Reference · Updated May 27, 2026

Frequently asked questions

Form turns your Apple Watch data into a single daily recommendation — no logging, no setup, no interpretation required.

Getting Started

What does Form actually do?: Form reads the health data already being captured by your iPhone and Apple Watch, then interprets it to give you a single daily recommendation. You do not log anything. The app answers five questions: Am I consistent this week? Did I get enough Zone 2 cardio? Am I maintaining strength? Am I balanced between strength and cardio? And most importantly — what should I do today?
What do I need to use Form?: An iPhone running iOS 17 or later and an Apple Watch that you wear regularly. The Watch needs to capture overnight heart rate and HRV data — this means wearing it to sleep at least a few nights per week. The more consistently you wear it, the more accurate and actionable the recommendations become.
Why doesn't Form ask me to log anything?: That is a deliberate design choice. The Apple Watch already captures workouts, heart rate zones, VO₂ max, resting HR, HRV, sleep, and HR recovery — without you doing anything beyond wearing it. Form's job is to interpret that data, not to collect more. No logging means no friction, and no fiction (fabricated data you entered because you forgot to log it in the moment).
How do I grant Form access to my health data?: On first launch, Form will request HealthKit permission. You can also go to Settings → Health Permissions inside the app, or navigate to the iPhone's Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Form at any time to review or change what Form can read.
How long does it take before recommendations become useful?: Form starts working from day one with whatever history you already have. The recommendations become noticeably more accurate after about 2–4 weeks, once personal baselines have stabilised. Tiles marked "baseline stabilizing" indicate that fewer than 30 days of data exist for that metric — the value shown is still real, just less statistically confident.

The TODAY Card

What is the TODAY card?

The large card at the top of the home screen. It shows today's recommendation as a short headline sentence, a one-line explanation of the reasoning behind it, and the weekly session strip (a row of seven circles showing Mon–Sun activity at a glance). Tap it to see the full rule detail — exactly which signals triggered the recommendation and why.

Why does the TODAY card have a coloured border?

The border colour signals urgency:

No border / subtle grey — everything looks normal. No anomaly detected.
Amber border — one or more signals warrant attention (e.g. HRV dipped below your baseline, sleep debt is accumulating, or training load is elevated). The recommendation will ask you to ease off or prioritise recovery.
Red border — sustained strain detected (e.g. multiple consecutive days of elevated resting HR, severely depressed HRV, or a large training load spike). The recommendation is to rest or keep activity very light.

The headline changes every day. What determines it?

Form evaluates 19 rules in priority order every time you open the app. The first rule whose conditions are met becomes today's recommendation. Rules are ranked so that recovery signals always outweigh training targets — if your body is signalling strain, Form will never tell you to push harder.

Form's recommendation seems wrong today. What should I do?

Tap the TODAY card to read the rule detail and see exactly which numbers triggered it. If it still feels off, use the "Was this off?" feedback option. This does not change today's recommendation, but it helps tune future versions. You can check how many recommendations you have flagged in Settings → Trust.

Does the recommendation update during the day if I work out?

The recommendation is generated fresh each time you open the app. If you log a workout mid-morning and then open Form again, it will acknowledge the workout and adjust its framing accordingly (e.g. "Workout done. You're on pace." rather than a prescription to go train). The underlying rule that fired may also change if a workout changes your zone accumulation.

What are the circles in the TODAY card?

That is the weekly session strip — seven circles for Monday through Sunday. A filled circle with a workout icon means a session was logged that day. A muted grey circle means no session. An outline circle is a future day. Tap any past session circle to see a summary of that workout.

Recommendation Labels (Pills)

The coloured pill above the headline tells you at a glance what category the recommendation falls into.

