Pulse
What's inside
Everything Pulse does for you two.
A full walk-through of every feature inside the Pulse couples wellness app, grouped the way the app is, and right at the bottom, a quiet way to tell us what's still missing.
01 · Your day
One cue. A whole day of context.
- Today's cue
- One gentle sentence about your partner's day, built from sleep, heart rate, HRV and movement, compared only against their own baseline, with one concrete way to be there tonight.
- Insights
- Weekly and monthly trends, a connection streak, and small patterns Pulse notices over time, every health concept sourced to the NIH, the American Heart Association and Cleveland Clinic.
- Why today looks like this
- Tap through from your own day and Pulse shows the signals behind the reading and how sure it is. Nothing about your day is a black box to you, even though your partner only ever sees the sentence.
- Rhythm Awareness
- Opt-in. Your cycle phase stays on your phone and is never named to your partner; with Rhythm Awareness on, it can shape the wording of a cue without revealing the phase behind it. Sharing your real period and cycle calendar is a separate choice, off unless you make it.
- Question of the day
- One shared, gentle question. Your partner's answer stays hidden until you've given your own. Both answers travel inside your shared iCloud space rather than through the chat encryption, and they clear out again within 48 hours.
- Evening reflection & morning echo
- One question at the end of the day about what actually made you feel close. If your partner answers too, you both find a small echo of it waiting the next morning.
- Did that help?
- The morning after a cue about you crossed, Pulse asks whether how your partner showed up helped. One tap, four honest answers. Your partner sees a line about it only when the answer was “helped” or “a little”; either way it is what teaches the app which gestures land for the two of you, so an idea that keeps missing quietly retires.
- WHOOP support Coming soon
- Wear a WHOOP instead of an Apple Watch? Pulse will bring your sleep, recovery and workouts into Apple Health, then read them like any other signal, so a band that writes nothing on its own stops being a blank screen. Your phone talks to WHOOP directly; none of those measurements ever reach our servers. How it works
02 · Together
A private space, just for the two of you.
Everything a good couples app should have: a private chat, real gestures, and a space that belongs to no one else.
Wordless signals
Hold, together
Connected · you both held at 22:41
- Chat, photos, GIFs, voice messages
- Text, voice messages, camera photos with in-app cropping, and GIF search, all end-to-end encrypted, with the key living only in your iCloud Keychain.
- Hold, together
- Press and hold the heart in chat; if your partner does the same at that moment, you both feel "Connected", no matter the distance, a small comfort built with long-distance couples in mind.
- Translate, pin, react
- Long-press any message to translate it, pin it, or react, small conveniences for the moments that matter. Hold the broken heart and the glass cracks on both screens at once.
- Wordless signals
- A candle glow, a bubble, a held heart. Presence you can send without a single word, and without a banner on their lock screen, felt the next time they look.
- Snap for them
- Press the Camera Control or Action button and Pulse opens straight to the camera, so the moment you are in reaches them before it is gone.
- Maybe they just miss you
- When they keep opening your chat without writing anything, Pulse quietly says so. A few times, never a number; the count itself never leaves their phone.
- Hands free, or locked
- Ask Siri, run it from Shortcuts, or tap the Pulse control on your Lock Screen. On iOS 18 the photo is taken without unlocking your phone, and it is sent the next time you open Pulse. It needs a connected partner.
- Their local time
- What time it is where they are, and whether they are likely asleep (from their Apple Health sleep data, refreshed when they open the app), so you know before you call. Only the time zone is shared, never your location, and it follows you if you travel. You each turn it on for yourselves, and turning it off clears it from their screen.
03 · Ask and reconnect
Asking for what you need, without a hard conversation.
Asked for
A hug, later tonight.
Affection
A hug
A talk
Closeness
Social battery
“Running low, but okay”
A gentle heads-up
You are both running low today. Maybe a soft check-in, or a quiet evening, instead of the big talk.
- Ask for what you need
- A quiet chat card for affection, a hug, a talk, or closeness, easy to send, easy to answer, the notification never spells out what was asked.
- A way back after a rough patch
- A structured, low-pressure nudge to reach out again when things have felt distant.
- A gentle heads-up
- If you're both running low, Pulse quietly suggests today might not be the day for a hard conversation, and suggests a soft check-in or a quiet evening instead.
- Social battery
- Say how much you have left today in your own words, never from a sensor. Only the level ever crosses over, and never the reason behind it.
- How to care for me
- A short, fixed-choice answer to what genuinely helps you on a hard day, so your partner is reading you rather than guessing at you.
- Unsaid
- A private notebook for the thing you have not managed to say. Name the feeling, write a line, and decide later what to do with it. What you write stays in your phone's keychain and goes nowhere unless you send it; for the charged feelings, keeping it comes first for eight hours, so nothing leaves in the heat of it unless you mean it to. If you do send one, your partner is told only that something arrived, never the words or the feeling, and opens it when they are ready.
04 · Saying it well
Saying the hard thing so it can be heard, and hearing it back.
Help me say it
- What happened Last night, while I was telling you about my day, you were on your phone.
- How it felt I felt sad, and a bit invisible to you.
- What you need I think it's because I need to know that what I do matters to you.
