Which wearables work with Pledro

Pledro does not read your wearable directly. It reads Apple Health, and Apple Health is where most wearables' companion apps put their data. That single decision is why the answer to "does my wearable work?" is more interesting than yes or no.

Pledro is not an Apple-Watch-only product. Apple Watch, Garmin, Whoop, Oura, Fitbit, Polar, COROS, Suunto, Amazfit, Huawei, Peloton and Runna all appear on the connect screen, and all of them can count. What differs is not whether a wearable works but which challenges it can honestly back.

Why does it differ by brand?

Because a challenge is only as verifiable as the measurements behind it, and manufacturers write very different amounts into Apple Health.

A distance challenge needs distance, duration and heart-rate evidence. An effort session needs heart rate as the target itself, not as corroboration — the whole point is proving you worked, rather than that you sat in a gym for forty minutes. A heart-rate-zone challenge needs a minute-by-minute trace, because it counts seconds spent above a threshold.

So a wearable that writes distance but no heart rate can back some challenges honestly and cannot back others at all. Saying so is more useful than pretending every device is equivalent.

A wearable that cannot measure something should never be allowed to enter a challenge that requires it. Selling somebody an entry they cannot complete is worse than turning them away.

That rule is enforced on our servers, not in the interface. If your wearable cannot prove a challenge type, the app does not let you enter it in the first place.

What each wearable can back

Four things about that table are worth reading twice.

Step challenges need an Apple Watch today. A step only counts when it comes from a source we have confirmed is worn and counts the way a wrist device does. Several wearables on that list write steps into Apple Health; accepting them is the next piece of work, not a promise with a date on it.

Heart-rate-zone challenges need a continuous trace, and Apple Watch is currently the only source that writes one. Every other wearable writes a summary — an average, sometimes a maximum — which is enough to corroborate effort and not enough to count seconds spent in a zone.

Whoop does not write distance into Apple Health. That is Whoop's design decision, not a limitation of Pledro, and it is why a Whoop on its own cannot back a 10km challenge. It is excellent for the things it does measure.

Strava is excluded deliberately. Strava is a re-publisher rather than a sensor: it accepts activity files uploaded from anywhere, including files that have been edited before upload. Accepting it as proof would make Strava's upload path Pledro's verification path. Every other name on that list is a device that measured something, or an app republishing a device that did.

What if I wear two?

Then you get the union of what they can prove, and this is the part most people do not expect.

Pledro judges the record of the activity, not the badge on the strap. Heart rate written across a workout's span by any connected wearable is real heart rate for that workout. So somebody wearing an Apple Watch alongside a Garmin gets a genuine, measured heart-rate trace on the Garmin's run — and that run can back a challenge the Garmin "cannot back" on its own.

It works the other way too. Pledro counts the wearables you tell it to count, and only those, so you decide what speaks for you.

What about steps specifically?

Step challenges are stricter than the rest, and it is the one rule that costs honest people something.

A step only counts when it comes from a device that is worn. A phone in a pocket counts nothing. That rule exists because a phone can be shaken, swung, or handed to somebody with a longer commute, and step targets are the easiest thing on any platform to inflate. Peloton and Runna are on the list above and can never back a step challenge for the same reason — a bike is not on your wrist, and an app is not a sensor.

Do I need to keep the app open?

No, and there is no way to. You connect once and then just train. Completed activities are read server-side and matched to your open challenges automatically. There has never been a "start a workout in Pledro" step, and there is not going to be one — most wearables only publish an activity after it has finished, so a live in-app session would work for one brand and fail for all the others.

What you need today

An iPhone and a wearable Pledro accepts — any of the twelve in the table above. Connecting takes one grant of permission in Apple Health, and after that the app can stay closed. The activities page shows the ten challenge types those wearables are proving.