Pill	Colour	What it means
STRAIN	Red	Sustained body strain detected. HRV has been depressed for 3+ days, resting HR has been elevated for 5+ days, or your training load jumped sharply above your recent average. Rest or very light movement only.
POSSIBLE ILLNESS	Amber	Your overnight respiratory rate has been elevated for 2+ consecutive nights. This is an early illness signal that often precedes HRV dips by 24–48 hours. Light activity only.
RECOVERY DOWN	Amber	Today's HRV is more than 15% below your personal 60-day average. A single-day dip — worth listening to, but not a sustained alarm.
LOAD SPIKE	Amber	Your training load this week is 1.5–1.8× your 28-day average (moderate spike). Pay attention to how your body feels.
SLEEP DEBT	Amber	You have accumulated more than 5 hours of sleep deficit over the rolling 7-day window. Prioritise rest over additional training tonight.
TRENDING DOWN	Amber	HRV has been quietly declining over the last 14 days (even if no single day triggered an alarm), or HR recovery has dropped 4+ BPM below your baseline. Could be early overtraining or poor sleep quality.
PLATEAU	Amber	VO₂ max has been flat for 4+ weeks despite Zone 3–4 effort being below target. Adding higher-intensity cardio this week would give your aerobic capacity a stimulus to adapt.
AHEAD	Grey	You are ahead of expected weekly pace on your training targets. No strain detected.
ON TRACK	Grey	You are 70–100% of expected pace on your weekly targets. No strain detected.
BEHIND PACE	Grey	You are below 70% of expected pace. No strain detected, but there is a gap to close if you want to hit this week's targets.
EASING BACK	Grey	The app hasn't received overnight HRV or resting HR data for 4–7 days (watch was off or uncharged). Baselines are uncertain; the app is giving you space to recalibrate.
REBUILDING	Grey	No overnight data for 8+ days. The app is rebuilding its picture of your baseline. Recommendations will sharpen as readings resume.

Readiness Metrics

The Readiness section shows four (or five) tiles representing today's body signals. These drive the highest-priority recommendations.

HRV (Heart Rate Variability)

What is HRV?: Heart rate variability is the variation in time between consecutive heartbeats. A higher HRV generally means your nervous system is well-recovered and ready to handle training stress. A lower HRV signals your body is under load — from training, illness, poor sleep, stress, or alcohol.
How does Apple Watch measure it?: The Watch measures HRV overnight during sleep using the SDNN method (standard deviation of NN intervals). Overnight readings are more consistent than daytime readings because they are less affected by activity, caffeine, and mental focus.
What does the delta (e.g. "↓ 18%") mean?: It is the percentage difference between today's overnight reading and your personal 60-day rolling average. A reading more than 15% below your own average triggers an amber recommendation. The threshold is relative to you, not to a population average — a chronically "low" HRV person and a high-HRV athlete are both assessed against their own baselines.
My HRV seems low every day. Is something wrong?: HRV varies enormously between people — normal ranges span from under 20 ms to over 100 ms. What matters is the trend relative to your baseline. If your HRV is consistently 10–15% below what it usually is for you, that is worth paying attention to. If it is stable (even if the number looks low compared to what you have read online), Form will treat it as normal.

Resting Heart Rate (RHR)

What is resting heart rate?: Your heart rate at rest — how many times your heart beats per minute when your body has minimal demands on it. Apple Watch computes this throughout the day based on periods when you are still and calm.
How does Form use RHR?: Form tracks your RHR relative to your personal 60-day average. If RHR has been elevated for five or more consecutive days, it fires a red STRAIN rule — this pattern is a reliable indicator that your body is under sustained stress (overtraining, illness, or insufficient recovery).
Why is RHR in both Readiness and Trends?: They are answering different questions. The Readiness tile shows today's RHR versus your recent personal baseline — an anomaly detector ("is something off right now?"). The Trends tile shows the long-term trajectory over 30 days — a fitness progress indicator ("is my aerobic fitness improving over time?"). A declining RHR in the Trends section is actually a positive sign.

