Start with the Help guide. The Help guide answers what runners ask most, from a Garmin run that has not shown up to what you keep without a membership. Search it, or browse it by topic. The same guide is in the app: tap HELP beside the bell on Home.
Need a person? Email support@whynot.run. It's a solo shop, so you're writing to the person who built the app. Include your iPhone model, iOS version, and roughly when the problem happened. It saves a round trip.
Why Not builds a training plan from where your fitness actually is, then adjusts it as you run. On first launch it asks for your goal race and distance, your recent running, and how many days a week you want to run. That's enough to generate a plan.
The app has four tabs:
If you connect Apple Health or Strava and there's enough recent running history, the app estimates your VO2 Max right away. If there isn't, it runs a short calibration period and gives you a provisional plan while it learns your paces. Either way you can train from day one.
That usually means the starting fitness estimate came in high. Email us with your recent race times or a few typical training runs and we'll tell you how to reset it.
Apple Health is how runs recorded on your Apple Watch, or in other iPhone running apps, reach Why Not. Find it at Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → Apple Health.
Open iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Why Not and confirm Read access is on for Workouts, Distance Walking + Running, Active Energy, and Heart Rate. Permissions granted at onboarding can be partially declined without any obvious sign in the app.
If you use a Garmin, Suunto, COROS, or Polar watch, note that those devices sync to Apple Health on their own schedule, which can lag by hours, and they generally don't pass route maps through. Apple Health is how those runs reach Why Not: Strava is closed to new connections for now (see below).
The WHOOP app saves its own workouts to Apple Health too. Those come in as runs only if you turn on Runs from WHOOP in Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → WHOOP; leave it off if a watch already records your runs.
Strava is closed to new connections for now. Strava limits how many athletes can connect to Why Not, and we're working on raising it. Until then a new account sees an inactive "Strava unavailable" card in Profile → Settings → Connected Apps, with no Connect button, and your runs still reach Why Not through Apple Health, including runs from a Garmin, Suunto, COROS or Polar watch. If you're already connected, everything below still applies.
Connecting Strava does two things: it brings runs from Garmin, Suunto, COROS, Polar and other devices into your training plan with full maps, splits and heart rate, and it uploads runs you record in Why Not back to your Strava account.
When connections reopen, you'll connect from Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → Strava with Connect with Strava. You'll be sent to Strava to log in and approve. Why Not never sees your Strava password. Strava handles the login and hands back a token.
After connecting you'll see two switches:
Two permissions, both requested when you connect:
Why Not never posts on your behalf, never reads other athletes' data, never touches your followers or kudos, and never modifies or deletes anything on your Strava account.
Runs whose data came from Strava carry a Powered by Strava label on the activity card and on the run detail screen. Any run that also exists on your Strava account carries a View on Strava link that opens it there. A run you recorded on your own watch shows the link but not the label, because the data is yours, not Strava's.
Imported runs, their routes, and their splits stay on your device. None of that is copied to our servers. The one exception: when a Strava-imported run completes a planned workout, that workout's distance and pace ride along in your plan backup, the same as any other completed workout. Never the run itself, never its route. It's shown only to you, never shared with other users, never sold, never used for advertising or analytics, and never used to train or run any AI system.
Tap Disconnect Strava at the bottom of Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → Strava. This deletes the runs Strava imported into Why Not, with their routes and splits, and clears any workouts they checked off your plan. Strava-supplied route and split data is also removed from your own runs; their distance, duration, and heart rate stay. While Strava is closed to new connections, you won't be able to reconnect after you disconnect.
You can also revoke access from Strava's side at strava.com/settings/apps. Doing it there revokes the token immediately; doing it in the app also clears the local copy, so the in-app route is the cleaner one.
Connecting WHOOP is optional and needs a WHOOP membership; everything else in Why Not works without it. When you connect, Why Not reads your daily Recovery (heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and WHOOP's own Recovery score), your sleep (how long you slept, your Sleep Performance, your Sleep Need, and your respiratory rate), and your daily Strain. Nothing is ever written back to WHOOP, and Why Not never reads your WHOOP workouts, profile, or body measurements.
WHOOP limits how many members can connect to an app until WHOOP approves it for more. If you tap Connect WHOOP while Why Not is at that limit, you'll see "WHOOP connections are full for now. We're adding room soon. Why Not works fully without it." Nothing from WHOOP is kept, and you carry on as normal. Try again later from Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → WHOOP. If you're already connected, nothing changes for you.
Everything Why Not reads from WHOOP stays on this phone only. No WHOOP number is ever sent to our servers or included in the plan backup, and none of it is shared with other users or anyone else. The one trace in the backup: if you take a hybrid session swap on a low Recovery morning, your plan records that you took the lighter session, and nothing about WHOOP. The app keeps 35 days at most; anything older is deleted automatically, including the WHOOP line in an older post-run read. Your WHOOP sign-in tokens are kept in the iPhone Keychain.
To see what Why Not holds, open the Plan tab and tap the RECOVERY card: it shows today's WHOOP Recovery, your HRV, resting heart rate, and Sleep Performance, and the detail screen shows your recent Recovery, day Strain, and sleep. Because the data lives only on your phone, we can't send you a copy of it by email; WHOOP holds your full history, and you can see or export it in the WHOOP app.
Tap Disconnect WHOOP in Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → WHOOP. This revokes Why Not's access at WHOOP and deletes every WHOOP record from this phone, including the WHOOP line in any post-run read that quoted it. Deleting your Why Not account does the same. You can reconnect any time.
Why Not includes a watchOS app for recording runs directly from your wrist, with your workout on screen. Runs recorded on the watch sync to your iPhone and land in Apple Health.
If the watch app won't pair or a run doesn't reach the phone, keep both devices unlocked and near each other, open the iPhone app, and give it a minute. If it still doesn't land, email us before recording over it.
Why Not is $9.99/month or $79.99/year, with a 7-day free trial if you haven't subscribed before. Without a subscription you can keep using the free tier. Billing runs entirely through Apple; we never see your card.
Full detail on the trial, tiers, switching, and what happens when a subscription lapses is on the Trial Policy page.
Your runs, routes and Apple Health readings live on your phone. Why Not requires an account. It keeps a copy of your training plan and your running stats (personal bests, totals, trophies and weekly miles) so a new phone gets them back, and your membership is linked to it. The full picture is on the Privacy Policy page.
Bug reports genuinely get read and fixed. Most of what ships comes from testers writing in. The useful ones include:
Send it to support@whynot.run.
Why Not Run LLC, the company that runs Why Not
Massachusetts, USA
Email: support@whynot.run
Related pages: Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Trial Policy · Delete your account and data
Written in plain English on purpose. If an answer here is unclear or wrong, that's worth an email too.