Tempo FAQ

Is my Health data shared or sold?

NO. My goal is to make amazing apps for you, not track you, or sell your private, personal information. All Indie apps are built and designed with utmost care to be as private as possible. Tempo utilizes your data that is stored in the Health app on your iPhone. Your data is only used within this app and never shared with any other apps, services, or network.

Can I use Tempo for walking?

Yes. Tempo has extensive support for walking. You can enable it to include all walks or walks done at a faster pace. If you do both running and walking, you also have the option to annotate walks to be easily able to differentiate.

Can I use Tempo for wheelchair workouts?

Absolutely. When wheelchair fitness and activity features are enabled in the Health section of Apple Watch, Tempo will look for training data logged using Wheelchair Run (or Walk) Pace workouts. In addition, Tempo has a custom wheelchair mode app icon that can be set from the Appearance section of the app’s settings screen.

Can I log workouts manually?

Yes. You can manually add a workout to the Health app from Tempo’s settings screen. Use the ⨁ Add a Workout option to log a workout that you didn’t record with your watch.

Does Tempo work with my run tracking app? or Does Tempo work with other tracking app?

Short answer: maybe, but it is not recommended.

Tempo primarily works with data stored in the Health app on your iPhone. It was originally built as a companion training log for runners who track runs with the Workout app on the Apple Watch. But as long your preferred tracking app saves all the required data in the Health app, Tempo should work fine. That said, it is highly recommended to use the Workout app on your Apple Watch. Workout app is a really powerful app and extremely reliable app, built and maintained by Apple.

As an indie developer, my bandwidth is limited to test and verify compatibility with the data from every third-party app. Tempo is being used by many runners, who do not use the Workout app. Some of them have reported missing data with varying experience — missing map data, missing heart rate, etc.

Why is my workout not available in Tempo?

Tempo reads workouts from the Health app using standard iOS API (HealthKit). In order for Tempo to be able to identify a workout and process it, the data needs to be structured in following ways,

• It should be stored as a workout, not just aggregated distance

• The type of workout saved should be set to running (or walking, if enabled)

• The distance of the workout should be more than 0.01 miles or km

My workout seems to be saved to the Health app, but I still don’t see it in Tempo. Or I don’t see map route if my outdoor run/walk?

This could be a sync delay. When workouts are stored in the Health app, it takes few seconds for the workout to be readable via the HealthKit API by Tempo

It’s been a few minutes, but I still don’t see my workout in Tempo.

Please verify that the workout is available in the Fitness app on your iPhone. Fitness app is different from the Health app.

If you see the workout showing up with the expected details in the Fitness app, but Tempo doesn’t see it, please try restarting Tempo to see if that one last bit helps, and if none of that helps, please report this bug to me with following info,

• How was the workout recorded? Was it with the Workout app or a different app?

• Version of iOS and watchOS

• Are you on a beta iOS or watchOS?

• Are you using jailbreak?

1. Reliability: I never want to lose my workout data, and believe (with a very high certainty) that Apple Engineers have more control and testing around the reliability of saving the workout data than any third-party apps. I have had moments when my watch died (forgot to charge it overnight) in the middle of a run, but my workout data, until the crash moment, was still saved and available in Health app once my watch was recharged and back online. Other apps may or may not have that level of tolerance because these apps might not have access to everything the Workout app does, or inadequate testing by the developer(s).

2. Privacy: I do not know how the third-party apps save, share, or sell my workout data. This becomes more complicated if they have backend servers. It’s not totally unknown — we know certain well-known runnings apps that actually have been discovered to violate privacy. The issue is you can’t be both social and privacy centric. Privacy has to be by design from day one, and not an afterthought.

3. Battery efficiency: The power usage of the default Workout app, like all other Apple apps, is very well optimized to utilize least amount of battery. This is very useful for the long runs. Not sure how third party apps do here (and could break with new updates of the app or iOS/watchOS).

4. Well-defined data standards (API): Apple’s Workout app will always create a compatible dataset in the Health app that can be accessed using HealthKit API on iOS.

5. Marathon ready: I have trained with Apple Watch since day one of its launch, and ran many marathons. I get everything I need for my training goals using the Workout app, and Apple has been very good at adding new metrics over the years.

How do I see my lifetime total distance?

You can see the total distance run by turning the iPhone into landscape mode from Tempo’s Home Screen. Note the total distance is based on workouts stored on the device in the Health app.

Why do I not see the weather info for my workouts?

Tempo currently uses the weather information that is stored with the workout data in the Health app. If you are not seeing it, it usually means that the data was not captured and saved by the app that recorded the workout. In case of the Workout app on Apple Watch, this usually happens when you start a workout and your watch does not have a cellular connection, and was not tethered to an iPhone either.

