iOS 27 basically turns your iPhone and AirPods into an Apple Watch at the gym

GymKit has been one of Apple Watch’s smartest fitness features since it launched in 2017. With iOS 27, Apple is expanding that idea beyond the watch so an iPhone and AirPods can play a similar role at the gym. Per 9to5Mac, the change basically turns those devices into an Apple Watch for equipment-linked workouts.

The original flow is simple and still defines the product. You tap your watch to compatible gym equipment. The watch shares your heart rate, and the machine sends back metrics such as distance, incline, pace, and calories. iOS 27 extends that same GymKit pairing model so the phone and earbuds can participate in that exchange instead of leaving it as a Watch-only handshake.

That matters for builders because GymKit has long been a Watch-gated integration with cardio machines. Moving the same heart-rate-out and machine-metrics-in path onto iPhone and AirPods widens the set of Apple devices that can complete a gym session without a wrist computer. Fitness apps, equipment partners, and accessory stacks that assumed a watch was required now have to treat phone and earbuds as first-class GymKit endpoints under iOS 27.

Market-wise, the feature has sat on Apple Watch since 2017 as a differentiator for people who train on compatible machines. Expanding it to iPhone and AirPods reduces how much of that gym experience depends on owning a watch. The core value stays the same: live heart rate to the machine, structured workout metrics back to the user, without retyping or manual logging.

Practical takeaway: if you design around Apple fitness hardware, treat GymKit as a multi-device surface on iOS 27, not a Watch exclusive. Watch how Apple documents pairing, which metrics still come from the machine versus the body sensors on phone or AirPods, and whether existing GymKit-compatible equipment works the same when the tap or session starts from iPhone or AirPods instead of the watch.