How to use Strava on a Samsung Galaxy smartwatch

If you're a runner or a cyclist using a Samsung Galaxy smartwatch, you'll certainly want to get involved with the Strava app.

Samsung already includes its own app to track runs, cycles, swims and more, but there's also a nice collection of third party fitness apps lurking inside of its Galaxy App Store to take care of that tracking too.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, Watch Active 2 or even older devices such as the Galaxy Watch Active you can download and access Strava from the wrist.

Strava is one of the big names to have created a dedicated app that works with Samsung's smartwatches. It's one of our favorite sports platforms, and provides incredible analysis and a buzzing community.

We've spent some time getting to know what Strava's Samsung Galaxy app is capable of and how it can offer an alternative way to track your activity and still earn you that kudos.

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Install Strava on your Samsung smartwatch

To get Strava onto your Samsung smartwatch it's pretty much the same process as getting any app onto your watch.

Step 1: Head to the Samsung Galaxy App Store whether it's via the Galaxy Wearable App or the dedicated app (if you have a Samsung phone).

Step 2: Search for Strava: Run, Walk or Ride, hit the install and it'll start transferring to the watch.

Step 3: When you go to your app tray on the watch and select the Strava app, you'll be prompted to go to watch.samsung.strava.com to get a 4-digit code to complete the set up.

Step 4: From there, you'll need to log into you existing Strava account or create a new one to authorise the connection between Samsung and Strava. Once that's all done, you're good to start using the app.

What activities can you track?

There are currently eight activities you can track from the Strava app. These are:

• outdoor cycling
• running
• walking
• hiking
• nordic skiing
• iindoor cycling
• treadmill running

For activities like running, you'll be able to see real-time metrics like pace, average pace and tap the top physical button on your Samsung Galaxy Watch to track individual laps. Nordic skiing will monitor speed and all outdoor activities make use of the onboard GPS to map routes.

While you can track heart rate data, you currently aren't able to view it as a data field in real-time. After you've finished a workout, you'll be able to see a summary of your heart rate showing it'll make use of the heart rate sensor packed into your watch.

What settings are available?

When it comes to tracking activities, we can all understandably be picky about what we want to see when we get moving. This Strava app does give you room to tinker with some aspects of that tracking experience.

If you're using a Samsung Galaxy Watch, you should be able to swipe to a second page of the app where you'll find your settings menu. From here, you can adjust if you want to display distance in miles or or kilometres.

For runners and cyclists, you can choose to turn on/off auto pause if you only want to capture the time you're moving. Though we think it's useful to capture all of that time during your activity. Runners can also choose whether to receive notifications about your running split times.

If you like cycling indoors, you can also choose whether to set the watch to normal or Theater display mode. This will dictate the level of screen brightness. So normal will keep it brighter and Theater will drop that brightness level down.

These settings are also available to adjust during a workout. Just hit pause and you'll find the settings icon available to tap and make those changes.

History and discarding

There's a couple of other features worth mentioning here like the ability to view your workout history once you start logging workouts with the watch. It won't show you workout history prior to that time of setting it up on your watch.

Another feature worth highlighting is the ability to discard workouts. If for some reason you accidentally start workout tracking or there's a session you don't want to keep a record of, hit the pause button on the screen and you can swipe over to the bin icon to dump it.

If you're happy with your workout and ready to sync it, simply hit pause, save workout and it'll sync over to the Strava app. It's pretty instant as well in terms of that syncing, so you can wait for that kudos to come raining in on your long Sunday bike session.