Most of a run happens with your phone tucked away in a pocket or armband. Your watch is what you actually look at, mid-stride, out of breath, usually for about half a second. So we built ShoosOn’s own watch companion apps instead of leaning on someone else’s watch face — covering Apple Watch, Garmin and Android,

We do have an in-app phone option for runners who don’t wear a watch at all but this post focuses on our watch companion apps.

Three platforms, one experience

ShoosOn’s watch app is built natively for:

Apple Watch — a native watchOS app, paired to ShoosOn on your iPhone.
Garmin — a Connect IQ app for Garmin watches, paired via an on-watch code.
Android / Wear OS — the same session-aware experience for Android watch wearers.

Why build our own, instead of just a data field

When developing ShoosOn, we found out early that relying only on a watch’s built-in running app would put some features we now can’t live without permanently out of reach:

Dynamic screens: an interval session and a long easy run do not need the same screen or focus. Our custom app lets us control exactly what information is shown, and how prominently, for each moment of the run.
Notification control: runners can set their own preferred nudges — or switch them off entirely — for when a run drifts off plan.
Mid-run awareness: a custom app lets ShoosOn know which segment of today’s session you’re in, so it can tell you when to ease off, push the pace, or start your cooldown.
Run type support: controlling the app lets ShoosOn support more and different run types, from hill repeats and hill sprints to 10-20-30 intervals or just a classic long, slow run.

Owning the watch app end to end means every one of those decisions is ours to make and improve. It means we can build new features we think you’ll love, without being constrained by a basic built-in running app.

One number at a time, the one that matters right now

The single biggest design decision on the watch screens: show one primary number, not a wall of stats.

ShoosOn automatically decides what that number should be, segment by segment:

Distance takes priority when a segment is defined by distance rather than time.
Pace leads during segments with a target pace — most easy, tempo and race-pace running.
Heart rate leads when a segment is HR-led with no pace target, like a pure effort-based recovery jog.
Time is the fallback for anything else, like a warm-up or a hill-transit walk-back.

Everything else drops to a smaller, secondary row so it’s still there if you glance for it, without competing for your attention. The result is a screen you can actually read at a glance, mid-effort, without squinting or scrolling — the number that matters for this segment, big and clear, and nothing fighting with it.

Nudge you, don’t annoy you

The same philosophy that shapes our phone notifications shapes the watch: alerts should help, not nag. If your pace drifts outside the target zone or your heart rate creeps past a cap, the watch tells you, quietly, once — not with a wall of repeated buzzing.

We wrote more about the thinking behind that principle, and how runner feedback shaped it, in Built with runners, not just for them.

No watch? No problem

Not every runner has a running watch, and that’s fine — ShoosOn’s session tracking, live coaching cues and post-run feedback all work from your phone alone. The watch apps are a bonus for the runners who have one, not a requirement to get the full ShoosOn experience.

Ours to control, ours to keep improving

Because we own the full stack — phone app, backend and all three watch apps — nothing about this experience is fixed. As runners tell us what they want on their wrist next (more metrics, new watch faces, complications, richer workout views), we can ship it ourselves, on our own timeline, instead of waiting on a third party’s roadmap.

This is day one for the watch apps, not the finished product. Expect this space to move quickly.

Want early access?

The ShoosOn watch apps for Apple Watch, Garmin and Android are rolling out to our closed beta now. If you want to try them, and get free lifetime access as a thank-you for helping shape the app, join the waitlist:

Join the ShoosOn beta waitlist ->