Why it exists
Most runners who rotate more than one pair of shoes have the same small, nagging problem: it's hard to remember how many kilometres are on each pair. Spreadsheets get abandoned, and a shoe you think is fresh has quietly done a few hundred kilometres. At the same time, runs are already recorded — on an Apple Watch, an iPhone, or a running app — and land in Apple Health.
Shoe Health started from that gap: read the runs you already record, let you assign each one to the pair you wore, and turn that into an accurate, up-to-date picture of every shoe's wear — without keeping a manual mileage log. Around that core it adds the things a rotation actually needs: run types, replacement estimates, and gentle suggestions for which pair to reach for next.
The approach
- Private by default for your health data. Apple Health data is processed on your device and never written to a database or sent to a third-party server; your shoe profiles live on your device and in your private iCloud. Marketing attribution is handled separately and described plainly in the Privacy Policy.
- Honest estimates, not promises. The app's numbers are planning aids to support good habits — not medical advice, injury prediction, or guarantees.
- Built around real training. Daily, long, tempo, race, and trail runs ask different things of a shoe, so the app is organised around run types and rotation rather than a generic activity log.
How the estimates are generated
Transparency matters for numbers people make decisions with, so here's what each one is based on — and what it can't measure:
- Wear & retirement. A shoe's wear is built from the total running distance of the workouts you assign to it. Pick a shoe from the catalog and a suggested lifespan tuned to its foam and category is pre-filled — and you can adjust it at any time. Distance is a guideline; physical wear signs matter more.
- Recovery hours. An estimate of how long to let a pair rest before its next run, based on your recent runs in it (distance, pace, and effort versus its usual), how long ago you last wore it, how worn it is, and — for catalog shoes — how it's built. It's a nudge, not a rule, and the science on how quickly foam recovers between runs is genuinely mixed.
- Rotation suggestions (Premium). For each run type, a 0–100 confidence score rolls together how rested a pair is, how worn it is, how well it suits the planned run, and your default-shoe choice. A higher score means a better pick right now — a helpful pointer, not a statistical probability.
None of these replace your own judgement. Listen to how your body and your shoes feel; the app is there to make the information easy to see, not to decide for you.
Who makes it
Shoe Health is designed and developed by Robert Iulian Basamac, an independent iOS developer. It's a solo, self-funded project rather than a company — which is why support comes straight from the person who builds the app. Questions, bugs, and feature requests are always welcome at basamacr@icloud.com.