Beat Watcher: Continuous Heart Rate Monitoring on Apple Watch
Get Beat Watcher in the App Store now.
Background
One of the things I like about my Apple Watch is being able to monitor my heart rate.
Sometimes I noticed my BPM was a lot higher than I expected at certain times during the day, but I only really knew this after the fact when I looked at a graph of the whole day.
Heart Rate Notifications
Apple has built-in “high heart rate” notification functionality, but I thought it would be interesting if I could get less-intrusive ongoing real-time feedback from my Apple Watch about my heart rate based on a specific threshold I could easily change.
I wanted an always-on heart rate app, to continuously record my heart rate and provide feedback.
This would be useful when I want to focus on being calm, along with either mediation or breathing exercises.
I built a prototype and liked it a lot, so I decided to polish it up a bit and release it in the App Store. It’s called Beat Watcher, and you can get it here.
How Beat Watcher Works
Get the app and open it. The first time, you’ll need to grant read access for Heart Rate from the Health app. This is necessary for the app to be able to monitor your heart rate, and the data is not saved in the app or sent anywhere.
You’ll see your current heart rate at the top. The adjustable alert threshold is right below that.
Heart Rate Alerts
Turn the Digital Crown to adjust the threshold. You’ll feel a vibration when your heart rate goes above or below the threshold you picked, and you’ll also hear a sound (unless your Apple Watch is has Silent Mode on).
There is a separate sound and haptic feedback vibration for over and under the threshold you set.
Use Background Mode for “always on” monitoring, to continuously record heart rate in the background and get realtime alerts.
Since Background Mode keeps the heart rate sensor and its LED lights on in the background for continuous heart rate readings, you may notice decreased battery life if you leave it on for a long period of time.
Unfortunately, due to limitations in watchOS, Background Mode in the app does not work while you’re recording a Workout with another app at the same time. Only one workout app is allowed to run in the background at a time.
There’s also no iOS companion app for iPhone or iPad, or a Mac app. It’s just an Apple Watch app.
It is mostly designed for high heart rate notifications, but it could also be used to get feedback when you have a low heart rate. You could use it to monitor your resting heart rate, or as a simple fitness tracker to take heart rate measurements and provide realtime feedback while you’re working out. It’s a simple, all-around heart rate monitoring and heart rate tracking app. It doesn’t keep track of your average heart rate or walking heart rate, just whatever your current heart rate is.
Beat Watcher requires watchOS 8 or higher, so it is compatible with the Apple Watch Series 3 or newer.
Let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: Beat Watcher is not designed to diagnose heart health or treat any heart conditions, including atrial fibrillation (afib), heart failure, tachycardia (elevated heart rate), or irregular heart beats.