Sleep

What sleep data does Form use?: Form reads total sleep duration from HealthKit's sleepAnalysis data — the same source the Apple Health app uses. If you use a third-party sleep tracking app (e.g. AutoSleep or Sleep Cycle) and it writes to Apple Health, Form will pick that up too.
What does the Sleep tile show?: Last night's total sleep in hours and minutes, and its difference from your personal 60-day average. The target for weekly targets and sleep debt calculations is 7 hours per night.
What is the Sleep detail view?: If your Apple Watch Series 8 or later recorded sleep stages, the detail view shows a breakdown of last night's sleep by stage: Deep, Core (Light), REM, and Awake. A warning note appears if Deep sleep was below 15% of total — this often correlates with lower HRV the following morning.

HR Recovery (HRR)

What is HR recovery?: HR recovery (HRR) measures how quickly your heart rate drops in the one minute immediately after you stop a high-intensity workout. A faster recovery — meaning a larger drop in BPM — indicates better cardiovascular fitness and parasympathetic nervous system function.
Why does Form show "—" for HR recovery?: Apple Watch only writes a HRR value for workouts where your heart rate was sustained in Zone 3 or above and the watch detected a clean cool-down. Strength training, casual walks, and yoga rarely produce a value. If you have not done a qualifying workout recently, there is no data to show.
How do I capture HR recovery data?: Do at least one workout per week from these types: running, cycling, hiking, rowing, elliptical, stair stepper, or HIIT. When you finish, sit or stand still for 2–3 minutes — walking off immediately is the most common reason a value is not recorded, as the watch cannot get a clean post-exercise heart rate reading.
What does Form's HRR baseline use?: A rolling average of your last 4 qualifying sessions over the past 30 days, compared against your 90-day session baseline. If your recent 4-session average has dropped 4+ BPM from your long-term session baseline, Form fires a TRENDING DOWN amber recommendation.

Respiratory Rate

What is respiratory rate?: Your breathing rate during sleep, measured in breaths per minute (brpm). Apple Watch Series 8 and later measures this automatically every night.
Why does this tile sometimes not appear?: The tile is only shown on devices that record respiratory rate data — Apple Watch Series 8 or later. On older Watch models, no data is available and the tile is hidden.
What is the threshold for a warning?: A 2+ BPM elevation above your personal 7-night rolling baseline for 2 consecutive nights triggers the amber POSSIBLE ILLNESS recommendation. A single elevated night does not trigger it; both of the last two nights must be above baseline. The rule clears automatically the morning after your rate returns to normal.
Why does the copy say "possible early illness" rather than "you're sick"?: Elevated respiratory rate has several causes beyond illness — altitude, alcohol, certain medications, and high training load can all raise it temporarily. Form uses neutral language and does not diagnose. Think of it as a prompt to pay attention to how you feel, not a diagnosis.

This Week Metrics

The This Week section shows your progress toward five weekly training targets, plus context rows for sleep debt, steps, active calories, and training load.

Active Days

What counts as an active day?: Any day on which you logged a workout in the Apple Workout app or a compatible third-party app that writes to Apple Health. Passive steps or background movement does not count unless Shadow Detection is enabled (see Shadow Detection).
What is the target?: 5 active days per week (Monday–Sunday).

Zone 2 Cardio

What is Zone 2?

Zone 2 is your aerobic endurance training zone — sustained, conversational-pace effort that trains your aerobic base, improves fat oxidation, and builds the foundation for all other fitness. Research shows the majority of endurance training should fall in this zone for long-term cardiovascular development.

How does Form calculate Zone 2 boundaries?

Using the Karvonen heart rate reserve formula:

Lower boundary: resting HR + 60% × (max HR − resting HR)
Upper boundary: resting HR + 70% × (max HR − resting HR)

Your max HR is estimated with the Tanaka formula (208 − 0.7 × age). Your resting HR is your personal 60-day rolling average. If your date of birth is not set in Apple Health, a population average (equivalent to a ~35-year-old) is used as a fallback.

What is the weekly target?

150 minutes per week — consistent with ACSM and WHO guidelines for aerobic activity.

What counts toward Zone 2 minutes?

Heart-rate data from your logged Apple Watch workouts where heart rate was within your Zone 2 range. Background walking and movement without a logged workout does not count (unless Shadow Detection is enabled).

