I've noticed that the Fitness app on the iPhone can rapidly detect the presence of an Apple Watch or External Heart Rate Monitor (e.g., AirPods Pro 3) so that it can adjust the availability of certain exercise types.
Is this done through an API that is public? Can third party fitness apps access similar functionality so users can be pre-alerted to the availability of workout types that require a heart rate sensor of some sort?
Would you mind to share more details about your observation? I am kind of unclear about the adjustment you mentioned, but I am wondering if querying the sources of heart rate from the Health store can help, or if Bluetooth API can help in any way...
Best,
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Ziqiao Chen
Worldwide Developer Relations.
@DTS Engineer
Sure!
On iOS 26, open the Fitness app and go to the "Workout" tab. If you have an Apple Watch on, you'll see that reflected in the top right corner - as well as in which activities are available to start.
Now take the watch off, observe that almost immediately, a number of workouts become unavailable and the lack of a heart rate sensor is reflected in the top right corner.
Finally, put on some AirPod Pro 3, this is the really interesting one - that also, nearly immediately, gets reflected in the top right as having a 3rd-party heart rate sensor available and the workout list is updated accordingly. This is the behavior I'd like to replicate.
It all registers surprisingly quickly - giving a nice responsive list to the type of workouts available.
