Runner's Shadow vs Step Lynx Activity Tracker
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Runner's Shadow
This app acts as a comprehensive companion for outdoor runners, consolidating run history from various sources. It helps track personal records, analyze courses, manage laps, and journal run experiences. Additionally, it offers shoe mileage tracking and photo integration for a complete running log.
- Consolidated run history from any supported app
- Course tracking and personal bests
- Interval lap management
- Journaling for run reflections
- Shoe mileage and lifespan tracking
- Integration with Apple Health/Activity
- Apple Watch app for on-the-go tracking
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Follow your runs like your shadow follows you. What Is Runner's Shadow? A runner's companion. A fantastic app for all outdoor runners to augment their kit. Runner's Shadow is an iOS Activity and Health-based app for the purpose of augmenting, tracking, logging, and understanding your outdoor runs, regardless of source; regardless of when the run took place. And it includes an Apple Watch app to get out and run with. Why Try Runner's Shadow? Run History A history of all of your runs, from any supported App. The run history is all your runs, grouped by week, month, year, and all-time. It has graphs, logs, journals, and more (like courses). Courses Which routes you've run. Do you tend to run the same routes repeatedly? Why not keep track of those as courses? This app keeps track of all of your courses; and your personal records for each course. Personal Records What's my personal best? Accurate and complete PRs. What is the best I've done so far at this distance? This course? This week? This month?. Runner's Shadow PR keeps my goals in perspective and my motivation on-point. This app finds and keeps your bests. Laps Keep and Recall interval laps. With a tap of a button in the Shadow Runner's watch app (included), you can set your laps. In the iPhone app, you can see how you did for them. What was the lap distance? Pace? Gain? It's all there. Journaling What are my thoughts after a run? How was the run? What do I find interesting about this course? Who did I run with? What did we laugh about? The journals are for these and/or anything else you want to write there. Labeling Tag runs for later retrieval. Label the people you ran with. Or label which runs were races. Or label which runs were your favorites. Tag runs with labels any way you'd like. Shoe Tracking Keep track of your running shoes. You may have heard that running shoes should be replaced between 300-500 miles or in 3-6 months. But how do you keep track of that? Simply add your shoes to the app, then tap on which ones were worn after a run. We'll keep track of how many run, miles, and days you've put on the pair. Photos Find photos taken near the time of your run. Want to find those shots you get before and after a run a year and a half later? Well, you just go to that run and click the 'camera' button, and there they all are. Graphs? Yes. Numbers? Of course. Maps? You bet. Running app for your Apple Watch? Yeah, that too. Watch Laps? Uh huh. Open to suggestions? We listen. What you'd expect? We try to be more than that. You can run with this or any other app that supports Apple Activity; we'll take it from there. ---- The data comes from Apple Health/Activity. That means that any outdoor running app that works with Apple Health/Activity will work with this one. The data goes nowhere. We don't take it. We don't keep it. We don't track it. We don't track you. We're not interested in all of that. We're just runners who want to enhance all of our running experiences. Contact us: support@alumra.ltd
Step Lynx Activity Tracker
This app provides a focused way to track your daily activity, including steps, distance, and calories burned, directly from your Lock Screen, Home Screen, and Apple Watch. It offers clear progress visualization, goal streaks, and customizable notifications to keep you motivated without overwhelming you.
- Live step count, distance, and calorie tracking
- Lock Screen and Home Screen widgets
- Apple Watch app and complications
- Goal rings and streaks
- Badge collection for milestones
- Optional daily check-in nudges
- Privacy-focused with no account required
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Step Lynx is a clean, focused step counter and activity tracker that lives where you actually look — your Lock Screen, your Home Screen, and your Apple Watch. No dashboards to wade through. Just clear progress, real streaks, and goals you can actually feel yourself moving toward. WHAT YOU GET • Live step count, distance, flights climbed, and active calories pulled straight from Apple Health. • Goal rings for every metric. Enable the ones you care about, hide the ones you don't. • Lock Screen widgets so your progress is always one glance away. • Home Screen widgets in every common size, from a single number to a full activity ring layout. • Apple Watch app and complications that mirror your iPhone, with goals that sync automatically. • Beautiful trends view so you can see your week, month, and lifetime at a glance. STREAKS THAT MEAN SOMETHING • Daily goal streaks for steps, distance, flights, and active calories — each one tracked separately. • Your best streak stays on record when a missed day resets the current one. • A growing badge collection for first miles, big-step days, big stair days, big burn days, week-long streaks on every metric, and the rare "Triple Threat" days where you hit steps, distance, and flights all at once. CELEBRATIONS YOU'LL ACTUALLY NOTICE • Crisp haptic feedback every time you cross a goal. • A bigger "All Goals Crushed" celebration with a stronger haptic on days you sweep every enabled goal. • A clean badge detail view that explains what each award means and shows you exactly how close you are to the next one. NUDGES, NOT NOISE • Optional daily check-in: pick any time of day and get one friendly push with your live progress. The message adapts to where you actually are — gentle on quiet mornings, motivating on near-misses, congratulatory on early sweeps. • Goal-met notifications fire only once per day per metric, so you never get spammed. • All notifications are off by default. You decide when we speak up. PRIVACY • Health data stays on your device. Step Lynx reads from Apple Health, never sends your data to a server, and has no third-party analytics. • No account required. Open the app, grant Health permission, done. WHAT'S FREE AND WHAT'S PRO The core experience — live counts, goal rings, basic widgets, daily streaks, and the milestone badges most people care about — is free forever. Step Lynx Pro unlocks the full badge collection (week-long streaks on every metric, the rare "Triple Threat", deeper milestones), advanced widgets, and the lifetime stats view. One-time purchase, no subscription required for the core upgrade. KEEP MOVING Whether you're chasing a 30-day streak, climbing more flights than you did last month, or just trying to stand up more, Step Lynx makes it easy to see where you are and feel good about getting there. Thanks for using Step Lynx.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Runner's Shadow at none against Step Lynx Activity Tracker's 1. Step Lynx Activity Tracker's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 6 weeks) and ratings volume (4 vs 1). On price, rating, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Step Lynx Activity Tracker sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Runner's Shadow asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Runner's Shadow against 5.0 for Step Lynx Activity Tracker. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 4 respectively.
Runner's Shadow ships an update every 6 weeks, Step Lynx Activity Tracker every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Runner's Shadow | Step Lynx Activity Tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 4 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 26 MB | 21 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Alumra Ltd | David Conroy |
Customer experience
Runner's Shadow
Step Lynx Activity Tracker
In-app purchases
Runner's Shadow
No in-app purchases
Step Lynx Activity Tracker
- Pro Mode$0.99
Questions
Is Runner's Shadow free?
Is Step Lynx Activity Tracker free?
Which has better reviews, Runner's Shadow or Step Lynx Activity Tracker?
Do Runner's Shadow or Step Lynx Activity Tracker have ads?
Which is updated more often, Runner's Shadow or Step Lynx Activity Tracker?
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