Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority
TL;DR
- WHOOP fitness trackers require a mandatory subscription to use, starting at $199 per year.
- A new open source app called Goose attempts to access WHOOP tracker data without requiring any subscription.
- At this point, Goose is more of a proof of concept than anything else, but it shows that there is potential for subscription alternatives.
Who among us doesn’t feel a little resentful of all the subscriptions Do we pay regularly to access the products and services we crave? Sometimes a subscription has an unmistakable meaning; Maybe you’ll really appreciate the convenience of meal prep kits. But all too often, it can seem like this payment model is little more than a way to get more money out of us. Just a few days ago, we took a look at how Oura Ring Users were creating a subscription-free way to access their health data and now we are hearing about a similar project for another wearable device.
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This time we’re not talking about smart rings, but screenless fitness trackers, and no, not the new one. fitbit air. Instead, we are looking HOWLa product created from scratch with the idea that its use is tied to a subscription. At least that’s what WHOOP wants you to do, but now a new open source project called Goose Try to see what can be done with the portable device without needing any subscription.
Developer Bennett shares news of their project on But it works in a rudimentary way and is able to extract and display data from the wearable device successfully.
If this is to come anywhere close to a real, realistic alternative to a WHOOP subscription, a lot of work needs to be done, from a lot of code optimization to reduce the current substantial backlog to migrating the project to Android; It is currently targeted at iOS devices. There is also no support for older hardware and the app only works with the latest WHOOP 5.0 model.
While there are a lot of asterisks that definitely affect the usefulness of this news, it’s still very exciting progress to see, especially considering how quickly this first version was put together. Considering that WHOOP subscriptions start at $199 a year and only go up from there, we imagine a lot of users might at least be curious about an alternative with no recurring costs.
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