Strava has turned back on syncing to Apple Health from third-party applications – such as Garmin and Zwift – following an uproar from the cycling community.
In a recent update, Strava had removed that functionality, meaning only activities recorded natively on the Strava app would sync with Apple Health. Activities recorded on a Garmin, or on Zwift, and synced with Strava wouldn’t then go on to sync with Apple Health.
Strava has since released a statement clarifying: “Our attempt to prevent duplicate activity uploads from posting to Strava created unintended consequences for our athlete community.”
“After listening to their feedback and assessing the situation we have decided to turn syncing back on for third party applications to Apple Health.”
(Image credit: Future)
But even without Strava third-party syncing, it was still possible to sync rides with Apple Health. More established platforms could be set up to push rides directly to Apple Health.
However, some users have reported that Zwift’s integration can be unreliable and syncing first with Strava provided a more stable experience.
Although Strava may have been attempting to improve the user experience, trying to “prevent duplicate activity uploads from posting to Strava”, the app update caused greater frustrations.
For smaller apps without a direct integration with Apple Health – and for users who wished to use Strava as a central ride pushing hub – use of the application RunGap provided an alternative workaround.
Instead of rides being pushed from: Zwift > Strava > Apple Health, users’ rides would instead go: Zwift > Strava > RunGap > Apple Health.
ibikeforcookies on Reddit captured the sentiment, saying: "This is so frustrating, made even worse by the fact Garmin Connect doesn't properly sync active calories. I question why I pay for Premium Strava at this point just to have feature taken away."
But Strava has been receptive to the complaints and subsequently turned third-party syncing to Apple Health back on.
After winning the 2019 National Single-Speed Cross-Country Mountain Biking Championships and claiming the plushie unicorn (true story), Stefan swapped the flat-bars for drop-bars and has never looked back.
But his favourite rides are multiday bikepacking trips, with all the huge amount of cycling tech and long days spent exploring new roads and trails - as well as histories and cultures. Most recently, he’s spent two weeks riding from Budapest into the mountains of Slovakia.
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