Built by a runner, Tempo is designed to be the daily go-to app for running. The basic idea is you go for a run, record it with the the Workout app on your Apple Watch, come back and open Tempo to view all the workout details, add personal training notes and tags, and see how the workout trends with the entire training progression. Tempo’s clean and beautiful design visualizes macro training insights to individual workout micro details in simple and intuitive ways.
It is the super-companion to the Workout app on Apple Watch and primarily works with data, accessed using HealthKit, that is recorded by the Workout app and stored in the Health app. (In most cases, Tempo will visualize data from other run tracking apps as well, but it completely depends on how well such 3rd-party apps follow HealthKit API and data storage protocols.)
As a powerful training log, to enable in-depth training analysis and self-motivation for runners to thrive and train well, Tempo’s overall value can be described in 3 essential ways,
Training Tools
Clear & Comprehensive Insights
Journaling
All of that built with the core tenet of privacy first and high-quality design for a delightful app.
A list of all workouts grouped by weekly totals
Ability to filter by a combination of different criteria based on user created custom tags, distance, dates and pace
Ability to star (favorite) workouts
Create and manage custom workouts from simple time, distance, or pace-based goals to complex multi-block intervals.
Upload your custom workouts to the Workout app on your Apple Watch and use them just like the standard pre-installed workouts.
Make the Workout app follow your training calendar by setting dates for the workouts.
View your entire schedule of past and upcoming workouts in Tempo.
Send your friends a copy of your favorite workout routine for them to try it on their Apple Watch.
Review your custom workout goals alongside all the beautiful workout details generated post-workout in Tempo.
All your custom workouts are stored in your iCloud account and stay private within Apple's Workout app.
Summary of key metrics: pace, duration, active energy, heart rate, cadence, total elevation, power, stride length, vertical oscillation, ground contact time
Every data point for a workout is displayed individually
Minimum, maximum, and average values of every data point
Full splits with pace, heart rate, cadence, power, vertical oscillation, ground contact time, stride length for each split
Intervals with interval duration and all the data points similar to splits
Ability to add custom tags
Ability to add personal training notes
Ability to edit the distance of a workout. This is useful when device data is not same as actual distance — USATF measured standard race routes, indoor treadmill workouts, etc
Pause detection for the entire workout and at split level
Interactive map with splits data and ability to view pace, heart rate, cadence at any point along the route
Interactive and zoomable charts for pace, heart rate, cadence, elevation, power, stride length, vertical oscillation, and ground contact time
Ability to compare with other workouts
Ability to add tags to individual workouts
A tags log to view workouts by tags. This is also extensively used to track shoe mileage
Power tagging via Workout Log filters — ability to tag multiple workouts with multiple tags
Ability to setup distance alerts for easier gear (especially shoe) tracking with tags
Ability to training notes to individual workouts
A seperate Notes Log to review all the notes in one place
Ability to add non-workout notes via the Notes Log
Ability to setup distance goals to be completed once by a set date, or recurring on a weekly or monthly basis
Track goal details with beautiful progress charts
Delete, archive, and restore goals
Set up multiple active goals
Track goals with Home Screen & Lock Screen widgets, and in Apple Watch app & Complications
A single big graph that shows distance, average pace, total days of workout, change in distance from previous period — all along a timeline of entire training history
Support for viewing the graph by years, months, or weeks
Support for active last 7, 30, and 365 days
Ability to filter the entire graph with custom tags to identify more personalized trends
A training intensity visualizer that shows every workout on a calendar with varying sizes and colors to represent workout intensity (strain). This is a powerful tool to help understand training patterns and balance stress, performance, and recovery to avoid overtraining.
The size and color of intensity circles change in relation to a baseline that is derived from lifetime training data set. Lifetime aggregated baseline values, across multiple years, may not accurately reflect current fitness level. So Tempo also provides ability to configure custom baseline to tune the training stress patterns on the Intensity Calendar with current goals and fitness.
Trends allow viewing and comparing averages for distance, duration, workouts, and pace by per week, month, and year.
Tempo also supports comparing trends across selectable date ranges (baseline vs trending) with preset options like last year vs this year, last 365 days vs last 12 weeks, last 4 weeks vs 7 days, or a custom date ranges.
Walking and hiking workout types are fully supported in Tempo with all the details same as running
Ability to include or exclude walks from the training log along with the ability to only include faster paced walks
Ability to highlight walks and hikes to easily distinguish from running workouts on the Workout Log
Tempo fully supports workouts done in wheelchair mode. There's a special wheelchair mode app icon that gets enabled when wheelchair mode is detected.
Free to download with basic features. Pro features with Tempo Premium for an annual subscription of $19.99 USD / year.
What is Tempo Premium?
Premium offers pro features that enables more effective training. Features in bold are only available in Tempo — Tempo is the only running app that offers that essential functionality.
Lifetime Cumulative Graph: Timeline of lifetime training progression
Training Planner: Create and schedule custom workouts in the Workout app on your Apple Watch.
Personal Bests: A showcase of lifetime fastest performance ever from 100m to 26.2mi
Journaling to add training notes and tags to workouts
Intensity Calendar: A calendar of workouts that can be configured with current fitness thresholds to visualize and identify training load patterns and avoid overtraining
Trends: Compare key training metrics by weeks, months, and years across selectable date ranges
Interactive Charts for workouts
Running dynamics metrics — cadence, ground contact time, vertical oscillation, stride length — by full splits as well as intervals
Apple Watch app and complications
Made by indie developer that respects your privacy
And a lot more
Tempo was built by Rahul Matta. Hello, that's me. I am a software engineer and an avid runner. I work on Tempo full-time and maintain it with all the help and feedback from a great community of runners and Tempo customers.
My training history as a runner can be broken down into 3 phases: running marathons before becoming a dad (2010), no marathons through 2015, and current.
Until 2015, I primarily used Garmin watches to track my runs. Those runs were then backed up on Garmin's website (Garmin Connect) and maintained on my Mac with scrappy spreadsheets (and other formats) for additional data visualizations. None of that was ideal and generally a frustratingly mediocre experience.
In 2015, as I was ramping back into marathon training, Apple Watch was launched, and I bought it on day one. Tempo is the result of:
The timely arrival of the Apple Watch with HealthKit.
The lack of quality and private running apps.
The fact that I had been making iOS apps for years by then and understood how to make a great one.
Tempo existed as a side project for almost a year, and I didn't release it because I hoped running apps from more established companies would catch up, but they never did. I trained and ran two marathons with pre-launched Tempo and finally decided it was time to share it with the community in 2016. Tempo's unique approach focusing primarily on the runner's experience with quality design and strict privacy has been refreshing and delightful for runners ever since.
