Strava is finally coming as a standalone app on your smartwatch

If you're tired of strapping a phone to your arm when heading out for a run or a cycle, and are one of the millions who use Strava to log their runs, then good news: you can finally use the app on a smartwatch.

That doesn't sound like that much of a big deal, but Strava has announced that you'll be able to finally leave the phone at home and have the app run natively on your smartwatch.

However, it's only on Android Wear 2.0 devices, of which there are currently very few - the LG Watch Sport and LG Watch Style are the first new devices to make use of it, and a few other smartwatches will be updated to the new platform in the coming months.

No love for Apple

The big miss here is the Apple Watch still - we've been hoping for a Strava app on the Apple Watch 2 (or the original Apple Watch) for months, if not years, and sadly it's still not here.

We'd previously spoken to Strava to see if it's planning on supporting the Apple Watch 2 and its GPS abilities any time soon, and got this response back:

"We are excited to see that Apple is introducing a native GPS into the Series 2 of the Watch. We are actively looking into how we can extend Strava's existing Apple Watch app to take advantage of the native GPS." 

It's pretty likely it'll appear on Apple's timepiece in the near future, but for now, if you want Strava on the go and don't want to have to keep a phone circulating around your body, at least there's now an option.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.