How do I add tags to multiple workouts?

You can add tags to multiple workouts using the Workout Log. Choose the Filter icon (top right). Apply a filter based on distance and/or tags. At the bottom of the filtered results, choose Tag these workouts. Choose Continue, and choose the tags that you wish to apply to all the workouts. Choose Save.

How often do the Widgets refresh?

Tempo's iOS 14 Widgets update as soon as your workout syncs up with the Health app and is available for access from Tempo’s iPhone app. Please keep in mind that Health data is encrypted when device is locked, so Tempo can not access your workouts until your iPhone is unlocked. On unlock, Tempo processes the workouts immediately to refresh all the widget related information. This process happens even when Tempo is backgrounded.

The Latest Workout widget refreshes in two steps: (1) the widget itself updates immediately (2) Tempo’s iPhone app generates additional graphing and map information for the widget for a second refresh cycle.

When do the Widgets refresh on app settings change?

60 seconds. Tempo will trigger a widget refresh once every minute if/when app settings like walk, distance unit, etc are changed.

Can I share my run?

You can share your run with others using email or messaging apps using the Workout Detail screen. Click on the share button and choose the app to send a screenshot of your workout details. You can also share Map or Graph details by clicking on the map or graph within the Workout Detail screen.

If you would like to share your workout details using the same distance units and elevation details as the recipient, you can change the Distance Units in the Settings menu before sharing. Remember to change this setting back after sharing.

What is Intensity Calendar?

Intensity Calendar is 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 identify stress, performance, and recovery to avoid overtraining.

Every workout's intensity circle is computed based on that workout's distance and pace as it relates to a baseline. Baseline provides the threshold values to which a workout's distance and pace are related to in identifying the intensity of that workout. The default baseline is based on lifetime values of maximum distance, average distance per workout, and average pace per workout. 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.

Every workout’s intensity circle has 2 components

• Intensity Circle Size increases proportional to the distance of the workout with respect to the maximum distance of baseline. Since this is constrained by screen real estate, color is also used to differentiate longer distances.

• Intensity Circle Color varies from yellow to orange to red based on distance and pace of a given run compared with max distance, average distance, and average pace across all runs.

What is Cumulative Graph?

Cumulative Graph provides a weekly, monthly or yearly overview of workouts logged. The graph provides the following information:

• Average pace

• Total distance logged

• % increase or decrease from previous period

• Total workout duration for the period

• Number of days where a workout was recorded

• Comparison with last 7, 30 or 365 days 

A period where zero workouts are logged will be shown in grey. A period is tagged with a ⭐️ when the period either follows a period with zero workouts or matches the distance of the previous period.

You can also customize Cumulative Graph using Tempo’s settings,

• Ignore periods with zero workouts recorded – Ignore Zero Distance Periods.

• Change the default day that is used to calculate the Cumulative Graph using Settings – First Day of the Week.

What Personal Best distances are supported by Tempo?

Tempo identifies and showcases Personal Bests for 12 distances: 100m, 400m, 800m, 1K, 1500m, 1mi, 5K, 5mi, 10K, 10mi, 13.1mi, and 26.2mi.

How does Tempo identify a Personal Best?

Each Personal Best is calculated in 2 steps,

1. An initial scan is made to identify PB by comparing average pace of all the workouts with distance greater than or equal to the distance in question.

2. Tempo then goes further by analyzing every data sample, from every workout to aggregate the fastest times for the required distance. This is the key step to identify the most accurate (and actual) fastest performance.

Why does Tempo need to aggregate individual data samples within workouts for a Personal Best?

Without aggregating individual data samples within workouts, there is no way to identify fastest performance hiding in an otherwise slower looking workout. This is best demonstrated using an example.

Imagine you ran for 3 miles with an average pace of 10'00" per mile. The fastest mile based on this workout's average pace (step 1 above) will be concluded to be 10'00" per mile. But let’s say the pace during the workout varied as follows,

1. 0 to 1.1mi at 10'00" per mile (in 11 mins)

2. 1.1 to 2.1mi at 5'00" per mile (in 5 mins)

3. And the last 0.9mi at 15'33" per mile (in 14 mins)

By aggregating individual data samples within this workout, Tempo can accurately detect that your fastest mile pace is 5'00" per mile, and not 10'00" per mile.

Why does the initial setup for Personal Bests take such a long time?

