Connecting a device

Taper reaches a Garmin or a COROS watch directly. For Suunto, Wahoo and Apple Watch it goes through intervals.icu, a free account that already talks to those watches. Polar sends your runs in but takes no sessions from outside its own app. Strava is separate again: it is where your activities come from, not somewhere workouts go.

Samsung watches come with Strava on them, so their runs reach Taper through Strava with nothing more than connecting it. Nothing goes out to the watch: there is no way into a Galaxy Watch from outside Samsung's own app, so your plan stays in Taper, and in your phone's calendar if you turn on the calendar feed in Profile, under Connections.

Taper itself runs in any browser and as an Android app on Google Play. Connections live on your account rather than on the device, so it makes no difference which of the two you set them up in.

Garmin

Open Profile, then Connections, tap the Garmin row and switch it on. Taper sends you to Garmin's own page: sign in there and choose what Taper may see. Taper never sees your Garmin password. When you are back in Taper, Garmin shows as connected, and switching it off tells Garmin and deletes the access Taper held.

Once Garmin's own connection is on for you, your activities and health stats arrive as Garmin sends them. If you allowed Training on Garmin's page, your next sessions are sent as structured workouts, with their steps, targets and rep counts, and you can switch Send planned workouts to my watch off in the same sheet. Changing your plan updates the sessions that changed and removes any that no longer exist, so your watch matches your plan rather than accumulating old copies. If it is not offered to you yet, Strava, or Run files, the zip Garmin sends when you ask for your data, bring your runs in.

Strava

Switch Strava on in Connections and you are sent to Strava's own sign-in page to approve access. Taper never sees your Strava password.

Strava is the source of truth for your activities. Where the same run arrives from both Strava and your watch, Taper keeps one copy rather than two.

Health Connect, in the Android app

In the Taper app on Android, Connections has a Health Connect row. Tap Read my runs and the phone asks once whether Taper may read your exercise sessions, distance and heart rate; Taper then reads the runs of the last 90 days from Samsung Health, Fitbit, Google Fit or whatever writes there. A run your watch already sent is kept once; the rest come in as summary runs, distance, time and heart rate, no laps. Nothing is written back, and the website cannot do this, because Health Connect lives on the phone.

A non-Garmin watch, through intervals.icu

This is how a non-Garmin watch gets your plan. For Suunto, Wahoo and Apple Watch, intervals.icu sits in the middle: Taper writes your planned sessions to an intervals.icu calendar, and your watch syncs them from there. The account is free.

If you have a Garmin or a COROS, you do not need this. The Garmin and COROS connections already send workouts to your watch, with their full steps and pace targets, and do it in one hop with no second account to set up.

Only one can be on at a time. Taper sends your workouts to a single destination - Garmin, COROS or intervals.icu - so connecting a second while one is on is refused, and the error tells you which to disconnect first. That is deliberate: with two, every session would reach your watch twice, and nothing on the watch tells two copies of the same session apart.

A COROS connects to Taper directly, like a Garmin. Open the COROS row in Profile, under Connections, connect it, approve Taper on COROS's own page, and your plan goes to the watch as proper workouts - warm-up, reps, pace targets and cool-down. A session you delete or move in Taper is removed from your COROS too, so your watch matches your plan instead of collecting old copies. Your runs, sleep and resting heart rate come back in the same way, with no intervals.icu account in between.

Setting it up

1. Create a free account at intervals.icu and connect your watch brand to it, using their instructions for your device. Do this first: if intervals.icu cannot reach your watch, nothing Taper sends will arrive either.
2. In intervals.icu Settings, set your threshold pace under the running zones. Without it, intervals.icu has no pace scale: your workouts arrive but their pace targets do not bind, the workout chart stays flat, and no pace reaches the watch. A recent hard 5k pace is a fine starting value; Taper shows yours in Profile, on the Training tab, under Pace and heart-rate zones.
3. In Taper, open Profile, then Connections, tap the intervals.icu row and switch it on. Press Connect with intervals.icu: you approve access on their own site and come straight back. There is no API key to find or paste, and Taper never sees your intervals.icu password.
4. Press Sync everything now, then sync your watch as you normally would.

Taper is granted your intervals.icu calendar and your activities and nothing else. You can withdraw that from your intervals.icu account whenever you like, and switching the connection off in Taper hands it back too.

Apple Watch needs one more app

An Apple Watch cannot import a workout on its own, so connecting intervals.icu is not enough by itself: your sessions reach the calendar and stop there. Install the Intervals.icu Companion app from the App Store on your iPhone, and it puts a matching app on the watch. It is made by an independent developer, not by intervals.icu itself, and it is what reads the calendar and gives you the session on your wrist, converting it through Apple's own workout format. That format holds distance, time and energy, not pace, so on the watch a pace target arrives as an alert during the session rather than as a number the watch holds.

Install it from the phone rather than looking for it on the watch, and open it once on both so it can sign in. If your workouts appear in intervals.icu but not on the watch, this is almost always the step that is missing.

Where your warm-up ends

In Taper, under Profile, on the Training tab, in What reaches the watch,Warm-up completion is either Lap press or Fixed. Fixed ends your warm-up at the distance Taper prescribed, on every watch. Lap press asks the watch to hold it open until you press the lap button, so you start the session when you feel ready rather than at a distance decided in advance.

On Lap press it depends on the watch, because not every brand takes an open step. Where it is not taken nothing is broken and nothing is lost: the warm-up simply arrives as the distance Taper prescribed, the same as Fixed.

• Garmin: Your warm-up ends when you press lap.
• COROS: Your warm-up ends at the distance shown.
• Suunto: Your warm-up ends when you press lap.
• Wahoo: Your warm-up ends at the distance shown.
• Apple Watch: Your warm-up ends at the distance shown.

Your cool-down is a fixed length whichever you choose, on every watch. A warm-up is open because you extend it until you are ready to work; a cool-down is a defined easy piece you run out and stop.

Turning a connection off

Every connection can be switched off from the same table, and each one clears up after itself.

Switching Garmin off tells Garmin and deletes the access Taper held.

Switching intervals.icu off removes the sessions Taper put on your calendar and hands back the access you granted. Switching Strava off stops new activities importing and, as Strava's terms require, removes the runs that reached Taper only through Strava; a run your watch also sent stays.

Other providers' activities stay when you disconnect. To delete those, use Profile, then the You tab.

If something is not working

Garmin does not connect. Switch Garmin off in Taper and on again. You are sent to Garmin's own page, so check you are signed in to the right Garmin account there. You can also take Taper's access back, or give it again, from your Garmin account.

Workouts are not on the watch. Press Sync everything now and read what it reports. If it says workouts were sent, sync the watch itself: most only pull new workouts when they connect to the phone app. On an Apple Watch, check you have the Intervals.icu Companion app installed on your iPhone - without it the sessions reach the calendar and go no further.

The sessions arrive but the paces do not. The workout is on the watch, the steps are right, and every pace target is blank or the workout chart is flat. Set your threshold pacein intervals.icu - their Settings, under the running zones - and not in Taper. Without it their side has no pace scale to hang your targets on, so the targets are dropped in transit and nothing about it is visible from Taper. A recent hard 5k pace is a fine starting value, and Taper shows yours in Profile, on the Training tab, under Pace and heart-rate zones. Re-send with Sync everything now once it is set.

Nothing is importing. Check the last-synced time under the Sync everything now button, at the foot of Profile's Connections tab. If it is stale, sync manually and see whether an error appears. A connection that has stopped working shows as switched off rather than pretending to be healthy.