Help Us Test the rslts Apple Watch App

rslts already pulls training from Garmin, COROS, Polar, Suunto and intervals.icu. Apple Watch is the newest one on that list, and it works a little differently. Instead of connecting an account, you install a small rslts app on the watch itself.

The app uploads the workouts the watch already recorded. Syncing can be a bit sporadic, since it depends on the watch having internet and battery to spare.

This is for athletes whose watch isn’t paired to a phone of their own. If your athlete has their own iPhone, use Apple Health instead. It’s simpler, it syncs more reliably, and it already works.

If Apple Health is already set up for your athlete, skip the watch app for now. Running both gets complicated and can cause problems with their data. This release is about getting workouts into rslts for athletes who don’t have a phone. There are already a few complications for the watch face — weekly mileage, a race PR at a distance you pick — and more useful data screens are on the way for everybody.

What you need

• Your iPhone. Specifically the one that manages the athlete’s watch, so yours or your spouse’s.
• The athlete’s Apple Watch, on Wi-Fi or cellular.
• About twenty minutes. The pairing itself takes a minute; most of the time goes to installing things.

Step 1: Make an rslts account and add your athlete

The watch has to be linked to an athlete profile that your account owns. This allows you to see communication between the athlete and coaches as well as allows you to be aware of what they are doing.

1. Go to rslts.run/performance/signup and create an account with your email and a password.
2. The welcome screen asks for a name, birth year and gender. It’s worded as though you’re the athlete, but put your athlete’s details in. That creates their profile under your account. Then choose Continue without watch data. The watch comes later, in Step 7.
3. That’s it. Your athlete exists. Go to Step 2.

You can skip that screen instead, using the I’m a parent or coach — skip this link at the bottom. Nothing gets created that way, so you’ll need to add the athlete yourself: open My Athletes, select Add athlete, fill in the same details. Do it this way for a second or third athlete too.

Your athlete has to show up on this page before you can pair a watch to them. Put in a last name. Without one we can’t match them to their race results.

The card also shows No watch connected with a Connect link. That’s a shortcut to Step 7. Come back to it once the watch app is installed.

Step 2: Install TestFlight on your iPhone

The app isn’t on the App Store yet. Betas go out through Apple’s TestFlight app, so install that first.

Get TestFlight from the App Store

It’s free and it’s Apple’s own app. Install it like anything else, then open it once so it finishes setting up. It’ll be empty. That’s fine, the next step fills it.

Step 3: Join the rslts beta

Tap this link on your iPhone. It won’t do anything useful on a computer.

Join the rslts beta

Completing the sign-up sends you an email with a link. Tapping that link opens TestFlight and lets you join the beta. Accept it, and rslts appears in your TestFlight app list alongside any other betas you are in.

Step 4: Install rslts on your iPhone

Still in TestFlight, tap rslts and then Install. From here it’s a normal app install. Same progress ring, same icon on your home screen at the end.

Open it and sign in with the account you made in Step 1. You should see your athlete. If you don’t, you signed into an account that doesn’t own them, so go back to Step 1 and check which email you used. If you have multiple athletes you may need to use the selector at the top of the screen to see the one you are starting with.

Step 5: Put the watch app on your athlete’s watch

This is the step I’m least sure about, and the main reason I need you.

The watch app ships inside the iPhone app. That’s how it reaches a watch with no phone of its own. The install should work one of two ways:

• In TestFlight, open the rslts app’s page and scroll to its details. If a watch app is available for a watch you manage, it is offered there.
• Or in the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, switch to your athlete’s watch and look for rslts under Available Apps. Family Setup watches show up under All Watches.

I don’t have an apple watch in my house so am unable to provide much guidance beyond the internet says it will work. My assumption based on google is that the testflight app will allow you to push the app to a watch you manage which is why it needs to be the phone that the athletes watch is managed from.

Step 6: Open rslts on the watch

On the athlete’s watch, open rslts. It shows a six-character Pairing code.

Leave the app open while you do the next step. Codes expire. If yours does, tap New code and use the new one. Codes use digits 2–9 and letters A–Z, skipping I and O, so there’s nothing ambiguous to read off the screen.

Step 7: Enter the code on your iPhone

Back in the rslts app on your phone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Apple Watch.
3. Type the code from the watch.
4. Under Pair to, choose your athlete.
5. Tap Pair Watch.

