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Show HN: Heart Rate Zones Plus – The first iOS app I developed by tobias5

Show HN: Heart Rate Zones Plus – The first iOS app I developed by tobias5

Show HN: Heart Rate Zones Plus – The first iOS app I developed by tobias5

22 Comments

  • Post Author
    serial_dev
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 6:55 pm

    Congrats on the launch! I really would have thought it’s already part of the iOS built in apps!

    You mentioned it’s your first app. Did you vibe code your way through it or did you heavily use AI?

    I played around with Swift SwiftUI and I felt that AI helped me a lot in contrast to my day to day job, humongous code base, I can’t get AI to get those mythical 100x productivity gains, more like 0.37x, but for new projects it’s been great, so I was wondering…

  • Post Author
    nonameiguess
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 6:59 pm

    I can't tell from reading the listing if this is a feature or not, but if not, you should add the ability to set custom targets that match your real heart rate zones rather than relying on the naive population estimators that Apple gives you, along with more important metrics like LT1 and LT2 thresholds and VO2 max. Ideally, this would be a feature of the exercise tracker itself, but getting it in a data rollup app is better than nothing.

  • Post Author
    tchock23
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 8:15 pm

    Nicely done! UI is clean and I really like that you give different options on how to calculate the zones since most apps just take the simplified % of max HR for zone calculations.

  • Post Author
    jpc0
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 8:35 pm

    More an organisational thing but, what is the long term sustainability plan for this project. Apple Developer Program isn’t free and apple isn’t exactly well known for keeping stable APIs.

    If the answer is “until I don’t want to do it anymore” that is perfectly fine but then can there be a commitment to open sourcing (if it isn’t already) when you make that decision?

  • Post Author
    throwanem
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 8:54 pm

    I like this visualization! I'm not doing a kind of training these days where it would be useful for me, but I wish I'd known about something like it when I was.

    Do you support Apple watch? I never actually targeted that or owned one (I like a much more stylish smartwatch!) and thus don't immediately know how to spot that integration on an App Store detail page, hence the need to ask. But I get the sense a lot of folks who do train seriously like to do that with an Apple watch as primary or only device, and I could see enough utility in getting something like this kind of view in effective real time, to make the integration possibly worth considering. (If not already present! Or who knows, maybe Apple watches natively do that and now I know what the "heart rate push" feature on mine is imitating… ;)

  • Post Author
    nikitoci
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 9:02 pm

    The ability to set max heart rate manually would be appreciated, neither of five available formulas provide accurate estimates at least for me.

  • Post Author
    maperz
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 9:05 pm

    Congratulations on your first App! I like the clean design and the simple configuration.

    I would love to have a widget that shows my progress in the zones. Ideally this could be configured to e.g. only show progress in Zone 2 if thats my current training goal.

    Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing!

  • Post Author
    pbreit
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 9:17 pm

    Can an iPhone app figure out your blood pressure (with sufficient reliability)?

  • Post Author
    ra7
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 9:19 pm

    Looks clean!

    Does the Health app not allow you to automatically grab resting heart rate and max heart rate? I'm not sure why I would manually set those values in settings when they are already tracked in Health.

  • Post Author
    kccqzy
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 9:33 pm

    I would prefer an adaptive approach where the user also enters perceived difficulty and the app learns the correlation between heart rate and perceived difficulty to figure out the zones. I consistently have high heart rate during exercise: a normal walk might get my heart rate to 130, and a moderate run (10:30/mile) might get my heart rate to 180. A very fast run gets my heart rate to 215 (this is beyond the max measurement of the Apple Watch which is 210bpm; I had to use a Garmin HRM to get this measurement). I don't really trust the zones information iOS calculates by default, and it seems like I also can't trust the zones in this app. Switching to the Karvonen method makes the numbers look believable, but I'm not sure where the intensity comes from.

  • Post Author
    wesgarrison
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 10:37 pm

    This is great, congrats on shipping it!

    I like the interface but for the life of me I think I should be able to go back a period (“last week”). I think a week starts on Monday?

  • Post Author
    aaronbrethorst
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 10:53 pm

    neat, I built something similar last year to help me learn SwiftUI: https://www.zone2.app

  • Post Author
    ellisv
    Posted April 28, 2025 at 11:57 pm

    Congratulations!

    I also wrote an iOS app to do this exact same thing, although it’s unfinished and unpublished. I had a lot of trouble getting the app to perform well (what’s your secret?!)

