, and give it a moment. If the coach says it's getting a GPS fix, start walking: it catches up. Check that location is allowed with Precise Location on, in iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Gears.

You can turn it off in You → Settings → Run → Auto-pause (on the watch, in Settings). It's never used indoors.

Check the volume on the device running the run, and the coach's own volume on the run screen or in Settings. On a watch run, your headphones must be paired with the watch, not the iPhone. Make sure Coach quiet isn't on, and that How often it talks isn't set to Quiet if you want more than gear changes.

The weather line needs a connection before the run and Weather talk turned on in Settings. Offline, the coach simply leaves it out.

In the Health app, tap your picture, then Apps, then Gears, and check that Gears may write workouts. A run discarded in its first minute is never saved.

Sign in with the same Apple Account and connect to the internet: your iPhone syncs when it can. Your runs come back if you chose to keep health data in your account.

Use the form on this page, or email support@gearsrunning.com. Tell us your iPhone and watch models and what you were doing when it happened. A person who builds Gears reads every message.

Write to privacy@gearsrunning.com. We answer every privacy request within 30 days.

Please tell us at support@gearsrunning.com, with your device and the assistive technology you use. See Accessibility.