Frequently asked questions
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Basics
What is mypacing, really?
mypacing helps you with pacing: if you like, it reads the data from your smartwatch and shows in plain language how much of your day was above your exertion limit, how you’re recovering and whether strain is building up. Instead of raw data you get one calm statement per day, one concrete tip and, if you want, a report for your doctor. A tool for observing yourself, not a diagnosis.
Who is mypacing for?
For people with Long COVID, ME/CFS, PEM, POTS, post-vaccination syndrome or chronic exhaustion — in other words, everyone who has to budget their energy (“pace” themselves) and knows the push-crash cycle. You need no prior knowledge and no wearable: your daily sense of how you feel and the stand test are enough to get started.
How often should I enter something — and when?
Once a day is enough, and the evening is the natural moment: by then you know how the day went. One check-in covers how you feel, your sleep, the crash question and the day's colour — and if you miss a day, you can tap it in the calendar and add it later. Everything else is voluntary and tied to no particular time: activities, symptoms and “mind & contact” go in whenever they happen or change — several times a day is expressly right, because at eight in the morning nobody knows how demanding the day will still become. None of it overwrites your check-in. Readings from a watch, ring or phone arrive on their own anyway. And if you enter nothing at all for a few days, that is fine too — mypacing works with what is there and does not nag you.
Does mypacing cost anything?
mypacing is a private labour of love and free for good. At most it is funded by voluntary contributions — there are no paywalls and nothing is ever charged. Your health data is never sold.
How is mypacing different from other apps or wearables?
Many comparable offers on the market require a subscription, their own hardware, or aren’t specifically built for Long COVID/ME/CFS/PEM/POTS/post-vaccination syndrome at all. mypacing is free, works with devices many people already own — or with no wearable at all, using just your daily sense of how you feel and the stand test —, is usable in German from day one, and learns from real, pseudonymised patterns of a community of people affected, rather than from generic fitness data. See also insights from the community.
How can I support mypacing?
The easiest way is a voluntary contribution via GoFundMe (link/QR code on the support page) — it helps fund servers and further development, but there is no paywall and no obligation. A contribution is not tax-deductible, and we cannot issue a receipt for it — mypacing is not a registered association. If you can’t or don’t want to contribute, recommending mypacing to others helps just as much — to doctors, support groups, or anyone else affected.
Data & devices
Which devices are supported?
Currently read automatically: Apple Health (which bundles Apple Watch, Oura, Withings and many more), Garmin, Whoop, Visible (CSV file) and ResMed CPAP (AirSense/AirCurve). Fitbit works too since August 2026 — via Apple Health or Health Connect, see the separate question below. We’re adding more devices step by step (e.g. Philips DreamStation, Löwenstein). And importantly: if you upload a format we don’t know yet, nothing is lost — you can send it to us voluntarily, we look at it by hand and build the support. An illustrated guide walks you through the export step by step.
Can I connect my Fitbit to mypacing?
Yes — since August 2026. If you tried before and it did not work, that was not your doing: until then Fitbit kept its values inside its own app, and there really was no switch.
The Fitbit app is now called Google Health. Since 2 August 2026 it can pass its values on to Apple Health (iPhone) and to Health Connect (Android) — and whatever lands there, mypacing picks up on its own.
How to do it: first update the app in the App Store or Play Store — if it still says “Fitbit”, it is too old. Then open Google Health, tap your profile picture at the top, choose Connections → Partner apps, and pick Apple Health or Health Connect. Confirm the prompt and tick the boxes. Then, in mypacing, tap the heart symbol in the bottom bar — that is the tab for the data sync with Apple Health or Health Connect. Give it time — Fitbit does not send every second; by the next day steps, sleep and heart rate should be there.
One difference between the systems: on Android, heart rate variability — how much your heartbeat varies (HRV) — comes along too. On iPhone it does not — and that is not a bug and cannot be switched on: Fitbit computes HRV with a different formula than Apple (RMSSD versus SDNN), so the same number means different things. That is why Fitbit does not hand it over at all. If HRV matters to you: mypacing measures it itself, with your phone camera.
And importantly: mypacing works without any device at all. The daily check-in is what the assessment mainly computes from, and the stand test needs no more than a watch with a second hand. Device readings make the picture sharper; they do not carry it.
The Fitbit app is now called Google Health. Since 2 August 2026 it can pass its values on to Apple Health (iPhone) and to Health Connect (Android) — and whatever lands there, mypacing picks up on its own.
How to do it: first update the app in the App Store or Play Store — if it still says “Fitbit”, it is too old. Then open Google Health, tap your profile picture at the top, choose Connections → Partner apps, and pick Apple Health or Health Connect. Confirm the prompt and tick the boxes. Then, in mypacing, tap the heart symbol in the bottom bar — that is the tab for the data sync with Apple Health or Health Connect. Give it time — Fitbit does not send every second; by the next day steps, sleep and heart rate should be there.
