Runr was an App Store Top 50 app that helped runners, joggers, and walkers track their workouts. I built and designed Runr, and released it on the App Store on March 6, 2014. It was written in Objective-C and UIKit for the iPhone and original Apple Watch. Runr remained on the App Store until January 4, 2019.
Runr was (ever so briefly) featured in one of Apple’s television commercials. I’ve included the advertisement above, and you can see the Runr in-workout screen starting at the 0:22 second mark in the middle-right side of the video.
Getting it Right
I believe Runr was successful because it did a number of things “right”, and that were unique to health and fitness apps from that time period:
No Accounts
You didn’t need an account to use Runr. This was my primary motivation for creating Runr in the first place. Every workout app I tried for my own run tracking required that I sign up for an account and answer a nauseating amount of questions before I could actually start working out. After downloading Runr, you could just press “Start”, and then get going with your exercise. It was refreshing.
Deep System Integration
It took advantage of system features to deliver the best possible experience (at the time). During your run, Runr would vocalize your progress using text-to-speech synthesis. Not only that, it was fairly “smart” about it too: Runr would speak motivational phrases to you as you closed in on a personal record (or a friend’s personal record). It seems basic now, but in 2014, it was pretty cool to have your workout app tell you when you hit the 2.0 mile marker.
Friendly Social Competition
It was social. Users could climb local and global leaderboards and earn achievements via Game Center. They could even challenge a friend to a live remote race (yes, you read that right!), again all via Game Center multiplayer.
Clear Progress Metrics
You could build your progress. Runr made it dead-simple to see your progress over time. Were you getting faster? Running longer? Going further? Beautiful charts made exploring data and understanding health progress easier than ever. And it was fully integrated with HealthKit so users could optionally analyze their data using other apps.
Saying Goodbye
After nearly 5 years of Runr on the App Store, I made the difficult decision to shut it down. In the 5 years since it had been released Swift had gained serious traction, the Apple Watch had been introduced, and many of Runr’s competitors (see: major corporations like Nike, Adidas, and Strava) had vastly improved their experiences. The combination of these factors made it difficult to justify continued maintenance, and what would have eventually required a full rewrite in Swift to support new features. I was sorry to see it go, but so thankful for everything I learned and all the wonderful people (and customers!) who supported me along the way.