Zone 3–4 Cardio

What is Zone 3–4?: Zone 3–4 is moderate-to-high-intensity cardio — harder than a comfortable aerobic pace, pushing into territory that improves VO₂ max and lactate threshold. This includes brisk running, cycling at pace, HIIT, and sustained intervals.
What is the target?: 45 minutes per week. Zone 3–4 minutes accumulate from the same logged workouts as Zone 2 — any time your heart rate is in the upper Karvonen bands during a workout.

Strength Sessions

What counts as a strength session?: Any workout logged as: Traditional Strength Training, Functional Strength Training, Cross Training, or High Intensity Interval Training. Other workout types (running, cycling, yoga, etc.) do not count as strength sessions.
What is the target?: 2 sessions per week.

Strength / Cardio Balance

What is this row?: A range indicator showing the ratio of your strength workout time to your cardio workout time this week. Rather than a simple progress bar, it shows a target band and your current position relative to it.
What is the target ratio?: 1 part strength to 2–3 parts cardio, measured by time. If you do 60 minutes of cardio in a week, 20–30 minutes of strength training puts you in the target band.

Sleep Debt

What is sleep debt?: The cumulative shortfall between your actual sleep and the 7 hours per night target, rolling over the last 7 calendar days. Only nights with recorded sleep data are counted — missing nights are not treated as zero-sleep nights.
When does it appear in recommendations?: When sleep debt exceeds 5 hours over the rolling 7-day window (averaging less than ~6 hours per night), Form fires an amber SLEEP DEBT recommendation, suggesting you prioritise rest over additional training.
Why is the bar coloured differently from the other progress rows?: The sleep debt bar grows as debt increases (unlike training targets where progress toward a goal fills the bar). It turns amber when debt exceeds 2 hours and red when it exceeds 5 hours.

Steps & Active Calories

What are Steps and Active Calories?: Context-only tiles showing your rolling weekly totals. Steps are your combined iPhone + Apple Watch pedometer count. Active Calories are the energy your Apple Watch attributes to deliberate movement above your resting metabolic rate.
Why can't I tap these tiles?: In the current version they are context-only displays. Full drill-down detail views for steps and active calories are planned for a future release.

Load Ratio (ACWR)

What is ACWR?

ACWR stands for Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio. It compares your recent training load (last 7 days of workout active energy) to your longer-term training baseline (the 28-day rolling average). A ratio of 1.0 means you are training at your recent average. A ratio of 1.3 means 30% above average.

Why does this matter?

Research in sports science consistently shows that large, sudden spikes in training load relative to your baseline — rather than absolute training volume — are the primary predictor of soft-tissue injury risk.

What do the colour thresholds mean?

Ratio	State	Meaning
Below 0.8	Normal	Undertraining — no rule fires in the current version
0.8–1.3	Normal (green)	Healthy training range
1.5–1.8	Amber	Moderate spike — pay attention to fatigue
Above 1.8	Red	Severe spike — STRAIN recommendation, rest advised

Why is ACWR not showing?

ACWR requires at least 14 days of workout history with a minimum of 2 workouts logged before it can appear. If you are new to the app or have recently started logging workouts, the tile will show a "baseline stabilizing" marker until sufficient history exists.

Trends Metrics

The Trends section shows slow-moving signals over 30–90 days. These reveal long-term fitness trajectory rather than day-to-day anomalies.

VO₂ Max

What is VO₂ max?: VO₂ max is the maximum rate at which your body can consume oxygen during intense exercise — it is the gold-standard measure of cardiovascular fitness. A higher VO₂ max means your cardiovascular system can deliver more oxygen to working muscles, which directly correlates with endurance performance, longevity, and overall health outcomes.
How does Apple Watch measure it?: Apple Watch estimates VO₂ max using heart rate data during outdoor walks, runs, and hikes — specifically by correlating your heart rate response to your pace. The estimate updates roughly once per week when qualifying activity data is available.
What does the context band mean (e.g. "above avg · 40–49 M")?: This compares your current VO₂ max to population norms stratified by age and biological sex (sourced from ACSM / Cooper Institute data). It answers "is this number good for someone like me?" and is shown for context only — it does not affect recommendations, which are always based on your personal baseline.
What triggers a PLATEAU recommendation?: If your VO₂ max has been flat for 4+ weeks and your Zone 3–4 minutes have been below the 45-minute weekly target, Form suggests adding a higher-intensity session. The body needs Zone 3–4 stimulus to drive VO₂ max improvements — Zone 2 alone maintains it but doesn't improve it.