One difference between the systems: on Android, heart rate variability — how much your heartbeat varies (HRV) — comes along too. On iPhone it does not — and that is not a bug and cannot be switched on: Fitbit computes HRV with a different formula than Apple (RMSSD versus SDNN), so the same number means different things. That is why Fitbit does not hand it over at all. If HRV matters to you: mypacing measures it itself, with your phone camera.
And importantly: mypacing works without any device at all. The daily check-in is what the assessment mainly computes from, and the stand test needs no more than a watch with a second hand. Device readings make the picture sharper; they do not carry it.
Can I use my Apple Watch for continuous pacing?
Yes. Alongside the regular Health import there’s a dedicated Watch app: it measures your heart rate continuously on your wrist during an activity and shows you whether you’re above your personal limit — no need to touch your phone. Available as its own app on your Apple Watch once the mypacing iOS app is installed.
How does my data get into mypacing?
In four ways, listed here by effort. The easiest is the mypacing app: connect it once to Apple Health (iPhone) or Health Connect (Android) — after that your pulse, HRV, sleep and steps arrive on their own, with no files at all. Without a watch or band, the app measures your pulse and heart rate variability with the phone camera. With no device at all, what you enter yourself under Today counts — how you feel, the stand test, a pulse typed in by hand. And if you have an export from a watch, ring or CPAP device, or the automatic route doesn’t fit you, the file upload is still there: drag the ZIP into the field, you don’t need to unpack anything. An illustrated guide walks you through each of these routes.
Do I have to upload something regularly?
No. Once the app is connected to Apple Health or Health Connect, new values arrive on their own — there is nothing to upload. Only if you use the file route do you bring a new export now and then: to begin with, one big file with your history is enough, after that you top it up whenever it suits you, for example every few weeks. There’s no live requirement and no obligation — mypacing works with what is there and doesn’t nag you.
What happens to the uploaded ZIP file?
It never leaves your device in the first place. Unpacking and processing happen in the browser on your own device; only the finished daily values (heart rate, sleep, steps …) reach us, not the file. We don’t keep any raw files. The one exception: if we don’t recognise your format, we ask you explicitly whether you would like to send us a sample — that is your decision, and without your yes it does not happen.
What is the anonymous data donation — do I need an account for that?
No. On the data donation page you can upload wearable or CPAP data completely anonymously and without an account or sign-up (any file format, any device, up to 100 GB) — it flows solely into the anonymous pattern research of mypacingLAB, with no link to you as a person. Unlike a normal upload inside an account, the values here land only anonymised in the shared pool, and no account is created for you.
What happens if I sign up but haven’t uploaded any data yet?
Nothing bad — your account works anyway, you can already, for example, log how you feel or do the stand test. Under “Today”, mypacing gently reminds you to upload your first export so that load values and the exertion review can get going. Some views (for example the load view in the calendar) only really show something once a few days of data or your own entries are in — we say that honestly instead of pretending there’s already an evaluation.
Do I get email reminders from mypacing?
Only when it really helps, and never as advertising: if you’ve registered but haven’t uploaded anything after a few days, we send you one single short reminder about your first export. If you like, there’s also an optional, calmly worded weekly recap by email — you switch it on yourself in settings, no advertising, no flood of push notifications, unsubscribe any time.
Health & meaning
What do “pacing” and the threshold mean?
Pacing means staying in your own rhythm and avoiding overexertion. With exhaustion conditions, the point at which the body starts working “on credit” is very low. A widely used guide value (Workwell Foundation) is resting heart rate + 15 beats — ideally don’t stay above it for longer than two minutes. That number is a rule of thumb and does not come from a study; we looked into where it comes from and what it is not. mypacing shows you how much time you spent above it.
Where does my pulse limit come from — and why does it not simply rise?
mypacing uses exactly one of four sources, in this order: a medically confirmed value from an exercise test (e.g. CPET) beats everything. Otherwise the median of your measured resting heart rate over 180 days plus 15 (Workwell rule of thumb). Otherwise your self-reported resting heart rate plus 15. If none of these exists, the limit deliberately stays empty — an invented number would look like a measurement. Next to the limit, the app always states where it comes from. And: the measured basis may fall but never rises on its own (a ratchet) — a rising resting heart rate would otherwise raise the limit exactly when you can tolerate less. It is only raised by a medical value or a deliberate change in your settings.
What is a “crash”, or PEM?
PEM (post-exertional malaise) is a delayed worsening after physical, mental or emotional effort — often only hours to days later. mypacing shows you, in hindsight, how your values looked on the days before the crashes you marked — for example time above the limit, or a drop in HRV, your heart rate variability.
