Documentation

What Gym Buddy is

Gym Buddy is a workout planner and tracker for iPhone with an AI trainer, Rhino, built in. You describe a session in plain language; Rhino writes it as a table of exercises, sets, reps and weights; the app saves it as a workout you can run again and again. While you train, you tick off sets one at a time, adjust weights and reps as needed, and a rest timer counts you down between sets. Every finished session counts towards a streak, appears on an activity heatmap, and feeds your personal bests and “last time” reminders.

Since then the app has grown a readiness dial, heart-rate zones built from your own efforts, strength standards, trophies and a rank for Rhino himself. This page covers version 2026.9.23.

Your workouts and history are stored on the phone. The text of your conversations with Rhino is sent off the device so that the reply can be generated, and gym search text leaves the phone to find a gym. See privacy in brief.

Rhino is an AI model, not a qualified coach or clinician. Please read the disclaimer.

Requirements

The tab bar and the four pages

A floating capsule sits at the bottom of the screen with four destinations. The page scrolls on behind it rather than stopping at a hard edge.

No page wears a coloured bar. Each one opens with a large title under a small eyebrow line, and that title shrinks into the transparent bar at the top as the list scrolls. A page you have pushed into, such as a settings page or a session, has a plain chevron on the left to come back.

The home screen

Home opens with the date as an eyebrow line and the Gym Buddy wordmark as its title. Under them, top to bottom:

• Streak card. A flame carrying your current streak in days, whether you have trained today, and a chip for any frozen days. Tap it to open the Progress page.
• Readiness. A dial and one word for how today looks. See readiness.
• This week’s event. The challenge everyone gets on a Monday, such as Bike Week or Plank Week.
• Up next. A workout scheduled for today is recommended first and badged Today. Otherwise the workout you have gone longest without doing is recommended. Rotating through your workouts this way keeps a split balanced without you having to remember what you did last.
• All workouts. Every other saved workout, each with its exercise list and a play button to start it.

Rhino and Settings have their own tabs in the bar at the bottom. The New workout button creates a workout. With nothing saved yet, home offers a starter workout you can run straight away.

Readiness

The readiness row on home is a dial and a plain word for how today looks: Fresh, Ready, Steady, Tired or Rest today. It is built from how your last session felt, your training load over the past weeks, the days since you last trained and, if Apple Health has them, your sleep, heart-rate variability and resting heart rate.

• Every part is measured against your own baseline, not against an average. A resting heart rate that has always been low is never read as tiredness.
• Tap the dial to see exactly what it was built from, part by part.
• Nothing is shown with fewer than two things to go on, and missing data never counts against you.
• It is recalculated in the background in the early morning, and again when a night’s sleep or a new heart-rate variability reading lands in Health.

Creating a workout with Rhino

1. Tap New workout on the home screen.
2. Type what you want to train and send it. Useful things to include: the muscle groups or goal, roughly how long you have, and what equipment is available. For example, “Upper body push day, about 45 minutes, I have dumbbells and a bench.”
3. Rhino replies with a table: one row per set, with the exercise name, set number, reps and weight. Cardio and timed work (“5 km run”, “plank 60 seconds”) is written in the same table and saved as a cardio or timed exercise. Rhino knows your units and, if you have listed it, the equipment at your gym. The reply streams in as it is written.
4. Not quite right? Keep talking. “Swap the shoulder press for lateral raises” or “make the weights lighter, I am new to this” both work. Rhino sees the whole conversation.
5. When you like it, tap Save in the top right. Rhino tidies the plan into a structured workout and gives it a short name that does not clash with your existing workouts. You land back on the home screen with the new workout in the list.

Training from a workout

Tap Start (or the play button) on a workout to begin. The workout screen shows one card per exercise. Each card shows the current set: its weight, its reps, a row of progress dots and a count such as 2/4 sets. The header counts sets completed across the whole workout.

• Complete a set. Swipe the set to the right, or tap the large tick on the right of the card. The card advances to the next set. Once every set is done the card stays ticked.
• Take a set back. Ticked one too many? Press and hold the tick to undo the last set. The first time you train, short tips point out the swipe, the hold to undo and the hold to finish, as each one becomes useful.
• Change the current set. Tap the weight or reps chip to open the set editor.
• See all sets. Tap the exercise name or the progress dots to open the set overview, where you can also add or remove sets and leave a note.
• Last time. Under the chips, each card reminds you what you did the last time you logged that exercise (60 kg × 8, 8, 6 · 5 days ago).

Completing a set gives one short haptic tap, dips the row and starts the rest timer. Beat a personal best and a New PB! banner says so: see PBs and progression.

