July 16, 2026
Locked, loaded, and lightly dragging devs
Track your workout from the iPhone Lock Screen
Gym app puts your next lift on your lock screen—and commenters are already fighting about it
TLDR: Musklr now lets iPhone users track sets and rest time from the Lock Screen, making workouts faster and less fiddly. Commenters were split between excitement over a more modern lifting app, fear it might mess with basic phone gestures, and the eternal complaint that fitness apps are somehow still too complicated.
Musklr’s big pitch is gloriously simple: your iPhone can now show your next set, your last numbers, and your rest countdown right on the Lock Screen, so you don’t have to unlock your phone mid-workout and fall into a social media black hole. If you’ve got a newer iPhone, it even hangs out in that little top-screen pill while you bounce between apps. Add an Apple Watch, and it can even flash your heart rate so you can pretend you’re being very scientific between sets.
But the real cardio happened in the comments. One of the loudest reactions was pure iPhone-user paranoia: “please don’t highjack the back swipe” became the battle cry of people who’ve clearly been burned by over-eager app design before. Others treated Musklr less like a breakthrough and more like a contestant in the endless “which workout app should I date next?” reality show. One person said they were already shopping for a replacement for Strong, praising its past glory while dragging its slow pace on newer iPhone features. Another swooped in to say the interface looked suspiciously close to Macrofactor Workouts, while a different commenter flexed their loyalty to Liftosaur—yes, including its custom programming language, because apparently even leg day needs lore.
And then came the funniest plot twist: someone ignored the whole lifting-app showdown and just begged for a dead-simple timer that beeps every minute. In other words, even when an app promises peak convenience, the internet still wants either less app… or a completely different app.
Key Points
- •Musklr uses Apple Live Activities to display workout information on the iPhone Lock Screen without requiring the app to be opened.
- •The Live Activity shows the current exercise, planned weight and reps, the previous session's result, and a set counter.
- •After a set is logged, the display changes to a rest countdown with controls to add or remove 15 seconds or skip the rest period.
- •If an Apple Watch is connected, heart-rate data can appear on the Live Activity, and the iPhone and Watch stay synchronized during the same workout session.
- •The feature requires iOS 16.2 or later for the Lock Screen card, supports Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro and newer compatible models, and is available on Musklr's free tier.