More on this in our blog: Frequently asked questions about PEM and crash detection
How does the build-up hint work?
mypacing compares your HRV and resting heart rate with your own personal average and shows when several days in a row have sat outside your usual range. Important and honest: the data cannot predict a crash the day before — we don’t claim that. What is reliable is the build-up pattern (“you’ve been pushing for days”). It’s a calm hint to pause, not an alarm and not a forecast — and it never replaces your own sense of your body.
How accurate are the values?
These are consumer devices, not medical devices — the values are good for trends and patterns, but not clinically exact. Your own sense of your body stays the most important sensor; the numbers are only an aid.
What actually is HRV (heart rate variability)?
HRV describes how much the interval between individual heartbeats varies — values vary widely with breathing, posture, time of day and measurement method. Reading HRV as a state of the nervous system is not supported; mypacing only shows its course against your own average. mypacing reads the HRV from your wearable and compares it with your own personal average. More on this (with sources) in our HRV blog article.
What is POTS?
POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) is a disorder of the autonomic nervous system: on standing up, heart rate rises sharply, often together with dizziness, palpitations or lightheadedness. POTS frequently occurs alongside Long COVID or ME/CFS. Explained in more depth in our knowledge base and in the glossary article.
What is post-vaccination syndrome?
Post-vaccination syndrome (long vax) describes persistent symptoms after a vaccination (for example exhaustion, exertion intolerance, cardiovascular or neurological symptoms) that overlap strongly with the symptom picture of ME/CFS and Long COVID. The causes are currently being researched, and standardised diagnostics don’t yet exist everywhere. For pacing with mypacing this makes no difference — the exertion limit, PEM patterns and crash prevention work regardless of the underlying diagnosis.
Calendar & exertion review
What does the calendar under “Today” show me?
A clickable calendar with two views: “Feeling” colours each day by how you logged you felt (red = very tired, green = great), “Load” colours by calculated exertion (calm/caution/warning). Tap a day to log afterwards how you felt — including days you forgot. Days with a dashed ring are marked by mypacingLAB as outside your usual range; you can record whether a crash actually happened.
What does it mean to mark a crash in the calendar?
Tapping a day in the calendar lets you confirm or deny: was there a crash or PEM flare on that day? This marking is more than a note — mypacing then automatically looks for what happened 1–2 days before (load, HRV, sleep), and learns from it, both personally for you and, pseudonymised, for mypacingLAB. The more of your own crashes are marked, the more precisely mypacing can adapt to you personally.
My crash lasts several days — how do I record that?
Mark each affected day individually in the calendar under Today. mypacing groups consecutive crash days into one event by itself — two marked days are one crash lasting two days, not two crashes; start, end and duration follow from that. Adding days later is expressly intended, even days afterwards: nobody operates an app while crashed, and that is exactly why every day in the calendar can be tapped. If a crash has stood for more than three days with no new marking, mypacing asks you under “Today” of its own accord — “Is your crash over?”, with “Yes, it is over”, “No, not yet” and “I don’t remember” as equally valid answers. There is deliberately no “still going” tick box that you would have to set and later clear again: the clearing is the work you do not have precisely when you start feeling better — and a crash that never ends makes every duration wrong.
How dependable is the build-up indicator — and how would I know?
Honestly: no one can seriously promise a forecast for tomorrow, and mypacing doesn’t claim that either. What mypacing shows is a build-up pattern over several days (e.g. a drop in HRV, a lot of time above the threshold, little sleep) — the more such signals come together, the further that day sits outside your usual range. And this is continuously tested on itself: an automatic test bench recalculates every night, against the entire pseudonymous dataset, whether the learned weightings actually catch more real crashes than a simple default formula. If the lead is not safely beyond chance, the learned weights are not used at all — the simple formula stays. Whether that is the case right now is shown, with the figure of the day, on the Technik page; nothing runs as a black box.
Doctor & report
Can I show the analysis to my doctor?
Yes. With one click mypacing creates a clean doctor’s report with your values and reference ranges (threshold, time above the limit, resting-heart-rate/HRV trend, stand-test result) — ideal for your next appointment. It’s only created when you create it.
Is mypacing a medical device?
No. mypacing is an information and self-management tool, makes no diagnoses and does not replace medical treatment. For acute symptoms: seek medical advice or call the emergency number (112).
Stand test & functional level
What is the stand test (NASA Lean Test)?
A guided, 10-minute self-test under Stand test: first lie down quietly for 10 minutes, then stand loosely against a wall for 10 minutes while entering your heart rate every minute. mypacing calculates the heart-rate increase and the number of consecutive minutes above the limit — and whether that matches the pattern described for POTS. A diagnosis is always made by medical staff, never by the app; it also requires blood pressure readings, symptom duration and ruling out other causes.