The header carries the workout name, the sets done out of the total and the weight moved so far, and it counts up as you go. Its chat button opens Rhino, who knows which workout you are on and how far through it you are; the edit button opens the workout editor. With a heart-rate device connected, your live rate and the zone you are in sit in the header too.

After a set you can rate how hard it felt. The rating changes the next suggestion in front of you: an easy set steps the weight up early, a maximum effort holds it, and two hard sessions in a row back it off.

Changing a set

The set editor shows the exercise name and which set you are editing (Set 3 of 4). For a strength exercise it has two fields, weight in your unit and reps; cardio sets have distance and time, timed sets have time and an optional load (see exercise types).

• Tap − or + to step the value. Weight moves in 2.5 kg (or 5 lb) steps; reps move by one.
• For barbell weights the editor shows the plates per side (“20 + 2.5 per side”) assuming a 20 kg or 45 lb bar, so you can load up without arithmetic.
• Tap the number itself to type a value on the keypad. The dialog stays above the keyboard.
• Tap Save to apply the change to that set, or Cancel to leave it as it was.

Edits made during a session are written back into the saved workout when you complete it, so your next session starts from the updated numbers.

The set overview and notes

The overview lists every set of one exercise. Completed sets are ticked and struck through, the current set is marked NOW, and upcoming sets follow. Tap any row to edit that set: useful for planning a drop set, or fixing a number you entered wrongly two sets ago.

• Add set appends a set copied from the last one. The × on a row removes that set (an exercise keeps at least one).
• The note field holds a short reminder, such as “seat height 4” or “pause at the bottom”, shown on the exercise card every session.

Set changes and notes belong to the workout and are saved with it, whether you complete the session or stop early.

Rest timer and supersets

When you complete a set, a countdown appears with the rest length from Settings (60, 90, 120 or 180 seconds, or off). +30 s adds time; Skip dismisses it. A ring around Rhino drains as you rest and cools from red through amber to green as your heart rate comes down. Three clicks count you in, zero reads Go!, and if you run over it counts up until the next set. No timer runs after the last set of the workout.

Lock the phone and the countdown carries on as a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, showing the time left, a progress bar and which set is up next. When rest is over you get a notification, so you can put the phone face down between sets. The first time it appears, iOS may ask to allow notifications from Gym Buddy; the card itself needs no permission.

A superset pairs an exercise with the one below it: in the editor, tap the link icon on an exercise row. Linked cards are drawn joined, and ticking a set of the first exercise starts no rest: you go straight into the partner, and rest after that.

Heart-rate zones and devices

Gym Buddy shows your heart rate live while you train, in beats per minute and as a zone, and keeps the average and the peak on the session. Every beat it reads from a strap is written to Apple Health.

Devices

• Apple Watch. Start the watch app and the rate comes from your wrist.
• AirPods. Models that measure heart rate write it to Health, and the app reads it from there.
• Bluetooth straps and armbands. Polar, Whoop, Amazfit Helio or any other standard Bluetooth chest strap or armband. Pair it under Settings › Workout › Devices. The page and the scan work whether or not a strap is in range, and iOS asks for Bluetooth permission the first time you scan.

A paired strap drives the live rate, the zones and the rest ring, with the Watch and AirPods still there when you would rather use them.

Your own zones

Where it can, the app works out your threshold rather than guessing from your age. It looks at your steady cardio sessions from the last 90 days, takes your best twenty minutes and discounts it, and pins the five zones to that. It needs at least three cardio sessions of twenty minutes or more before it will say anything, and the estimate is refreshed as you train.

Without enough cardio to measure a threshold, the zones fall back to heart-rate reserve, and then to percentages of your maximum, exactly as before. A threshold that has not been refreshed for 90 days falls back in the same way.

Last time, PBs and progression

• Last time. Each exercise card shows the sets you actually ticked the last time you did that exercise, in any workout, and how long ago that was.
• PBs. When a ticked set beats your heaviest weight, or your best estimated one-rep max (weight and reps combined, Epley formula), the phone buzzes twice and a banner says so. Cardio PBs are longest distance; timed PBs are longest hold. Your first-ever set of an exercise is a baseline, not a PB, and a PB is announced once per session.
• Progression. When you complete a workout, Rhino offers a small step up for next time: one weight step (2.5 kg or 5 lb) for loaded lifts, one more rep for bodyweight ones. The suggestion is judged on the work you actually did rather than on the reps alone, so five at 14 kg can beat a planned four at 12 kg and still step up, while two hard sessions in a row back off. Choose Apply or Keep as is.