As explained above, each Personal Best is calculated in 2 steps. Tempo has to process every workout (for 12 distances from 100m to 26.2mi) to identify your Personal Bests. Step 1 is a relatively faster scan, and usually takes less than 30 seconds. Step 2 is very time intensive—a training data set of 1200 workouts could take up to an hour. During this step, Tempo aggregates every data sample that is recorded by your workout tracker (Apple Watch). Every workout is a continous stream of data samples that are captured every few seconds. Longer workouts are made of larger number of samples. This data sample-level aggregation has to be done multiple times for all the 12 distances that Tempo identifies a Personal Best for.

While inconvenient, this initial setup is a one-off process, and once setup, Tempo will refresh for the latest workouts without requiring any significant processing time. It is also built to be incremental. Tempo provides pause and resume capability for this step—Tempo will auto-pause when the app is backgrounded, and auto-resume when it is foregrounded. The easiest way to do this initial setup is to start it off, and leave it overnight.

How accurate are Tempo's identified Personal Best times?

Accuracy is a factor of the data that is used for calculating Personal Bests. One of the challenges with analyzing data samples is the accuracy of each data sample. These data samples are really small distances (few meters in length) with start and end timestamps, and are recorded by sensors (like GPS) of the workout tracking device (Apple Watch). Sometimes this data can be inaccurate (GPS glitches, etc), and could result in impossibly fast time segments. Tempo addresses these inaccuracies, as best as it can, by providing following options to auto-filter paces that are unattainably faster,

1. World Records option allows filtering records faster than current world record for the given distance.

2. Tempo Pace Thresholds is a custom (and a very generous) fastest time estimator for various distances. This is the default auto-filter option for fastest times, and is based on your training data (i.e. fitness level).

In addition, if the above filtering options still misses any inaccurate data, Tempo allows marking individual Personal Best Records, or an entire workout, to be ignored from the Personal Bests list.

How can I add a Personal Best to Tempo if that workout is not in Apple Health yet?

You can log a workout manually from Tempo's settings, or also from the Personal Best section of the settings. This creates a workout record in Apple Health, and Tempo will identify it to be a Personal Best, or might show you a different faster one that you might have been unaware of.

What type of Filters are available in Tempo? Or What can I use Filters for?

Tempo enables viewing a subset of workouts that match a filtering criteria based on workout activity type, distance, pace, and tags. Filters can be applied to the Workout Log and Cumulative Graph.

Filtering is a super-power for a training log. The primary purpose of filters is to easily lookup workouts that match a specific criteria. This can be useful in many scenarios. Here are a few examples,

• Find total distance (mileage) for specific shoes tracked with a tag

• Find how many times you have run a 10K or longer

• Find how often do you run faster than 9’09” pace

• Combine the above with an AND matching criteria to see if you run fast 10K in those shoes :)

Generally, filters are especially useful in discovering new insights that are hidden by the volume of training data. When used with Cumulative Graph filters enable a whole new level of trends discovery and visualization.

Filters with Workout Log also enable fast tagging in Tempo, where multiple tags can be applied to multiple workouts at the same time.

How do I only see pace trends of my running workouts?

If you have enabled Walking & Hiking workouts in the app settings, then you can choose to exclude these from the pace calculations for the Cumulative Graph and Trending Averages. This will include the total distance and duration of the walks and hikes, but exclude those workouts from pace calculations to show only running pace trends.

How do I compare workouts?

On iOS 16, compare any two workouts from a workout’s details screen — scroll all the way to the bottom for the Compare Workout button.

What is Tempo?

Tempo is an app for runners. It’s a running app that is not a run tracker, there are plenty of those. 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, track it with the the Workout app on your Apple Watch, come back and see all your workout data for the day alongside entire training history in Tempo. Tempo’s clean and beautiful design visualizes macro training insights as well as individual workout details in simple and intuitive way.

Tempo’s overall offering can be described in 3 essential ways for runners,

• Training Tools

• Clear & Comprehensive Insights

• Journaling

How does Tempo work?

Tempo is an iPhone app and relies on the fitness data in the Health app on your iPhone. It uses HealthKit framework to access the data, and renders your entire training from macro to micro levels with beautiful and interactive visualizations.

Tempo reads workouts of type running and walking, both indoor and outdoor, along with other training data points in the Health app to work correctly.

Who built Tempo?

Tempo was built by me — Rahul Matta. I am an independent developer and an avid runner. I work on Tempo full-time, and maintain it with all the amazing help and feedback from a great community of runners and Tempo customers.

What is the business model? Or How does Tempo make money?

It’s a traditional model in which I build an amazing app for you, it provides value for your training, and you pay me to keep making it better and maintain it. For that I rely on your annual subscription of Tempo Premium.

Don’t see what you are looking for?

Please email me at tempo@indie.sh.