Apple reportedly has no immediate plans to shut down Fitness+, but subscribers may soon notice fewer new workouts in one part of the service.
Apple reportedly laid off a handful of Fitness+ employees as it reassesses its fitness subscription. The cuts affected staff working on audio features such as Time to Walk and Time to Run, with new releases expected to become less frequent rather than stop entirely. Slowing the release schedule could help Apple lower ongoing content costs without immediately taking features away from subscribers.
Cuts hit Fitness+ audio features first
The layoffs affected employees working on Fitness+ audio content, according to 9to5Mac, citing Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Time to Walk and Time to Run give Apple Watch users guided audio sessions they can follow without watching a workout video.
Gurman said new audio releases are not going away “completely,” but will “drop in frequency.”
MacRumors reported that only a “handful” of employees were affected. People within Fitness+ reportedly see the cuts as the start of deeper cost reductions and other major changes over the coming months and years.
Audio is a relatively contained place for Apple to cut spending. Slowing the release schedule reduces the need to continually produce new sessions while leaving the existing library and the wider Fitness+ service available.
For subscribers, the more immediate issue is therefore content freshness rather than access. People who regularly use Time to Walk or Time to Run could see fewer new sessions, while there is currently no indication that Apple plans to remove existing workouts.
Fitness+ cuts follow a wider Apple reorganization
Firstpost noted that the Fitness+ layoffs also come less than two months after Apple reportedly eliminated more than 200 positions across other parts of the company.
Around 100 of those jobs were reportedly associated with Vision Pro, while roughly another 100 were spread across Siri and software-related teams, including Apple’s Intelligent Systems Experience group.
Apple described the earlier reductions as a reorganization and said some new positions would be created. Viewed alongside the smaller Fitness+ cuts, the pattern looks less like an across-the-board pullback and more like Apple moving staff and spending toward areas it considers more important.
No report has established that the two rounds of layoffs are directly connected, however. The common thread is that Apple appears willing to trim teams even in products and technologies it continues to support.
Could Fitness+ become part of a bigger Apple Health push?
Fitness+ itself is not currently “on the chopping block,” Gurman said. He pointed instead to the cost of running the service, subscriber churn, and the constant need for new content as reasons Apple could look for savings.
Apple had already been reviewing Fitness+ before the latest layoffs. Oversight reportedly shifted to services chief Eddy Cue and health executive Sumbul Desai, and Gurman reported that Cue has pushed the company to move faster in health and fitness.
One possible direction is a closer connection between Fitness+ and Apple’s redesigned Health app. Apple has announced that the forthcoming redesign will include personalized benchmarks, educational videos and articles, Health Age estimates, and other guidance based on users’ health data.
Gurman has speculated that Fitness+ could eventually become more closely integrated with Health, but Apple has not announced such a plan.
A deeper integration would change more than where users find their workouts. Fitness+ could become one piece of a larger health experience built around Apple Watch activity data, health information, educational content, and personal benchmarks instead of operating primarily as a separate workout subscription.
Apple has not confirmed plans to integrate Fitness+ with Health, nor has it announced a price change, major feature removal, or shutdown. For now, subscribers should expect only fewer new Time to Walk and Time to Run sessions. The next signal to watch is whether Apple keeps Fitness+ primarily as a standalone workout subscription or connects it more closely with the redesigned Health app arriving later this year.
Read more: Apple is already laying the groundwork for a broader health experience, with its redesigned Health app turning wearable data into readiness scores, Health Age estimates, and personalized daily guidance.