The watch switches to Paired once it connects.

Every workout that watch uploads goes to the athlete you pick here. Don’t pair one watch to two athletes. If the watch changes wrists, unpair it first.

Or do it on rslts.run

You can enter the same code on a computer. Open the account menu at the top left, choose Connected platforms, and pick your athlete. Or use the Connect link on their card in My Athletes. Scroll to the Apple Watch panel at the bottom, type the code, and select Pair watch.

Step 8: Allow Health access on the watch

Once the watch is paired it asks for permission to read its own workouts. The prompt shows up on the watch. Whatever you already allowed on your own iPhone doesn’t carry over.

It only appears while the app is open on screen, so keep rslts up for a moment after pairing instead of dropping your wrist. If the watch sleeps first, open the app again and wait.

Four screens:

1. Health Access — “rslts would like to access your Health data.” Tap Review.
2. Allow Read Access — a list of data categories with a master switch at the top labelled All Requested Data Below.
3. That master switch is off by default, and so is every category under it. Turn it on.
4. Scroll to the bottom and tap Done.

If you tap Done without turning that switch on, the pairing still succeeds and the watch still says it is syncing. It just never has anything to send, we get no errors it just never sees any of the activities your athlete records.

Step 9: Check that it is working

After pairing, the watch starts uploading recent workouts. The first batch can take a while and continues in the background.

Three places to look:

• On the watch, open rslts. It shows Last sync and a Sync now button.
• On your iPhone, go back to Settings → Apple Watch and check Last sync under Paired watches.
• On rslts.run, open your athlete and see whether the workouts appeared.

Last sync is when the watch last reached us. Waiting is how many workouts are still queued. Waiting stuck above zero means the watch is finding us but not finishing. Last sync saying Never means it hasn’t reached us at all. The line at the bottom of that screen, Missing workouts? Check Health permissions for rslts in Settings on this watch, points back at Step 8. That’s usually the answer.

Step 10: Add the sync complication

On the athlete’s watch:

1. Press and hold the watch face until it zooms out slightly, then tap Edit.
2. Swipe left to the Complications screen.
3. Tap the slot you want. Any shape works: round, corner, rectangular, or the line of text across the top.
4. Scroll the list to rslts. There are three to pick from:
   • Race PR — your current personal record at a distance you choose. It defaults to the 5K; tap it after adding it to switch to 800m, 1600m, Mile, 3K, 3200m, 4K or 10K.
   • Weekly mileage — running volume so far this week. In a rectangular slot it also draws an eight-week trend line.
   • rslts sync — when the watch last sent training to us. Less interesting day to day, but handy while we’re testing.
5. Press the Digital Crown to save, then tap the face to go back to it.

You can also do this from the Watch app on the managing iPhone. Pick the watch, choose the face under My Faces, and edit its complications there.

Tapping either one opens the app. If rslts sync stays stale for more than a day, tell me.

What I already know might not work

Nobody has run this on real hardware. A Family Setup watch cannot be connected to Xcode — that is Apple’s restriction. Everything so far has been tested in a development environment. So if you are a bit nervous about stuff like this maybe let someone else experiment for us and we can help you once we have proven it works.

The Health prompt in Step 8 might behave differently on a child account. Apple says an independent watch app shows its own permission form, but says nothing about how that works when the account belongs to a kid. If the prompt never shows up, or shows up and workouts still don’t arrive, tell me.

Sync can lag. The watch only gets small slices of background time, and Schooltime and low battery shrink them further. A workout from practice might not show up until someone opens the app that evening. If it gets there eventually, that’s slow, not broken.

Sleep will never sync. Apple blocks Sleep on Family Setup watches, along with blood oxygen, ECG and a few others. Nothing we build gets around that. Don’t report it as a bug.

What to send me

If something goes wrong, this is what helps:

• Which step number you were on.
• What the screen said, word for word if you can. “Code expired” and “Code already used” are different problems.
• Your athlete’s first name and roughly when you tried.

If it all worked, tell me that too.

If you want to stop

Open Settings → Apple Watch on your iPhone and tap Unpair, or do the same from Connected platforms on rslts.run.

Unpairing stops future uploads. Workouts already uploaded stay on the athlete’s profile. You can delete the app from the watch afterward if you want it gone.

There’s a fuller version of these steps in the docs: Pair a Standalone Apple Watch.