Floating heart rate bubble
A small bubble that floats over other apps with your rate and zone colour, so you can watch a video and still see your zone.
What to expect
A bubble that sits on top of whatever else you are doing. Your heart rate in the middle, the bubble itself coloured by the zone you are in.
Drag it wherever you want and it stays there, out of the way of the thing you are actually watching. Tap it to expand for a little more, your time in zone and points so far, and tap again to shrink it back to the number.
Everything keeps recording exactly as it does now. This is another window onto the session, not a different way of running one.
Why we're building it
Plenty of training happens while you are looking at something else. A workout video, a film on the turbo trainer, a match on the treadmill, a phone propped up on a rowing machine.
Today ZonePoints has to be the thing on screen. The moment you switch to anything else, the one number you are training by disappears, and you are back to guessing or breaking your rhythm to check.
The colour matters more than the digits here. A bubble that turns from green to blue tells you what you need to know at the edge of your vision, without reading anything.
It is also the visual answer to the problem the voice alerts solve for runners. If you are watching a video, spoken alerts either interrupt it or get lost in it. A bubble does not compete for the same channel.
What it needs
Android's permission to display over other apps, granted once. It is entirely optional: never turn it on and nothing about the app changes.
The bubble is drawn by the same foreground service that already keeps your sensor connected during a session, so it is not another thing running in the background.
Android first
This one is Android only to begin with. Floating windows over other apps are something Android allows and iOS does not, so the iPhone app will need a different answer rather than the same feature.
The nearest equivalent there is a Live Activity, your rate and zone on the lock screen and in the Dynamic Island, and that is what we will look at once the iPhone app is out.
When it's ready
No date yet. Use Vote for this feature at the top of this page and you'll get one email the day it ships.