With the completely rebuilt Runkeeper app for Apple Watch, you can actually leave your phone at home on your run and still get all the tracking goodness you love. Never have the words hold the phone have been so literal.

Hold the phone. We’ve got a standalone Runkeeper app for Apple Watch.

This is for all of you who have been saying since 2008 (Runkeeper’s birth year) that you’d love to track your runs but can’t imagine running with a phone.

Hold the phone. We’ve got a standalone Runkeeper app for Apple Watch.

And, thanks to the watchOS 2 fairy, you’ll also get heart rate data with your run!

Give me the nitty gritty

  • You’ll see your current heart rate while on the run, and also a lovely little heart rate chart in the activity summary screen on your phone.
  • A fully untethered app means you can also change your activity type right from the watch. When you finish a workout you’ll get a nice recap of your run’s stats—you guessed it—right on the watch. That includes your run’s distance, duration, average pace, and average heart rate. (How many times can you say heart rate in one blog post?)
  • Be sure to run several times first with the phone AND the Watch so it can calibrate.

Hold the phone. We’ve got a standalone Runkeeper app for Apple Watch.

What else is new?

  • Swipe right (hehe) or force touch to pause your run with ease. No more dreading those long stop lights.

What doesn’t it do?

  • When you leave your phone at home, you forego GPS so you won’t have a map on your Runkeeper activity summary.
  • The post-activity summary for runs tracked in untethered mode shows average pace, not split times or pace charts.
  • No social sharing to Facebook or Twitter for activities tracked solely on the watch.
  • It doesn’t run for you. You need to do that. We’re not miracle workers!

Updated

We’ve got a whole bunch of new goodness for the Apple Watch, giving you a complete training experience even with your phone at home. Included in our 6.4 release:

  • Workouts: You’ll be able to choose your Training Plan, One-off, or prescribed workout on the Watch and complete it by running with or without the phone.
  • Splits: One more swipe and you’ll now see splits on the Watch! If you have a training plan workout it will show you the training intervals. If not, you’ll see your 1-mile or 1-km splits.
  • Pace and stride graphs: You’ll now get pace and stride graphs in the activity summary on the phone, even when you run with just the Watch!
  • Dedicated Apple Watch Summary page: Instead of saying “Pocket tracked,” the summary page will say “Tracked with Apple Watch” and behind it will be a map of the general area you ran in.

If you can’t tell already, we’re thrilled with all the promise the Watch app holds for making your run amazing. We can’t wait to do more.

Bonus: This Runkeeper update also includes post-run music analytics, so you finally know for sure if you run faster to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. Play music in Runkeeper via Spotify, iTunes or Runkeeper DJ, and after your run you’ll get a rundown of your playlist and your pace per song.

P.P.S. This Watch app was fully rebuilt and won’t work on watchOS 1 anymore, so be sure to upgrade to watchOS 2 and download our 6.2 update to enjoy it for yourself!