Walking is one of the simplest ways to become more active and stay in shape, bringing numerous physical benefits and helping regulate mood and improve mental well-being. Using an app to track walks can make the experience more useful, depending on what you want to achieve, such as counting daily steps, recording routes, or offering detailed stats.
A good walking app can provide structured training or give your workout a deeper purpose. There are several walking apps worth considering, each aimed at a slightly different type of walker. ActivityTracker is best for everyday walking and activity tracking, focusing on information like steps, distance, active time, and calories burned.
Walking Apps for Different Needs
ActivityTracker leverages your phone’s motion sensors to automatically log movement, conserving battery life. For focused walking sessions, its Activities feature incorporates GPS tracking, enabling manual session starts, route mapping, and access to detailed metrics like pace, elevation, splits, and heart rate.
The app enables users to set weekly fitness goals and provides daily targets based on these. It offers progress alerts, AI-driven daily activity insights, and tools to review daily, weekly, and monthly totals. Motivational quotes are also included to keep users engaged.
Walkmeter enhances walking by offering a full fitness tool for smartphones, featuring maps, graphs, splits, intervals, and a variety of stats. It primarily uses GPS for outdoor tracking but also integrates data from the phone’s sensors.
Users can track metrics such as distance, pace, elevation, heart rate, and cadence. The app supports audio updates during walks, interval training, and custom workouts. It also provides Google Maps integration for terrain and navigation, along with weather and temperature logging.
Apps for Health and Charity
Google Health serves as a tracker for monitoring overall wellness and daily activities. The app can track essential walking stats, such as steps, distance, and calories without requiring another dedicated fitness tracker. At the same time, it can bring together relevant information from compatible apps and devices, giving you a broader overview of your sleep, fitness, nutrition, and overall health.
Charity Miles links walking with charitable giving, enabling users to raise funds for various causes through walking, running, or cycling. It supports both outdoor and indoor walking, using GPS for outdoor distance measurement and motion sensors for indoor tracking.
For indoor walking, it uses the device’s motion sensors, and there’s also a pedometer mode available, which can get activity data from Apple Health or an Android phone’s pedometer. Charity Miles allows you to choose from a large selection of charities and keep track of your personal contribution over time.
Walking for Weight Loss focuses on guided walking techniques rather than just step counting, offering a three-month interval-walking program with varying difficulty levels. Audio instructions allow users to follow workouts without constant phone interaction.
The app combines faster and slower walking intervals and can be used both outdoors and on a treadmill. During outdoor sessions, GPS records the route, while the app tracks metrics like distance, time, pace, and calories. Walking for Weight Loss provides workout reminders, customizable music integration, and a training calendar that helps you keep track of completed sessions, with the app’s 3-month program offering a structured approach to weight loss.
Choosing the Right App
The right app for a user depends on their specific goals and preferences. For example, someone who wants to simply track their daily steps and activity may find ActivityTracker or Google Health suitable. On the other hand, someone who wants more detailed statistics and control over their workouts may prefer Walkmeter.