    Couple of things I implemented that you may want to consider:

    1) onboarding flow to help users setup the app on first launch

    2) filter certain workouts to include/exclude by type, duration, etc

    3) home screen widget

    Id love to chat if you’re open to it.

  • Post Author
    jayunit
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 12:15 am

    Congrats! I've been wanting exactly this app. I paid $5.99 for HealthFit trying to get similar information, but it doesn't (afaik) show the weekly/daily zone summaries.

    I'd really love to see last week's information. Especially since you launched on a Monday, I'd love to have a new-user experience that shows me last week's info.

    Other misc feedback:

    1. Upon launching the app, I didn't see any data. Had to go into the gear menu -> approve health data sharing. I think it'd be better to push the user to this approval flow on their first session? (Edit: Aha, after watching the video: settings -> time period -> last 7 days)

    2. Neither here nor there, but I wanted to download this so searched the app store on my phone for "heart rate zones plus" and this app was #16. I'm curious if anyone in the discussion knows — how is this search rating determined? Is there anything the author can do to improve the ranking?

  • Post Author
    tea-coffee
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 12:49 am

    Not sure if it is mentioned in the app description, but how is heart rate calculated? Using the Apple Watch?

  • Post Author
    voisin
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 1:00 am

    It would be great if it was quicker to switch between time periods, like swiping to compare week by week or month by month.

    Also, to filter by workout type. I care about zone for running but not for strength.

  • Post Author
    gdudeman
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 4:21 am

    Clean and simple. There are a million apps that over think this, have weird onboarding, and aren't nearly this useful.

    Thank you!

  • Post Author
    fud101
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 7:01 am

    Zones are useless tbh unless you know your max HR. My watch tells me i'm in zone 2 but that was based on a value I put in for max which i care not to test anytime soon.

  • Post Author
    interleave
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 7:35 am

    Hi Tobias!

    Feedback: First off, I really like your app's style. I love bold colors. The screenshots and text are clear and understandable – maybe except on how the data gets in there. Even if that's by hand, I still think this is a great first version and a solid product.

    While I'm not in your workout target group – nor on iOS – it still resonates with me because I use Oura (the ring) specifically for their detailed heart-rate tracking and stress tracking. My most-used feature in their app is my stress-tracking throughout the day.

    Feature request: Only to explain how data gets inserted.

  • Post Author
    beingfit
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 7:51 am

    Congrats on this launch! I love that there is no data tracking and collection outside of the device (it’s always a plus point). However, after downloading the app, I don’t understand the following in the Setup menu screens. Please look at these from a newbie perspective.

    1. Time Period — not sure what this refers to. Why is the maximum only 30 days or one month? I think some text to explain that screen would help.

    2. Resting Heart Rate — I don’t know what to choose and there is no information or link to sources that could help decide.

    3. Metrics and Goals — what time period are those goals over? Is that related to the Time Period setting? Or is it weekly? Why are there goals and toggles for “Vigorous Exercise” and “Moderate Exercise” in addition to the zone wise toggles? How do these overlap with the zones? Again, reducing the goals and toggles and/or adding text and/or reorganizing this may help (for example, “Vigorous Exercise” could just be a heading for zone 5 and zone 4, “Moderate Exercise” could just be a heading for zone 3 and zone 2 — I don’t know if this even makes sense).

    As someone else said, an onboarding flow with explanations and choices for settings could really help (and the user could be instructed that if needed, they can change these in settings later).

    Looking at my “Vigorous Exercise” number on the main screen, I don’t know if I should aim to increase it or not. Some guidance on what goals to aim for, with the caveat that the user should consult a medical professional to decide on exercises appropriate for them, would also be useful.

    Edit: I see that there’s some information in the Help & FAQ and About pages linked from the i (information) button, but it doesn’t cover everything from my feedback above. I still think these should be in the onboarding flow and easily accessible again within the app (without opening a web page).

  • Post Author
    jondishotsky
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 9:19 am

    This is super cool! I downloaded it, a features I would love to see: A message on Friday morning – "You're lacking on these zones of training, take the next 3 days to focus on them."

  • Post Author
    aziaziazi
    Posted April 29, 2025 at 9:19 am

    Looks great! Require iOS 18, however I’m on iOS 15 and not willing to throw my working iPhone yet.

    Any chance you "down-port it" ? Or open source and accept contributions / clones ?

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