Where you stand

The Standards card grades a lift against what other people lift. Each one is classed Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced or Elite for your body weight, your age and, if you give it, your sex, along with the kilos it would take to reach the next level.

• Sex is optional and is used only to pick the right column. That happens on the phone, and the one time it leaves is inside a workout link you choose to share, so that the weights land on the other person’s standards the way they landed on yours. It is never sent to Rhino.
• Body weight comes from your latest weigh-in on Progress or from Apple Health. Without one, a lift that is graded against your body weight cannot be placed.
• DOTS. Every PB carries a DOTS score, which puts lifts at different body weights on one scale. For the squat, bench press and deadlift it also shows your share of the world record in your class.
• A lift the tables do not cover is given no level at all, rather than a guess.

The numbers come from strengthlevel.com and the card says so, with the month they were taken.

Finishing, or stopping early

• Complete workout. One finish button sits at the bottom of the screen and comes to you when the last set is done. Hold it to save, so a brush of the thumb can never end a workout. It logs the session (every set, with its weight and reps, plus how long the session took), offers a progression if you earned one, saves any edits into the workout, and returns you to the home screen. The summary asks how the session felt, which feeds readiness.
• Finish early. If sets are still outstanding, the app asks first. Choosing Finish anyway saves the workout and logs the session as cut short (it still counts towards your streak, and the heatmap shades it by the sets you did).
• Stop without saving. The close button in the top left abandons the session. Nothing is logged and weight or rep changes made during the session are discarded (notes, added or removed sets, supersets and schedule changes are kept). The app asks you to confirm, and tells you how many ticked sets would go unlogged so you can choose Complete workout instead.

A session in which no set was ticked is not logged, whichever way you leave.

If the app is closed mid-workout

A session in progress is written to the phone as you train, not at the end. Every set you tick, every weight you correct, the rest countdown and the clocks go down as they happen, so there is nothing to lose if iOS closes the app while you are resting with the screen locked, or if you take a call and come back an hour later.

The next time you open Gym Buddy it asks, with the workout’s own name: “Continue Leg Day?”, and says how far through you were and how long ago. Continue reopens the session exactly as you left it: the sets already ticked, the swaps you made, the added and skipped exercises, and the rest timer counting to the same moment it was always counting to, so a rest that ran out while you were away comes back already over rather than starting again. Discard throws it away. Dismissing the question answers neither, so the session is still there next time.

• Only one session is held at a time, which is the most that can be under way.
• An unfinished session is offered for eight hours and then forgotten. Being asked about a workout you finished in your head yesterday is worse than being asked nothing.
• Finishing a workout, or stopping it early, clears it. So does Discard.
• None of it leaves the phone. This is a local save, separate from cloud backup.

Editing a workout

Tap the edit icon in the workout screen’s app bar to switch to the editor. Here you can:

• Rename the workout. Tap the name at the top.
• Reorder exercises. Press and hold an exercise, then drag it into place.
• Rename or remove an exercise. Use the controls on its row. Removing asks for confirmation.
• Add an exercise. Tap Add, enter a name, choose Strength, Cardio or Timed, and set how many sets it has and the starting numbers.
• Link a superset. Tap the link icon on a row to pair it with the exercise below (see supersets).
• Schedule it. The row of weekday letters under the name marks the days this workout is planned for. On those days it is recommended first on the home screen.
• Ask Rhino to revise it. Tap Ask Rhino, pick a suggestion (“Easier on my knees”, “Make it harder”, “Add more back work”, “Shorter session”) or type your own request. Rhino rewrites the whole workout, keeping the progress on any exercise that stayed. You can cancel while it is thinking.

Tap Done (or the back arrow) to return to tracking. Any changes are saved into the workout at that point, so they are kept even if you then stop the session without completing it.

Exercise names

The list of exercises follows strengthlevel.com, so a name you read there is a name you can log here. Every exercise the site grades is in the list.

• Where the site is more specific than we were, its name is the one used: a plain leg press is a Sled Leg Press.
• Where the site drops the implement, as in “Bench Press”, our fuller name stays and the site’s becomes an also known as.
• Search matches both. Type an alias and the exercise it belongs to comes up, with “Also known as” printed under the name in the picker.
• Rhino picks only from this list when it writes a plan, so what it programs is what you can log and grade.

Existing workouts are renamed for you where a name moved. Your history follows the exercise, so PBs and “last time” are not lost.

Sharing workouts

Press and hold a workout card on the home screen and choose Share. You get a QR code and a link, either of which hands the whole workout to someone else: its name, exercises, sets, reps and weights, notes and supersets.

