Apple Fitness+ brings studio-style classes with excellent music and instruction to the comfort and safety of your living room, but right now it requires an Apple TV to stream workouts on your big screen.
Soon, that will change. Future watchOS and iOS software updates will let you use AirPlay to stream the audio and video from Fitness+ workouts directly to AirPlay 2-enabled TVs and devices. Apple offered evidence of this new integration in Developer Seed 1 of watchOS 7.4 and iOS 14.5, released today.
The experience won’t be quite the same as Fitness+ on an Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K. When streaming workouts via AirPlay, you won’t see your Apple Watch metrics on the big screen, for instance, though you’ll still be able to view these stats on the watch itself. Normally, you can see your activity rings, calories burned, and heart rate on the screen during Fitness+ workouts. You also still won’t be able to browse Fitness+ classes on your TV without one of Apple’s media streamers.
In my experience, Fitness+ is best viewed on a big screen, so it’s nice that Apple is adding this integration, as it makes the service a lot more accessible on TVs. Fitness+ earned an excellent rating in PCMag’s review and praise for its well-designed, intuitive interface, Apple Watch integration for automatic workout tracking, good class selection, and more.
News of the new AirPlay integration comes after Apple last week announced a new Fitness+ feature called Time to Walk, which is designed to make you feel like you’re on a jaunt with celebrities like Dolly Parton, NBA star Draymond Green, musician Shawn Mendes, and Emmy Award winner Uzo Aduba. Each 25- to 40-minute episode features a different celebrity, who will help pass the time on your walk by sharing stories and songs, along with photos that will show up on your Apple Watch screen.