Resting HR (Trend)

What does the Resting HR trend tile show?: The 30-day trajectory of your resting heart rate. Unlike the Readiness tile (which flags today's reading as an anomaly), this tile tracks whether your RHR is improving over time. A gradually declining resting HR over weeks and months is a clear sign of improving cardiovascular fitness.

Walking Heart Rate

What is walking heart rate?: Apple Watch computes your average heart rate during casual, unlogged walking throughout the day. A lower walking heart rate over time means your cardiovascular system is becoming more efficient — your heart doesn't need to work as hard to sustain the same level of activity.

Weight

Where does weight data come from?: From any connected smart scale or manual entry in the Apple Health app. Form reads this passively — you never enter weight in Form directly.
Why does the tile sometimes not appear?: The weight tile is hidden when no weight data exists in Apple Health. Once at least 7 days of readings are available, the tile appears and shows the 30-day trend.

Consistency Score

What does the Consistency Score measure?: The percentage of the last 8 complete Monday–Sunday weeks in which you hit all five weekly training targets simultaneously: active days, Zone 2, Zone 3–4, strength sessions, and balance ratio. It is a lagging fitness-habit signal — not how this week is going, but whether the pattern is holding over time.
What is a good score?: Success is ≥ 75% (6 of 8 weeks). 50–74% is normal. Below 50% triggers a grey recommendation to get back on track. If fewer than 4 complete weeks of data exist, the tile is hidden until enough history accumulates.
Why doesn't sleep count toward the Consistency Score?: Sleep is a nightly readiness signal rather than a weekly training achievement. It influences your Readiness tiles and can trigger a sleep debt recommendation, but it is not included in the Consistency Score targets.

Walking Speed

What is walking speed?: Your average walking speed derived from your iPhone's motion sensors during everyday walks (not logged workouts). It is a proxy for functional mobility — for the 30–50 age group, gradual declines in walking speed can be an early indicator of fitness age regression that is independent of deliberate training.
Why isn't this always visible?: The tile is hidden until at least 7 days of walking speed readings exist. It also only appears on iPhones that have sufficient motion data.

Active Calories Trend

What does the Active Calories Trend show?: The 30-day trend in daily active energy expenditure — how many calories your Watch attributes to deliberate movement above baseline each day. A positive trend typically reflects increased training volume or intensity over time.

Baselines & Personalisation

What is a personal baseline?

Every metric in Form is assessed against your own rolling historical average — not a population norm. "HRV −15%" means 15% below your 60-day average. This means Form adapts to your body, whether you have naturally low HRV or naturally high resting HR, without penalising you for being outside a generic normal range.

What baseline window is used for each signal?

Signal	Baseline window
HRV, Resting HR, Sleep	60 days
VO₂ max	90 days
HR Recovery	Last 4 qualifying sessions (30-day window)
Respiratory Rate	7 nights
ACWR (chronic load)	28-day rolling average
Sleep debt	7-day rolling
Training Consistency	8 most recent complete weeks

What does "baseline stabilizing" mean on a tile?

It means fewer than 30 real data points exist for that metric's baseline window. The current value shown is real, but the personal average it is compared against has less statistical confidence. As more data accumulates, the baseline stabilises and the marker disappears.

Does Form use my age and sex?

Yes — Form reads age and biological sex from Apple Health (the same values you set in the Health app). Age is used to calculate your estimated max heart rate (Tanaka formula), which sets your Zone 2 and Zone 3–4 boundaries. Sex is used to contextualise VO₂ max against population norms (e.g. "above avg · 40–49 M"). These characteristics are never used as rule thresholds; all recommendations remain relative to your personal baseline.