• Send the link. Copy link or the share sheet passes it to Messages, email or anywhere else. On an iPhone with Gym Buddy installed, opening the link jumps straight into the app and offers to add the workout. Without the app it opens a web page that shows the workout and links to the App Store.
• Show the QR code. Hold it up and let the other person scan it with their camera. It carries the same link.
• Receiving one. Open a shared link, or scan the code, then confirm to save the workout. It is added as a new workout; nothing you already have is overwritten, and you can rename or edit it afterwards.

The workout is packed into the link itself, in the part after the #, which browsers never send to a server. The workout itself is never uploaded and no copy is kept, and the link keeps working offline once someone has it. The server keeps one small record per share, so that the app can tell you when a workout you shared was actually added by somebody: an id for the link and the random install identifier, and nothing about the workout. Equally, anyone who has the link has the workout, so share it as deliberately as any other message. Editing a workout after sharing does not change the links already sent; share it again to pass on the new version.

Strength, cardio and timed exercises

Rhino picks the type when it saves a plan, and you choose it when adding an exercise by hand. Cards, the set editor, the overview and session history all show each type in its own terms.

Asking Rhino

Rhino answers questions about training, technique, recovery and nutrition. Open the Rhino tab for a general question, or the chat button in the workout header when you want advice about the session you are in the middle of. There Rhino is told the workout name, the exercises, and how many sets you have done. Questions outside training and food get one friendly sentence and a nudge back.

Replies stream in as they are written and may include lists and tables. Rhino uses the units you chose in Settings and knows your name and gym equipment if you have entered them. You can stop a reply mid-stream with the cancel button in the input bar.

Every conversation goes through the Gym Buddy server, which keeps the coach quick for everyone by holding each phone to a fair-use allowance. The messages you have left and the day the count resets are shown in the same words wherever they appear. Rhino Pro lifts the limit.

Progress, streaks and the heatmap

Open Progress from the tab bar, or tap the streak card on home. The page runs from your streak and muscles this week down through trends, the heatmap, your PBs and your body weight, with a door to Trophies.

Streaks

• A streak is a run of consecutive calendar days with at least one logged session.
• A day you have not trained yet does not break a streak. If you trained yesterday, the card shows the streak and asks you to train today to keep it going. Miss a whole day and a freeze covers it if you have one; otherwise it resets.
• Best streak is the longest run anywhere in your history. This week counts sessions since Monday. Total sessions counts everything logged.

Activity heatmap

The heatmap is a calendar of the last few months, one square per day, with weeks in columns. A square is shaded by the number of sets you completed that day, relative to your own typical session: an ordinary workout is mid-shade, one you cut short is lighter, and a day well above your usual, two sessions say, is darkest. Tap a square to see which workouts you did that day, then a session to see every set with its weight and reps, how long it took and the volume moved.

Sharing a session

The share icon on a session opens a preview card with the workout, the date, sets, time, volume and your best set of each exercise. Share image sends it as a picture to Messages, Instagram or anywhere else the iOS share sheet reaches. See sharing images.

Personal bests

Below the heatmap, every exercise you have logged is listed with its heaviest set and estimated one-rep max (longest distance or hold for cardio and timed work) and the date you set it. Each PB carries its level and DOTS score where the tables cover that lift. Long lists collapse behind Show all.

Body weight

Tap Log to record today’s weight in your unit. The card shows the latest reading, the change over the last month and a small trend line. One reading is kept per day; logging again replaces it.

Muscles this week

On Progress, a map of the rhino, front and back, is tinted by the sets you gave each muscle over the past week. A pale region is one you have barely touched; a deep one has had the most work. Tap a region to see the exercises behind it.

Trends

Trends chart how your training is moving: volume, sessions and the lifts you repeat. Four sessions are enough to draw four points, and the chart says whether you are looking at sessions, weeks or months, so you are never waiting for a calendar boundary.

The last 28 days of trends are free for everyone. Going further back is part of Rhino Pro.

Trophies and app icons

Trophies has its own door on Progress. It is a room for everything you collect, and empty slots are on show on purpose so you can see what is still to win.

• Personal bests for each lift.
• Streak medals for the runs you have put together.
• Monthly badges for every month you hit your training target, and dated badges for one-off days.
• Milestone ladders for each lift, at 10, 25, 50 and 100 sessions, and rungs for the volume you have moved.
• Weekly event badges from the challenge that starts each Monday. The list reaches several weeks ahead, so you and a friend can plan one.
• App icons. Twenty alternate icons, most of them earned, twenty-one counting the one the app ships with. Pick one under Settings › Appearance › App icon. A locked icon is shown in full colour with what unlocks it. The holiday icons are counted separately: there are ninety-three of them, and one reaches the picker only once its day has been trained on.