- A small ask Could we have fifteen minutes tonight, just us, phones away?
The listening loop
Mira said back what she heard
It sounds like you needed me to put the phone down and actually hear your day.
Yes, that's it
Not quite
Let's just talk
- Help me say it
- For when the feeling is clear and the sentence is not. Inside Unsaid, Pulse asks four small things in the order a hard thing can be heard: what happened, the way a camera would have seen it; how it felt; what you need underneath it; and one small ask your partner could actually do. It puts them together as plain sentences and hands the whole thing back for you to change. Only the moment is required, and you can leave for a blank page at any step.
- The listening loop
- When your partner opens what you sent and says they are here, they can say back what they heard, in their own words. You answer with one of three: yes, that is it; not quite, with a line of what they missed; or let us just talk. Both of you see the same short thread of what has happened, so nobody has to remember who said what. A thank-you has no loop: the right reply to one is simpler.
- Free to say "not in here"
- When something arrives, the words stay closed until your partner says they are here. They have three answers, not two: I am here; I need a moment, with an optional "back in an hour, tonight or tomorrow" so you are not left guessing; or let us talk in person, which keeps the words closed unless they choose to read them, and you are told if they do. Each answer is shown to you, and none of them is a way to make the other person engage.
- Their side, too
- Your partner is offered their own side once you answer yes or let us talk, after a second "not quite", if they asked to talk in person, or after two quiet days without an answer from you: whether their experience gets a turn is never yours alone to grant. It is written the same guided way, kept private until they decide to send it, and arrives linked to yours, as one exchange rather than two unrelated notes.
- Never a test
- Nobody is graded. "Not quite" is never red, it can happen at most twice before the page suggests a conversation instead, and either of you can step out into the chat at any point. The person asked to try again is never chased onto the home screen to do it, and your own reminder on Home retires after two days.
- When it is not safe
- Everything above assumes two people who can disagree safely. If the feeling you pick is scared, Pulse stops steering you towards your partner: sharing is never the default, there is no ask and no listening loop, it never comes back on Home, and it points you to support outside the two of you through an international helpline directory. Writing it down stays private either way.
- No language model, here either
- Nothing writes, scores or reads your words. The help is the order of the questions, plus one fixed, translated sentence for each feeling and each need. The suggested reflection is only a faint hint in an empty field; nothing is sent until your partner has typed their own words.
- Private until you send it
- Every step stays on your phone until you choose to send the note. What travels is end-to-end encrypted like a chat message, including what your partner says back, and your partner is told only that something arrived, plus a “no rush” or “marked as kind” if you add one. If the connection ends, what they wrote back leaves with them. Unsaid can also have a Face ID or passcode lock of its own, and a line you keep for yourself beside a note is never sent.
06 · Stay in the loop
Everything Pulse told you, kept in one place.
Pulse
Mira is having a gentle day.
Home Screen widget
Hold to Feel
Notification Center
A calm evening might mean a lot today. · 18:04
Mira answered today's question. · 09:12
You have been close 34 days in a row.
- Notification Center
- A persistent, read-tracked log of everything Pulse has told you, since iOS's own notification center eventually forgets.
- Home Screen widget
- Your partner's mood at a glance, without a single number.
- Lock Screen Live Activity
- A "Hold to Feel" or similar gesture briefly appears on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island, with a one-tap way to send it right back.
07 · On your wrist
Four small pages for the smallest gestures.
- Today & Us
- Your own wellness, and how the two of you are doing, across two swipeable pages. From Today you also ask for something (with an optional note), reach out again, set your social battery, say you miss them, answer today's question or an Unsaid note, without taking your phone out.
- Chat & mood check-in
- Read the tail of your conversation and reply from the wrist by dictation, Scribble, emoji or a reaction, and log your mood with a tap.
- More: Our Story, lists and plans
- Your shared timeline on your wrist, plus the wishlist, the shopping list, what is coming up, your notifications and settings, all on the More page.
08 · Your data
Ownership, not surveillance.
The full data architectureFrom the journal: Why your partner will never see your heart rate
Sharing
Paused
Instantly, and invisibly if you want.
Face ID
Asked for every time Pulse opens, and covered in the app switcher.
Your data
Export everything
Delete account
Both live inside the app, no email required.
- One pause button, always
- Stop sharing instantly, optionally invisible to your partner, and end a connection with one tap.
- Export or delete your data
- Download your chat, Our Story, and profile as a file, or delete your account right inside the app, any time.
- No ads, no data sales
- No advertising, no third-party trackers and no data brokers. What leaves your phone, what does not, and what we still cannot protect you from are all written out on our legal page.
- Face ID lock
- Pulse can ask for Face ID every time it opens, and covers itself in the app switcher, so your chat and your story stay behind it when you hand your phone to someone. With the lock on, your Apple Watch shows titles only: no chat, story or notification text.
- Unusual moments stay yours
- If Pulse notices a short window of unusual heart signals, nothing reaches your partner unless you approve that exact moment. You can soften the wording or keep it private.
- A new phone brings it back
- Your chat, Our Story and your settings return when you sign in with the same Apple ID. Health data is never part of that backup, by design.
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A real person reads every idea. No ranking, no public list, just a short path to us.