Simple WalkerHow Simple Walker finds your walks
No start button, no workout to remember. Here is exactly what the app does with the steps your iPhone already counts.
Your iPhone already counts
Your iPhone counts your steps all day and keeps them in Apple Health, together with distance and the floors you climb. If you wear an Apple Watch, it adds your heart rate. Simple Walker reads those, on your iPhone, and never writes anything back.
What counts as a walk
Simple Walker looks at your steps minute by minute. A walk is five minutes or more at walking pace, about 60 steps a minute or more. Short stops, like waiting at a traffic light, don't end a walk: up to two quiet minutes are allowed inside one.
We checked these numbers against weeks of real walking. Moving about the house sits well below 60 steps a minute; walking sits well above it.
Climbing stairs is not a walk: you climb floors quickly while your steps stay slow. Those minutes still count in your steps and floors, and show as moving about on the day strip. A fast walk up a hill stays a walk.
Each walk's pace
Each walk shows its pace in one word. It is Fast when about half its minutes reach about 100 steps a minute or more: breathing harder, still able to talk. Otherwise it is Easy.
Whole-day numbers and walk numbers
Steps, distance, floors, energy and heart rate count your whole day, so they match the Health app; heart rate shows the day's lowest, average and highest on one bar. Walking time counts your walks only. Each walk's own heart rate shows when you tap that walk. On the day strip, walks are bright and the moving about in between is dimmer; tap a walk's mark to open it.
Five tabs
Every tab starts with the same row: its walker, who takes a few steps as the tab opens, and the date. Today shows your steps against yesterday at the same time and the day strip on a dark card, then four numbers, your heart rate and your walks. Week shows the last seven days the same way: total steps against the week before and one strip of when you walked, then a bar of steps for each day. Year shows every day of the year as a small window, brighter the more you walked, and plays it as music. Bests keeps your records. Settings holds the good-news switch, the Year's sound, and the app's version and links.
On Today and Week, the arrows by the date, or a swipe, step back through earlier days or weeks. The arrow with a line jumps straight back to today or this week, and so does tapping the open tab again. The date says Today or This week only when it is. Tapping a bar or a day on the week strip opens that day on Today.
The next day or week slides in from the side, and a swipe across a walk moves the day without opening the walk. Back stops at the first day Apple Health holds. A day or week with nothing in Apple Health shows the walker and "No steps recorded", not a page of zeros. While the numbers load, the walker steps in place.
Your bests
Bests looks at every day Apple Health holds and shows your records: most steps in a day, best week, best month, best year, farthest in a day, most floors in a day, and every step you've taken, each with its date. These are whole-day totals, so they match the Health app. Tap a one-day record to open that day. There are no streaks: a streak that ends is bad news.
Your usual, and good news
Your usual is the middle value of your last four weeks, each day measured up to the same time of day. At 10:00 you aren't compared with a whole day, only with a usual morning. When today beats it by a clear margin, the walker celebrates.
Good news covers your steps, walking time, distance, floors and your longest walk. A rare one, your longest walk in all four weeks, gets the walker cheering. If you turn on "Tell me when I beat my usual" in Settings, Apple Health wakes the app at most once an hour when new steps arrive, so a notification comes within about an hour. It sends at most one a day, and only good news: never "less than usual".
While the app is open
Today's steps update live as you walk, from your iPhone's motion sensors.
Apple Health access
Simple Walker only reads from Apple Health: steps, walking distance, floors, heart rate and active energy. It never writes anything back. To change what it can read, open the Health app, tap your picture, then Apps (or Sharing, Apps), Simple Walker.
What it doesn't do
It needs your iPhone with you: steps your phone didn't count can't show up. It doesn't record where you walked, and it isn't a medical device. It makes no internet connections and has no account and no ads. Everything stays on your iPhone, unless you share a picture or video yourself.
