Questions

A fitness accountability coach for iPhone and Apple Watch. You commit to one session for the day and start it, train through guided sets rather than tick a checklist, and get a coach that reads your recovery before it decides how hard to push. The app is four screens: Today, Health, Coach and You. The point is not to record more. It is to make the quiet bail harder than doing the thing.

No. The iPhone app is the whole product and works on its own. An Apple Watch lets you start and run a session from your wrist, with live heart rate and set by set guidance, and it records outdoor runs and their route on its own. One thing worth knowing: the readiness score is built from sleep, resting heart rate and heart rate variability, and a phone alone does not produce those. They have to come from a watch or tracker that writes them into Apple Health.

An iPhone running iOS 26. The Apple Watch app is optional. Two Plus features, the coach's daily note and the coach conversation, need an iPhone that can run Apple's on-device model. Persto checks compatibility before presenting a purchase.

There is an Android build that shares the same tested engine, and it reached closed testing first. It is not feature identical. Anything you have read about food logging, barcode scanning or meal photos belongs to that Android build. None of it exists on iPhone or Apple Watch.

The core training experience works signed out and without an internet connection. Store purchases, manual iCloud actions and Sign in with Apple need Apple's services, while a direct phone transfer needs the local network. Coaching is computed on the device when the phone supports Apple's on-device model.

Your health, workout and body data lives on the iPhone it was recorded on. It sits in protected app storage that is excluded from device cloud and computer backups. Deleting the app removes that local store, but not workouts already in Apple Health, exported files or a setup copy you manually saved to iCloud. The app talks to no fitness-data server of ours.

Health and training data move only when you start an encrypted export or direct transfer. Persto's free manual iCloud setup copy contains only your display name and coach voice. It excludes training setup, Health readings, body measurements, goals, allergies, readiness, history and logged sets. A forgotten export passphrase is unrecoverable.

Hold both phones and send it across. The old iPhone shows a one-time 16-character code, the new one asks for it, and everything goes directly between them over the local network. The encrypted payload cannot be opened without the code, and both ends request available device authentication. Nothing is written to a transfer file or sent through a server. If the two phones are not in the same room, use the encrypted export instead.

No. There is no Persto account and nothing to sign up for. Sign in with Apple is offered and optional. It asks for neither your email nor your name, and stores only the anonymous identifier Apple issues for this one app, which is what lets two phones confirm they belong to the same person during a transfer.

No. There is no food log, barcode scanner or meal-photo feature on iPhone or Apple Watch. The current Apple app does not ask for or use allergy data. An older beta profile can remove any legacy allergy data from the You screen. Never rely on Persto to decide whether food is safe.

Readiness, workout completion, progression and calorie floors come from deterministic code. The on-device language model explains local context and answers coaching questions, but it can be wrong, does not diagnose and cannot override those rules. On a phone that cannot run it, the core training app still works.

No. There is no advertising and no data sale, and no analytics or crash reporting SDK in the app either. If Persto ever charges for anything, that is the business model, not your data.

No, and on the iPhone there is no location permission at all. The Health tab draws routes that are already in Apple Health, holds the coordinates in memory for the map on screen, and drops them. GPS recording happens on the Apple Watch, only during an outdoor session you start.

Join the early access list for testing and public App Store availability updates.

The app is free and stays useful on its own. Persto Plus adds four features: next-working-weight guidance, the coach's daily note, the trajectory card and coach conversation. In the United States it is $4.99 monthly or $39.99 yearly, with eligibility for any trial shown by Apple before purchase. Manual iCloud setup save, restore and deletion remain free.

Yes. You can export an encrypted file at any time and restore it on another iPhone, or from the first setup screen after a reinstall. Neither the export nor the restore is part of Plus, and neither will ever require a payment, because getting your own data back should not be something you buy.

No. It is not diagnostic and cannot tell you what is wrong with you. It uses available sleep, resting heart rate and heart rate variability as inputs to a conservative Ready, Moderate or Rest label. Other permitted Health readings are shown descriptively and do not change that verdict. If you have a medical concern, talk to a qualified clinician rather than an app.