Meet the Slovenian fitness tracker that received the Apple Watch ‘App of the Year’ award
Med Winners of the 2022 Apple Store Awards, Gentler Streak became Apple Watch App of the Year. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the app — designed for the iPhone and Apple Watch use — is an exercise and fitness tracker that has a specialty: a self-compassionate approach to exercise.
A softer line is the first product of Gentler Stories, a Slovenian studio for mobile applications that deals with solutions for a sustainable lifestyle. The women-led company was founded in February 2021 by three alumni of Apple Entrepreneur Camp and one alumni of startup accelerator Y Combinator.
The app was launched in September 2021 and although it has been available for a little over a year, it is steadily gaining popularity.
Essentially, Gentler Streak is a fitness app, which means it helps users track workout activities, distance, heart rate zones, and activity stats, among other things.
But what’s truly unique about it is its gentler approach, which also focuses on recovery time.
Unlike Apple’s Workouts app, for example, rest days on Gentler Streak don’t break your workout streak. In fact, the goal of the app is to encourage a healthy level of activity without creating pressure to compete with daily goals that don’t really correspond to the body’s actual needs or daily circumstances (such as injury or illness).
According to reports research University of Galway Fitness apps can be a double-edged sword, as some users may develop obsessive tendencies or maladaptive perceptions of exercise and burnout in the long term.
The Gentler Streak aims to turn types of inflexible fitness behaviors into viable lifelong habits.
To do this, it responds to users’ individual physical fitness and suggests optimal levels of exercise through a customized activity path. Users can also use the Go Gentler feature, which monitors exercise intensity and alerts them to speed up or slow down, taking into account rest and active recovery sessions.
Since its launch, the app has been constantly tweaked with some of the latest updates, including social media sharing and the addition of Spanish.
Commenting on the rapid success of the app, Tom Henrikssongeneral partner in an early stage European venture capital firm OpenOcean, noted: “Gentler Streak comes from a strong software tradition start-ups from smaller European countries punching above their weight.”
As he explained, this corresponds to a wider trend in the East Europewhich has emerged “as a hotbed of technological innovation” — where many brilliant ideas and technology founders can be found.
“Gentler Streak seems to have won over the judges with its solution-oriented approach to development,” added Henriksson.
“Instead of trying to fight bigger competitors based on performance or design alone, developers have designed a highly rated Apple Watch fitness app that understands users’ fitness and balances well between training and rest.”
The application is free to download in the App Store, but requires a subscription to take full advantage of it. The premium monthly price is $7.99 and the annual premium is $24.99.