Your miles are nobody's business.

Coming from Strava?

Strava is a good app whose business model, as of this writing, needs two things from you: a yearly subscription for most of the analysis, and a copy of your GPS history on its servers so the social features can work. SilentMile is built the other way around.

• The subscription features are included. Segments, a personal heatmap, saved routes you can follow, with live progress and off-course alerts, training plans, fitness and freshness, matched runs, race predictions and workout replay are all in SilentMile for one purchase of $4.99. As of this writing, Strava puts most of that behind its yearly plan.
• Your data has no server to go to. Strava's heatmap and segments exist because millions of GPS tracks sit on Strava's servers. SilentMile computes the same things from your own history, on your own device, and has no server to upload to.
• What you give up. The feed, kudos, clubs, public leaderboards and live location sharing. Every one of those needs a server holding everyone's location, so we don't build them. If the social side is the part of Strava you love, keep Strava. If it isn't, you probably don't need to keep paying for it.
• Moving over takes a few minutes. Strava lets you download your whole archive as GPX files. Open them in SilentMile and your history, PRs and routes come with you. Going the other way works too, since every workout exports as GPX.

The advanced features, without the subscription

These are the parts of a fitness app that usually cost a yearly fee. None of them needs a server, so they are simply in SilentMile, computed on your phone.

• Segments. Mark any stretch of road or trail and race your own past times on it. Efforts and PRs are matched automatically against your history, and while you run, a live segment tells you whether you are ahead of your best.
• Personal heatmap. Every track you have recorded, stacked on one canvas so the roads you run most glow brightest. Rendered on the phone, never uploaded.
• Routes. Save a course from any workout or an imported GPX file, then follow it on your next run with live progress and off-route warnings.
• Training plans. Couch to 5K, 10K and half marathon plans that check off your workouts as you do them. Or build your own: pick a race, a date and how many days a week you can run, and the plan is built from your recent mileage and PRs, with paces, and adjusts week to week from what you actually ran.
• Fitness and freshness. Training load and form over time, per-workout analysis, matched runs on the same route so you can see whether you are getting faster, and a progress view that puts this training block against the last one.
• Race predictions. Finish times from the mile to the marathon, worked out from your own PRs, with training paces to match.
• Workout summaries, written on the phone. A few plain sentences about each workout, drawn from your numbers. On iPhones with Apple Intelligence that is Apple's on-device model; on other phones it is a set of rules. Either way nothing leaves the device.
• Replay. Play any workout back along its route with the numbers moving, drawn from your own GPS points.
• Goals. Weekly, monthly or yearly targets for distance, time, elevation or number of workouts.

A real tracker, not a compromise

• Record with GPS. Pace, splits, elevation, heart rate from your watch or a Bluetooth strap, and manual laps with spoken lap times. Recording continues with the screen off.
• Auto-pause that waits for you to actually stop. It is off unless you want it, and when you turn it on it reads your steps as well as GPS, so a slow stretch under trees doesn't pause your run.
• Running metronome. Clicks at the cadence you set, over your music, with the screen off.
• Live stats on the Lock Screen. Time, distance, pace, heart rate and cadence in a Live Activity and the Dynamic Island while you record. Numbers only; your route stays inside the app.
• Maps drawn on your phone. Your route is rendered from your own GPS points rather than downloaded map tiles, which is why it works offline.
• Apple Watch app. Record from your wrist; workouts reach the phone over the local watch link.
• Bluetooth sensors. Heart-rate straps, cadence sensors and power meters connect directly to your phone.
• Your data is portable. Import GPX and FIT files from Strava or Garmin, and export everything as GPX whenever you like.

Privacy that is built in, and that you can check

There is no networking code in SilentMile, so the usual "we don't sell your data" promise isn't needed. The app has no way to send anything on its own; the only copies that ever leave are the ones you export or write to Apple Health. That is a description of how the software is built, and the network part of it is something you can test yourself.

• Encrypted database. Every workout sits in an AES-256 encrypted database, keyed from your device's Keychain.
• Kept out of backups. SilentMile's database never rides along inside an iCloud or computer backup. The honest cost is that if you lose the phone, the history goes with it, so export GPX now and then if it matters to you.
• App lock. Face ID, or a PIN that is hashed and stored only in the Keychain.
• Erase means erase. One button wipes and re-keys the database, destroys the keys, and removes anything SilentMile wrote to Apple Health. If a step fails, the app tells you which one.
• The fine print, stated plainly. iOS itself may contact Apple's location service when GPS starts, and no app can stop that. Airplane Mode can, and SilentMile keeps recording there; the first GPS fix just takes a little longer. The details are in the privacy policy.

A word on limits. SilentMile is built for people who want a good tracker without handing their runs to a company, and it does that job well. It cannot make your phone unhackable, and it can't control what the rest of your device does. If your safety or your livelihood depends on your location history staying secret, don't rely on any app for that, this one included. Test the network claims yourself, understand the other risks on your device, and read the terms, which spell out what we do and don't promise.

Fair questions

Why is it paid?

Because you are the customer rather than the product. $4.99 once buys the app, and there is nothing else to sell you. Most free fitness apps make their money from your data or from getting you onto a subscription.

Can I try it first?

Apple doesn't offer trials for paid apps. If you buy it and it isn't for you, Apple's refund process at reportaproblem.apple.com works for SilentMile like any other app, and we would rather refund you than keep a customer who doesn't want it.

Where's the feed? Kudos? Leaderboards?

Deliberately absent. Social features require servers, and servers require your location history. SilentMile is for people whose runs are their own.

Can I still use Apple Health?

Yes, and it is your call. Reading heart rate needs your permission, and writing workouts to Health is off by default for both phone and watch workouts, because Health can sync to iCloud under your Apple settings and we would rather you decide.

Who is this for?

Anyone who wants a good tracker without an audience: people who left Strava, people who would rather not have their routes on a server, and people who just think a morning run isn't content.