What happens to my stand-test result?
It is stored encrypted in your account and appears automatically in the doctor’s report, so you have it ready for your next appointment. You can also download it as a file. You can repeat the test as often as you like — every result is stored separately.
What is the functional-level overview (Bell score)?
Under Progress you record your functional level with a slider (0–100) on a scale commonly used for ME/CFS/Long COVID — as often as you like. mypacing draws a trend from this over weeks, months or even years, using real date spacing rather than just the order of entries — making slow improvements or declines visible that are easy to miss day to day.
What is the FUNCAP calculator?
The FUNCAP calculator is a free self-assessment based on the scientifically published FUNCAP-55 questionnaire: across 8 life domains you estimate your functional capacity with ME/CFS or Long COVID — no account needed, all calculations run locally in your browser, and your individual answers are never transmitted. The result is an orientation aid, not a medical diagnosis.
Your history
Do my marked crash days also show up in the chart?
Yes. The crash days you mark in the calendar also appear directly in the history chart of your functional level — so you can see at a glance whether a dip coincides with a crash.
Can I log medications or treatments?
Yes. Under History you can add medications and supplements to a timeline with start, end and a note — handy if you want to see whether your history changes around the start or stop of a treatment.
Can I log individual symptoms?
Yes, with symptom tagging under History. You log individual symptoms with a severity level and can see how often and how persistently a symptom shows up for you over time.
What is the energy balance?
A look back over the last 30 days under History: how many days you were pacing conservatively, staying within your "envelope", or overexerting. Not a fixed medical score, but our own approximation — it helps you spot patterns over a longer period.
What is the activity log?
Under History you can log individual activities like cooking, walking or housework — with your own rating of exertion and recovery (1–5 points each). That makes it easier to see in hindsight which activities are especially demanding for you.
Does mypacing also show my sleep stages?
If your device or import provides it: yes. Alongside sleep duration and quality, mypacing also shows deep sleep, REM, light sleep and awake time individually under History — on days with markedly less sleep than in the person’s own previous week, a crash is marked slightly more often in the research pool (0.50 instead of 0.36 % of days, as of 6 September 2026) — a link, but a weak one.
Privacy
What happens to my health data?
It belongs to you. It is stored encrypted, processed only with your explicit consent, never sold and never used for advertising. Details in the privacy policy.
Is my data compared with other people’s?
Yes — but always only pseudonymised. Your daily values are stored pseudonymised in mypacingLAB under a random research identifier. While your account exists, that identifier can be linked to your account internally; publicly, mypacing only shows group-level results once the minimum group size is met. That’s exactly what makes mypacing better: what many people contribute sharpens your own assessment and the hints mypacing shows you. It is explicitly not a forecast for tomorrow — we do not make those anywhere. This pseudonymous analysis is a core part of mypacing — without it mypacingLAB couldn’t learn. Because both purposes hang on a single consent, there is no separate revocation of the pool alone: you withdraw by deleting your account yourself in the account settings. After that nothing new flows in; contributions already pseudonymized stay, because they can no longer be matched to you.
How do I delete my data or my account?
In your account settings you can delete your account and all data at any time with one click. After that your personal data is removed. What remains are only the pseudonymised metrics that have already flowed into the research pool — they are attached to no account any more and cannot be traced back to you. The privacy policy says the same.
Can insurers, employers or authorities get my data?
No, under no circumstances — not even as part of assessment or benefits procedures. Your data is never sold and never shared with insurers, employers or authorities. This is stated explicitly in the consent declaration.
Does mypacing adapt to my own data, or only to the community?
Both. In addition to the community’s pseudonymous patterns, mypacing increasingly takes into account your own, already-marked crash history — both in weighting individual factors (e.g. an HRV drop, lack of sleep) and in the threshold above which a day counts as outside your range. This happens within tight, traceable limits and is reversible at any time. On the Technik page, the built-in "test bench" continuously shows whether this adjustment is actually doing better than fixed default values — openly and verifiably, not as a black box.
Account & login
I can’t get into my account — what can I do?
First check that your email address is spelled correctly. If that doesn’t help, reset your password via “Forgot password” — this also works if you simply want to change your password. After several failed attempts in a row, login is briefly locked for security reasons; it works again after a short wait. Because mypacing processes health data (Art. 9 GDPR), it is intended for people aged 18 and over.
How do I delete my account?
In your account settings you’ll find a full, two-step-confirmed deletion — your account and all its data can be permanently deleted there at any time. What remains are only the pseudonymised metrics that have already flowed into the research pool; they are attached to no account any more and cannot be traced back to you.