Track Your Running Shoe Mileage with Apple Health

No. Shoe Health works with any running workout that ends up in Apple Health — whether recorded on iPhone, Apple Watch, or imported from a third-party app.

Currently, the app only supports tracking running workouts imported from Apple Health.

The lifespan of a shoe is based on the total running distance from workouts imported from Apple Health. When you pick a shoe from the built-in catalog, a suggested lifespan tailored to its foam and category is pre-filled, which you can adjust at any time.

When adding a shoe, you can pick it from a built-in catalog of popular running shoes, or simply start typing and we’ll detect the model and offer to fill in the brand, model, a suggested lifespan, and recommended run types. Catalog shoes also show a specs section (foam, stack height, drop, plate, and weight) and let the app tailor lifespan and recovery estimates to the shoe’s construction. You can edit anything, and adding a shoe manually still works exactly as before.

For each run type we point you to the pair that’s the best choice right now, so you don’t have to wonder ‘which shoes today?’. The goal is to gently encourage you to rotate between pairs instead of always grabbing the same one. Rotating gives each shoe time to recover between runs, evens out the wear so no single pair breaks down early, and varies the cushioning and feel underfoot slightly from run to run — all things that can help reduce overuse injuries. It’s a friendly recommendation to support healthier running, never a rule you must follow.

Everything that helps protect you and your shoes: how recently each pair was used and whether it’s had time to recover, how worn it is, whether it suits the run you’re planning, and your default-shoe choice when you’ve set one. A rested, lightly worn pair that fits the run is suggested ahead of one you ran in yesterday or one nearing the end of its life, so the load is shared and no pair (or leg) is overworked.

It’s a simple confidence score from 0 to 100 that rolls everything above into one number. A higher percentage means that pair is the better pick right now — rested, in good shape, and well suited to the run. It’s there to make the choice easy at a glance: a helpful pointer, not a hard rule, so listen to how your body and your shoes feel too.

Recovery hours are our estimate of how long it’s ideal to let a pair rest before its next run, so its cushioning can settle and bounce back. We look at your recent runs in that shoe (how far, how fast, and how hard compared to its usual pace), how long ago you last wore it, how worn it is, and — for shoes from the catalog — how it’s built. Treat it as a gentle nudge, not a strict rule: while a pair still shows hours left, it’s a good moment to reach for a different shoe. Resting a pair lets the foam recover and spreads the pounding across your rotation instead of one shoe, which helps look after your legs and makes each pair last longer. It’s guidance to support good habits, not a guarantee or medical advice.

A default shoe allows you to quickly assign workouts by long pressing on new workout notifications, without navigating through the app. When a new workout is logged in Apple Health using another app, Shoe Health will notify you and let you assign it to the default shoe or any other shoe of your choice.

A default shoe is not mandatory, but the app will remind you if a Daily default shoe is not set. Other categories are not mandatory, but it is recommended to have at least a Daily default shoe set for convenience.

You will receive notifications about new workouts available for shoe assignment and updates on your shoes’ wear condition after assigning workouts to them.

Yes, the free version of the app allows you to add up to 3 shoes. To add more, you can upgrade to the Premium version.

Premium unlocks: unlimited shoes (the free version includes up to 3); the Long, Tempo, Race, and Trail run types (Daily is always free); smart rotation suggestions; and the ability to browse and list your shoes by run type. Premium also lets you set default shoes for those extra run types, assign them straight from new-workout notifications, and show them in widgets.

If you switch back to the free version, all shoes you added while using Premium will remain in the app, but they will be restricted. You won’t be able to edit them, add workouts, or set them as default shoes. You will only have access to up to 3 shoes. These 3 shoes are selected by specific rules in the following order: the default Daily shoe is included first (if set), followed by the most recently used shoes and then the most recently added shoes until the limit of 3 shoes is reached.

Only what it needs: running workouts, walking + running distance, step count, heart rate (display only), and running power (optional). You grant or revoke each permission anytime in iPhone Settings → Health → Shoe Health.

Your health and shoe data stays private: running workouts from Apple Health are processed on your device and never written to a database or sent to a third-party server, and your shoe profiles live on your device and in your private iCloud. Separately, the app uses standard marketing-attribution tools (including the Meta SDK) to measure which ads and campaigns bring runners to the app — this concerns app installs, not your health data, and you can limit it in iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

Your shoe profiles live on your device and in your private iCloud container. Apple Health data is processed in-memory only — never written to a database, never sent to any third-party server.

Your shoe data is stored in iCloud and will automatically restore when you open the app after reinstalling, as long as you are signed in with the same Apple ID in the system settings.

Yes. Everything runs locally on your device. iCloud sync happens in the background when a connection is available.

Yes. Mark any pair as retired and Shoe Health keeps its full history visible under the Retired filter, separate from your active rotation.