What if my age or sex is not set in Apple Health?

No date of birth: Zone boundaries fall back to a population average. A note appears in the This Week section suggesting you add your date of birth for accurate zones.
Sex "not set" or "other": Everything works normally. The VO₂ max context band shows the population average across both sexes for your age bracket, without a sex label.

Data Gaps & Missing Data

I forgot to wear my Watch for a few days. What happens?

Form automatically detects how many consecutive nights are missing overnight data and adjusts its behaviour accordingly:

Gap	What Form does
0–1 nights	Fully operational. All recommendations available.
2–3 nights	Streak-dependent rules (e.g. "HRV elevated for 3 days") are suppressed, but training and trend recommendations still work.
4–7 nights	EASING BACK mode. Prescriptive training recommendations pause. TODAY card shows a gentle welcome-back message.
8+ nights	REBUILDING mode. Only a default message appears. Baselines resume stabilising as overnight readings return.

This ensures Form never generates a falsely alarming recommendation based on a gap in data. A missed night is never treated as a low-HRV night.

Some tiles show "—". What does that mean?

The metric exists in Form's data model, but no Apple Health data was found for it yet. Common causes: HealthKit permission not granted for that data type, an older Apple Watch that doesn't record the metric, or insufficient workout history (for HRR and ACWR). The tile will update automatically once data becomes available.

My metrics look wrong after I came back from a trip. Is that normal?

Yes — this is expected. If your Watch was off or you didn't log workouts while travelling, your chronic training average (ACWR) may temporarily make your return-week load look inflated. Form suppresses load-spike rules during and immediately after medium/long gaps specifically to avoid this false alarm. By day two back, the pace math naturally adjusts based on remaining days in the week.

Shadow Detection

What is Shadow Detection?: An opt-in feature (found in Settings → Shadow Detection) that attempts to infer unlogged physical activity from your Apple Watch's granular heart rate and step data. When enabled, Form looks for patterns — elevated heart rate combined with increased step counts — that suggest you were active even if you didn't log a workout.
Why would I use this?: If you regularly exercise without starting an Apple Watch workout (e.g. you go for a walk or bike ride but forget to record it), Shadow Detection prevents those days from counting as missed sessions. Days where unlogged activity was inferred appear with a different visual indicator in the weekly session strip.
Is it accurate?: It is a heuristic inference, not a definitive classification. It works well for sustained aerobic activity but is less reliable for low-movement activities. If accuracy is important to you, logging workouts explicitly on your Watch will always be more reliable.

Privacy & Data

Where is my health data stored?: All data stays on your device and in your personal iCloud-protected Apple Health database. Form reads from HealthKit — it does not transmit your health data to any external server, and it does not have a backend.
Does Form share my data with anyone?: No. Form is a passive reader of Apple Health data. It does not export, share, or transmit your health information.
Can I revoke Form's access to my health data?: Yes. At any time, go to iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Form and toggle off any data types you no longer want Form to read. You can also adjust permissions from within the app at Settings → Health Permissions.
Where can I read the full privacy policy?: The full policy is at privacy_policy.html — it covers subscriptions, what network requests Form does and doesn't make, and your rights.

Subscription & Settings

What is included in the free version?: Form starts with a free trial. During the trial, all features are available. The trial length is shown in Settings → Subscription.
What happens when the trial ends?: A subscription is required to continue using the full app. If you choose not to subscribe, the app will indicate that a subscription is needed.
How do I restore a previous purchase?: Go to Settings → Subscription → Restore to restore a prior purchase on the same Apple ID.
What does the Appearance setting do?: It switches the app between light mode, dark mode, or following your iPhone's system setting. All three modes are fully supported.
What is the Trust section in Settings?: It shows how many of Form's daily recommendations you have flagged as "off-base" in the last 30 days. Flagging a recommendation (via the "Was this off?" option on the home screen) does not change the current recommendation but provides signal to improve the rule set in future updates.

The activity advice provided by Form is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Consult your healthcare provider before making any changes to your diet, sleep or exercise routine.