Festive icons

Halloween, Christmas and New Year have icons of their own, and they behave differently from the rest:

• Each one appears only in the week of its festival: the seven days ending on the day itself, so it turns up one week before.
• You keep it only if you train on the day. One completed session dated on the festival earns that year’s icon for good.
• Earned, it stays on the phone and in the picker all year and every year after, even if a subscription lapses or you delete the session.
• Not earned, it goes away at the end of the week. They also come with Rhino Pro and the icon pack.

Holiday badges and icons

The DAYS shelf in Trophies is a calendar rather than a ladder: a hundred dated days, the five the app has always had plus ninety-five holidays, and one rule for all of them. Turn up on the day and it is yours.

• Earning one. Finish one session dated on the day. A few holidays run longer than a day, and for those any session inside the window counts. A badge earned is kept, and deleting the session later does not take it back.
• An icon as well. Ninety-three of the days carry an app icon of their own. They are free, they are not in the Settings › Appearance › App icon picker until you have won them, and once won they stay. They are not the three festive icons above, which are bought and worn for a week.
• The days ahead, not behind. The shelf draws the next eight, so it is a short list you can act on rather than a wall of padlocks, and the link under it opens the whole twelve months.

Which country’s days you see

Some days are worldwide and the rest belong to a country, so the shelf has to know where you train. It takes that from the gym you picked in My Gym. With no gym set you get the worldwide days and nothing else.

Settings › Profile › Holidays has three answers:

• From my gym, which is the default.
• Worldwide only, for the shared days by themselves.
• A country you pick, from forty-nine, for training away from home or for the days you would rather see.

This is a preference, not a location. The app asks for no location, looks nothing up and sends nothing: the country is a two-letter code remembered for a building at the moment you chose it. See the privacy policy.

A holiday is a day to train on. Time off is a different thing, and it is under holiday breaks and streak freezes.

Rhino XP and bands

Rhino has a rank of his own, and it comes from showing up rather than from how much you lift.

• Earning XP. Every day of a streak pays, and the longer the run the more each day is worth, up to a daily ceiling. Every badge pays once as well. Rest days and frozen days hold the streak and pay nothing.
• Eight bands, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Obsidian, Titanium and Legend, with five levels in each and no ceiling on Legend. The first levels arrive in days.
• He wears the rank. Each band gives him something to keep, from a chrome sweatband and wrist wraps through a gold chain, a champion’s belt, a diamond horn, shoulder plates and gauntlets to a halo and a cape at Legend. You see it on home, in the chat and on the Home Screen widget.
• Nothing is taken away. The rank is worked out from your whole history and never goes backwards, even if you delete a session.

The header card on Trophies shows the level, your XP, how many badges you hold and what is left to the next level, with a How XP works link. The volume you have lifted is still counted, now as its own shelf of badges.

Holiday breaks and streak freezes

Freezes

A freeze covers a day you missed, automatically, so the streak carries on. Freezes are earned by training and by nothing else: they cannot be bought, and there is no XP wallet to spend. Frozen days hold the run without counting as days you trained, and home shows how many you are holding.

Holiday breaks

Going away? Start a break of up to three weeks. The streak holds for its whole length, no freezes are spent on it, and reminders stay quiet until you are back.

After time off, Rhino offers a shorter version of your own next workout, so coming back is one session rather than a mountain.

Workouts from Apple Health

With Apple Health turned on, workouts recorded by your Watch or by another app come into Gym Buddy as sessions of their own: outdoor walks and runs, rides, rows, swims, and sports such as tennis and basketball, with their distance, time and heart rate.

• They count towards your streak, your weekly event and Rhino’s read on your week.
• They feed the cardio your threshold is estimated from.
• Gym Buddy’s own sessions are not read back in, so nothing is counted twice.
• Imported workouts do not set the hour your streak reminder arrives. Only sessions you logged in the app do that.

Apple Watch and complications

The watch app is built around readiness: the dial takes the main screen, with a flame and your streak beneath it. From the wrist you also get the live heart rate, the set count in one place and the rest timer with its +30 s and Skip, plus Now Playing.

A complication puts your readiness on the watch face, and it refreshes on its own through the day. The rest timer also appears as a Live Activity in the Smart Stack.

Sharing images

Three things make a picture you can send anywhere the iOS share sheet reaches. Each puts your rhino in the spotlight with one big number, and the card is drawn on the phone.

• A session. The workout, the date, sets, time, volume and your best set of each exercise.
• Your rank. Rhino in his band, with the level he has reached.
• Year in Lifting. Seven pages about your year, including where your rhino stands and how many icons you have unlocked.

