Pace Buddy

Help & Support

Set a goal, get a plan, and let your watch coach every run

🎯

Getting Started

  1. 1 Open Pace Buddy on your iPhone. There is no sign-up — the app uses your own iCloud account, so there is nothing to create and no password to remember.
  2. 2 Tap New Plan and pick a goal — a race like a 10k or a half marathon, or a habit like running three times a week. Pace Buddy builds a training plan aimed at that goal, with each day laid out as the next step toward it.
  3. 3 Pace Buddy asks how much you run now. If the plan you pick starts well above that, it tells you before you create it — and if your race is too close for the plan to start safely, it says so and suggests the earliest date that works.
  4. 4 Your plan syncs to your Apple Watch automatically over the pairing. From then on the watch runs each workout on its own — you can leave the phone at home.
💡 Some races offer more than one way to train. Balanced is the all-round default; Mostly easy keeps nearly every run easy with one hard day a week; the marathon also has Six days a week, for experienced runners only. Tap the info button beside the choice to read more.
📅

Your Plan & Today

  1. 1 The Today screen answers one question: what is today's run, and why. It shows today's workout, your progress toward the goal, and the week around you.
  2. 2 Open the Plan to see every day, rest days included. You can add, move, or remove a workout, and edit the steps of any workout to suit you.
  3. 3 Skip a workout you can't do and it's marked skipped without breaking the plan. Today's framing stays honest about what's still ahead.
  4. 4 Back after a break or an illness? In the Plan, open More and choose Ease back in for one or two weeks: the runs in that time become shorter, easy ones, and the plan carries on as written after that.
  5. 5 Share a plan as a .runplan file to send it or keep a copy, and open a .runplan someone sends you to load it straight in.
  6. 6 Use Export to Calendar to put the plan's workouts in a calendar of their own. Export again after a change and the calendar is updated to match.
⌚

Running on the Watch

  1. 1 Open Pace Buddy on the watch and start today's workout. A short countdown gives you a moment to get going before the first step begins.
  2. 2 The run screen shows your pace, heart rate, distance, and the current step. The pace number turns green when you're on target, yellow when you're too slow, and red when you're too fast.
  3. 3 Pause and resume at any time — the workout clock stops while you're paused. Skip a step to move straight to the next one.
  4. 4 The run works fully offline. Leave your phone behind — the watch guides you the whole way and saves the run when you finish.
  5. 5 At the end, Pace Buddy asks how hard the run felt and saves it to Apple Health as a workout, with its route, so it counts toward your rings and your progress.
💡 Grant Location and each run is saved with a map of where you went. Deny it and the run still works — you just won't get the route.
⚡

Quick Start

  1. 1 Want to run right now without a plan? On the watch, use Quick Start and pick a bundled workout — an easy run, a long run, a tempo, intervals, or a fartlek.
  2. 2 These workouts guide effort in plain words and don't put a pace target on you, so they suit any runner. It's the fastest way to try Pace Buddy with no setup.
🗣️

Voice Coaching

  1. 1 Pace Buddy speaks the run to you so you can keep your eyes up: each step change, a heads-up before the next step, the halfway point, and each kilometre or mile split with its pace.
  2. 2 On a pace-target step it nudges you when you drift — "Speed up" or "Slow down" — and says "On pace" when you're back. It settles down as the run goes on so it coaches rather than chatters. Prefer fewer nudges? Set Pace cues in Settings to Only "Slow down", or turn them off.
  3. 3 Cues duck your music or podcast rather than stopping it, and play over the watch speaker, AirPods, or any Bluetooth headphones.
  4. 4 Short countdown beeps and a haptic tap mark each step change, so you feel a transition even with the audio off. You can turn the beeps off in Settings.
  5. 5 If your heart rate climbs very high, Pace Buddy says "Ease off. Heart rate is high." and stops asking you to speed up until it comes down. Listen to your body first — the app can't know how you feel.
⏱️

Your 5K Time & Paces

  1. 1 Pace targets in a plan are worked out from your recent 5K time. You can type it in, pick a recent 5k from Health, or run the built-in 5K Time Trial on the watch to measure it.
  2. 2 When you run a faster 5k, Pace Buddy offers to re-work the paces in your current plan so the rest of your training keeps pace with you. If you've lost fitness, enter a slower time in Settings and the rest of the plan eases to match. Days you've already run are left as they were.
☁️

Progress & Sync

  1. 1 Finish a run and the day is marked done — on the watch and, when they're back in range, on the phone. Your progress toward the goal updates on the Today screen.
  2. 2 Tap a completed day to see the run's route, distance, pace, heart rate, and — where available — the weather at the time, credited to Apple Weather.
  3. 3 Your plan and its progress live in your own iCloud, so they stay in step across your devices. Finish a run out of range of your phone and it catches up as soon as the two are together again.
  4. 4 Done with a plan? Tap ••• → Archive plan. It leaves your watch but keeps every run you ticked off. Find it again under Plans → Past plans, where you can restore it or delete it for good. Deleting a plan never deletes your runs from Health.
  5. 5 Runs from Health not showing? Pace Buddy may not be allowed to read Workouts. Turn it on in Settings → Apps → Pace Buddy → Health.
🔔

Reminders & Complication

  1. 1 Pace Buddy can remind you on a training day and stays quiet on a rest day. Add the complication to your watch face to see today's run at a glance and tap straight into it.
  2. 2 Today's run can also show up in the watch Smart Stack around the time you usually run, and you can ask Siri for today's run.
⚙️

Settings

  1. 1 Choose your units — kilometres or miles, or follow your system setting. The choice syncs across your devices.
  2. 2 Turn the countdown beeps on or off. Haptic taps at each step change stay on regardless, so you always feel a transition.
  3. 3 Set or update your 5K time, which is what your pace targets are worked out from.
  4. 4 Choose how much the voice coaches pace with Pace cues: all cues, only "Slow down", or off. The run screen's colour still shows your pace either way.
💡 Still stuck? Email pacebuddy@icloud.com and we'll help. You can also read the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.
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