Reminders

Reminders are notifications, and they all ride on the single Streak reminder switch in Settings. Turn that off and none of them arrive. With it on, four switches under it decide which kinds you get: Streak, workouts and special days, After a break, Friends, and Monthly photo reminder, which is off until you turn it on. The app asks for notification permission once, on your first session summary, and says what it is for.

• The streak reminder arrives at the hour you usually train, worked out from the gym sessions you logged in the app. Walks and rides imported from Health do not move it.
• A morning reminder on a day you have a workout scheduled.
• Lapse reminders if you have been away for a while.
• An evening nudge on a day a daily quest is still there to finish.
• A monthly photo reminder, the morning after 28 days since your last progress photo. Off unless you turn it on.
• A holiday break quietens all of them until you are back.

Rhino Pro

Gym Buddy is free to use. Logging every set, the streak, the Watch app, the trophy room and the Rhino chat within its fair-use allowance do not cost anything and are not going to.

Finish your first workout and Pro is yours for fourteen days, with nothing to cancel: every trend, every program and your heart-rate strap. When the fortnight ends the app carries on; the parts that are Pro simply stop.

Pro adds unlimited Rhino, the full trends, unlimited saved workouts and every collectable icon, as a yearly plan or a monthly one. The last 28 days of trends stay free for everyone. Buy it from Settings › Rhino Pro, which also holds Restore purchases if you have changed phone.

The free plan holds 2 saved workouts. Pro keeps as many as you like.

The yearly plan starts with a seven-day free trial when the App Store still has one for your Apple ID. The paywall says so on the button, and it says nothing of the sort if you have had one before, so what you see there is what you will be charged. It is separate from the fourteen-day preview above: the preview needs no card and nothing to cancel, the trial is the store’s own and cancels in your App Store settings.

The icon pack is sold on its own for anyone who wants every app icon without a subscription. It is a one-off purchase, it is included in Pro, and it has its own screen under Settings › Appearance › App icon.

Accounts and cloud backup

Everything in Gym Buddy works without an account. Signing in keeps a backup of your training on the server so you can get it back on a new phone, or after deleting and reinstalling the app, and lets invites and a Pro bought on the website follow you. It is optional, and nothing below happens until you choose it.

• Signing in. Settings › Account offers Sign in with Apple and Google Sign-In. Linking both puts them on the same account, so either one gets you back in. You never give Gym Buddy a password.
• What is backed up. Exactly what the app holds: your workouts, your session history, your settings, your body-weight log and your body measurements. It is stored on the developer’s own server, in Australia, and it is used for nothing but giving it back to you.
• When it happens. On its own after you save a workout or finish a session, and whenever you tap Back up now. The Account page shows when the last one was. Deleting something never triggers a backup, so a mistake on one phone does not race to the server.
• A new phone. Sign in and tap Restore. Your history lands as it was.
• Backup, not sync. Two phones signed into the same account do not stay in step with each other minute by minute; the newer backup is the one that restores.
• Purchases follow the account. If you have Pro or the icon pack, signing in attaches it to the account rather than to the phone, which is what makes Restore purchases work on a new one.
• Deleting it. Settings › Account › Delete account removes the account, both sign-ins and every backup from the server, immediately and for good. What is on your phone stays on your phone. Signing out leaves both copies where they are.

You get one email when the account is created and one more if a second sign-in is ever linked, so you would know if it was not you. There is nothing else: no newsletters and no reminders. The privacy policy has the full account.

Friend streaks

Two people who have exchanged a workout can keep a streak together: the run of days you both trained. It needs no account on either side, and nothing is shared until both of you have said yes.

• How it starts. When someone adds a workout you shared, both phones are asked whether to keep a streak with the other. Either of you can decline, and the invitation simply lapses.
• What it counts. The days you both trained. A day one of you rested, froze or was on a holiday break keeps the run alive without adding to the number, exactly as it does for your own streak. Today is counted once you both have it; until then the number is read from yesterday.
• On the home screen. A row for each friend with the name you gave them, the shared streak, and whether they have trained today. The name is yours alone and never leaves your phone.
• The Together badge. If you both finish the same weekly event, you both get it.
• Leaving. Either of you can end it at any time, which deletes the pair and all of its days for both sides.

What the server holds is the two phones’ random installation identifiers and a list of dates. No names, no times, no workouts, no weights and no heart rate.

Inviting a friend

Every account gets an invite code and a link to go with it, under Settings › Rhino Pro. Send it to somebody who might like the app, and when they take a yearly plan you each get an extra month of Pro: thirteen months for twelve, on both sides at once.

• The code needs an account on both sides. A code is one per person for life, and a phone that is wiped and set up again cannot be told from a new person, so it is the account that holds it.
• Claiming one. Open your friend’s link on an iPhone with the app installed and it is claimed for you, or type the six characters into Settings › Rhino Pro. If you have not signed in yet, the code is kept and claimed the moment you do.
• Claiming grants nothing on the spot, and it is meant not to: the months exist when a yearly plan starts and not a moment before. A monthly plan earns neither side anything.
• Stacking. The months are added past the end of whatever cover you already have, so an invitation accepted while you are already a subscriber is collected at your next yearly renewal rather than lost.
• Your own code is not claimable by you, and a code can only be claimed once.

The Pro page shows how many people have joined through your link, how many have subscribed, and how many months you have banked.

Settings, units and your gym

Settings is the fourth tab. It is a hub of short pages, and each row says underneath it what is set behind it.

• Name. Optional; Rhino uses it now and then.
• Sex. Optional, and used only to pick the right column in the strength standards. That happens on the phone; the one time it leaves is inside a workout link you choose to share. It is never sent to Rhino.
• Units. Metric (kg, km) or imperial (lb, miles). Everything is stored in metric and converted for display, so you can switch at any time without losing anything.
• Rest timer. Off, 60, 90, 120 or 180 seconds.
• Haptics. Turn off the taps and buzzes.
• Workout › Devices. Pair a Bluetooth chest strap or armband, and see which device is driving your heart rate. See heart-rate zones and devices.
• Apple Health. Under Workout. Off by default. When on, Gym Buddy asks Health for access, then saves each completed workout (as a strength, cardio or core-training workout depending on what the session mostly was), writes the heart rate it reads from a strap, and reads your heart rate while a workout is open. Sessions of under a minute, or stopped without completing, are not saved. It also reads the workouts other apps record, your weigh-ins, and the sleep and heart-rate figures behind readiness. The Settings copy under the switch lists every type it reads. Health data is read and worked out on the phone. A few rounded lines (last night’s sleep, heart-rate variability and resting heart rate against your usual, the week’s protein, energy balance, steps and mindful minutes, body fat if known) ride inside your chat request only if you allow it: the app asks once, and the Rhino can see my health data switch here changes the answer. No dates and no raw samples. If you sign in, your backup keeps what the app saved from Health with your training, such as the heart rate of each session.
• Streak reminder. The single switch behind every reminder the app sends.
• Appearance › App icon. The twenty alternate app icons, with what unlocks each locked one.
• Rhino Pro. What is in Pro, the two plans and the free trial, and Restore purchases.
• My gym. The equipment you have access to. Search the gym directory by name, suburb or town to pick yours, or add one by hand. Type a piece of equipment, or tap the camera to photograph a machine and let Rhino identify it (the photo is sent to the server for that one request and not stored). Rhino only prescribes exercises you have kit for. What you type into the gym search leaves the phone; see privacy in brief.
• Export sessions. Shares a CSV of every logged session, one row per set with date, workout, exercise, type, weight, reps, distance and time, for a spreadsheet or another app.
• Bring my history. Brings your training in from Strong, Hevy or a Gym Buddy export. Export from the other app, save the file to Files and choose it here: the file is read on your phone and nothing is uploaded. Names are matched to the standard list and you get the last word on any the app is not sure about, sessions you already have are skipped, and one tap on Undo last import takes the whole import back off the phone.
• Delete all data. Removes workouts, history, body-weight readings, tape measurements, progress photos, a workout left in progress and your saved Rhino conversation from the phone. Settings are kept. What the phone left on the server (friend streaks, league entries, weekly events finished, shares and equipment lists) is hidden at once and erased after 30 days, and so are your cloud backups if you are signed in and also tick Also delete my backup. Until then Settings › Data offers to undo it, and the backup brings your workouts back. Workouts that were never backed up cannot be recovered.

Deleting a workout

Press and hold a workout card on the home screen, choose Delete and confirm. Swiping a card does not delete it. The workout is removed from the phone. Past sessions of it stay in your history, so your streak and heatmap are unaffected.

Connectivity

Rhino runs on a server operated by the developer. Creating a workout, revising one and chatting all need an internet connection, as does searching the gym directory; everything else works offline. Requests are sent over HTTPS. Replies for a full workout can take a little while: the typing indicator shows the request is in progress, and you can cancel it at any time.

Keeping the app up to date

When the app opens, it asks the server for the oldest version still supported. Almost always there is nothing to do and you never see it.

If your version is older than that, a full-screen page takes over with a button to the App Store. There is no way past it, because a build that old can no longer talk to the server properly. The page shows the version you have and the one you need.

No connection means no interruption. If the check cannot reach the server, times out, or gets an answer it cannot read, the app opens as normal. The check also never delays the first screen.

Troubleshooting

Rhino does not reply, or the request fails

Check that the phone has an internet connection and try again. If the server is busy, a request may time out after about a minute; sending it again usually works.

“Could not save the workout”

Rhino’s plan could not be converted into a structured workout. Ask Rhino to present the workout as a table of exercises, sets, reps and weights, then tap Save again.

The recommended workout is not the one I expected

A workout scheduled for today is recommended first. Otherwise the app recommends the saved workout that was completed longest ago; completing a workout moves it to the back of the queue.

No “last time” line or PBs appear

Both are built from logged sessions, so they appear from the second time you complete an exercise. Exercise names are matched ignoring case and spacing; a renamed exercise starts a fresh history.

The rest timer does not start

Check it is not set to Off in Settings. It also does not run after a set of an exercise that leads a superset, or after the last set of the workout.

My streak reset

A streak needs a logged session on every calendar day, unless a rest day, an earned freeze or a holiday break covers it. Sessions are logged only when you complete a workout (including finishing early) with at least one set ticked. Stopping with the close button does not log a session.

The readiness dial is not there

It needs at least two things to go on, so it stays hidden until you have logged a session or two. Turning on Apple Health gives it more to read.

My heart-rate zones look wrong

Zones are pinned to your own threshold once you have three steady cardio sessions of twenty minutes or more in the last 90 days. Before that, and again if 90 days pass without one, they fall back to the older reserve-based zones, which are wider. See heart-rate zones.

The app will not open past an update screen

Your version is older than the oldest one the server still supports. Update from the App Store and it goes away. See keeping the app up to date.

I want to move my data to a new phone

Sign in on the old phone if you have not already, check that Settings › Account shows a recent backup, then sign in on the new one and tap Restore. That is what cloud backup is for, and it is the only path that carries your history between phones directly. Without an account, workouts and history live only on the device: they are included in an encrypted iCloud or computer backup of the phone and restored with it. Settings also offers a CSV export of your session history, which is a copy rather than a move.

I was in the middle of a workout and the app closed

Open it again and it will ask “Continue your workout?” with how far through you were. See if the app is closed mid-workout.

Known limitations

• iPhone and iPad, portrait. There is an Apple Watch app. The Android version is built but not yet on Google Play.
• Heart rate needs a device: an Apple Watch, AirPods that measure it, or a Bluetooth strap. The phone itself has no sensor.
• Threshold zones need three steady cardio sessions of twenty minutes or more in the last 90 days. Without them the zones fall back.
• Readiness is a training cue only. It is not a medical reading and does not detect illness.
• Standards cover the lifts the tables grade. Anything else gets no level, and a lift graded against your body weight needs a weigh-in.
• History exports as CSV. Moving between devices needs the optional cloud backup, which is a backup and a restore rather than live sync.
• Rhino needs an internet connection and the developer’s server to be running, and is held to a fair-use allowance.

Privacy in brief

• No advertising and no tracking. The app sends anonymous usage counts to TelemetryDeck (which screens were opened, that a workout was saved) with nothing that could identify you; the privacy policy lists exactly what.
• Workouts and session history are stored on the phone. Rhino gets a short summary with each request, and the whole history leaves only as a backup if you sign in.
• Your conversations with Rhino go through the Gym Buddy server, which generates the reply and holds each phone to a fair-use allowance. What is sent is the text of the conversation (and, for in-workout chat, the workout it relates to), a short training brief, your unit preference, and any name or equipment list you have entered. A photo taken to identify equipment is sent for that request only, with its location and camera details taken out first. Do not include personal or medical details you would not want sent.
• What you type into the gym search leaves the phone, because the directory is on the server. It is logged with the number of results, to find the gyms that are missing. It is not joined to an account or to your history.
• Health data is worked out on the phone. Readiness, the heart-rate zones and the imported workouts are all worked out on the device. A few rounded Health lines go with your chat request only if you allow it, and your backup keeps what the app saved from Health if you sign in. Health data is never used for ads, never sold and never shared. The sex you set for the standards is never sent to Rhino; it travels only inside a workout link you share.
• No location. The app never reads your location. On Android 11 and older, Android asks for the location permission before any Bluetooth scan, so pairing a heart-rate strap asks for it there, and it is used for nothing else.

The full privacy policy has the detail.

Support

Questions, bug reports and suggestions: support. Please include your iPhone model and iOS version for bug reports.