Shindo This page answers the questions we are asked most often about Shindo, and it is where to start if something is not working. It describes the app as it currently ships, including the parts that are not finished — a limitation you can plan around is more useful than one you discover later.
Getting in touch #
Shindo is made by a very small team, so replies are written by a person rather than a ticket system. We aim to answer within 3 working days, and in any case within 5. Formal data-protection requests — access, erasure, objection — are answered within one month, as section 13 of the Privacy Policy sets out.
There is no phone line and no live chat. Please write in English if you can; we will do our best with any of the languages the app supports.
What you need to run Shindo #
- iOS 26.4 or later. This is a hard requirement, not a recommendation — the app is built against that SDK and will not install on an earlier version of iOS.
- An iPhone. Shindo is designed and laid out for iPhone, and runs in portrait orientation only; it does not rotate to landscape. There is no Apple Watch app, no iPad-specific layout, no Mac app and no web version.
- An internet connection for the AI features only. Readiness, training load, the plan and the nutrition targets are computed on the device and work offline. The written coaching text does not.
Where the data comes from #
Shindo reads from two places, and only two:
- Apple Health — the default and the only source that is always available. Sleep, heart-rate variability, resting heart rate, heart rate, workouts and nutrition all arrive through it, whatever device wrote them there.
- Garmin Connect — optional, and covered in its own section below. Connecting it adds the metrics Apple Health has no equivalent for (Body Battery, stress, Training Readiness) and gives richer workout records.
You do not need Garmin. With Apple Health alone the app is complete; the Garmin-only channels simply do not appear.
If Garmin is connected, workouts are taken from Garmin rather than Apple Health. A Garmin watch mirrors its activities into Apple Health, so importing both would count the same session twice and inflate that day's training load. When Garmin is not connected, workouts come from Apple Health as normal. Sleep, HRV and the other daily metrics always come from Apple Health regardless.
Why Shindo asks for Apple Health #
Reading is what the whole app is built on: sleep, HRV, resting and working heart rate, workouts and nutrition are the inputs to every metric it computes. Access is granted per category in Apple's own permission sheet, and you can withdraw any of it at any time in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → Shindo. Shindo stops reading a channel the moment you turn it off.
Writing is deliberately tiny. Shindo writes back exactly four things, and only when you log food in the app:
- dietary energy (calories),
- protein,
- carbohydrates,
- fat.
Each is written as one daily total, not one entry per meal. Nothing else is ever written: workouts, sleep, heart rate and every other channel are strictly read-only. If you would rather Shindo wrote nothing at all, decline the write permission — the app's own nutrition tracking carries on working, it just stops mirroring the totals into Health.
Connecting Garmin #
This is not an official Garmin integration. Shindo signs in to Garmin Connect with the e-mail and password you type into the app, using the same private interface Garmin's own mobile app uses. There is no Garmin "authorise Shindo" screen, Garmin has not reviewed or approved it, and Garmin can change or block that interface at any time — at which point sync stops working until we adapt.
Your Garmin e-mail and password are stored on your device in the iOS Keychain, because the session has to be re-established when its tokens expire. They are never logged and never sent anywhere except to Garmin's own login endpoints. The connection is direct between your iPhone and Garmin — there is no Shindo server in the middle, because there is no Shindo server at all. Two-factor authentication is supported: the app asks for the code.
Section 5 of the Privacy Policy lists exactly which hosts are contacted and everything that is fetched.
Accounts, storage and sync #
There is no Shindo account. No sign-up, no e-mail, no password, no social login. You install the app and use it.
Everything Shindo computes and everything you log is stored in a local database on your iPhone. It is not backed up to iCloud by Shindo and there is no server-side copy, which has one consequence worth knowing before you invest months of data in it:
There is no sync between devices, and no cloud restore. If you move to a new iPhone, your Shindo history does not follow it by itself, and if you delete the app the local database goes with it. Your health data is safe — that lives in Apple Health, and Shindo re-reads it — but the app's own records, such as manually logged meals and journal entries, are local only.
The AI, and what leaves your iPhone #
Shindo separates the two halves of what it does, and the difference matters for your privacy:
- The numbers are computed on your device, by deterministic algorithms. Readiness, training load (TSS, fitness, fatigue, form), the training plan and the nutrition targets never involve an AI model.
- The words are written by an AI — Google Gemini. Its job is to phrase figures that have already been decided; it does not choose your session, your target load or your calorie goal.
To write those words, information about you is sent to Google. Today those requests go directly from your iPhone to Google. What is sent depends on the feature: a compact JSON summary of computed figures for the morning report and weekly plan; the photo or text for food logging; and, for the journal, the note you wrote, verbatim. Raw sample series, GPS routes and your Garmin credentials are never included. Section 6 of the Privacy Policy itemises all of it, including the notification nudges that are generated in the background while the app is closed.
AI features are capped per day to keep the cost sustainable: one morning report, one weekly plan, and thirty nutrition calls (food estimation and the AI meal plan share that counter). Failed calls do not count, so a retry after an error is free. Counters reset at midnight in your device's own time zone. The full rules are in section 7 of the Terms.
Shindo Pro, trials and cancelling #
Shindo is usable without paying. The free tier includes your readiness score and its drivers, the training-load metrics, weekly plan generation, the manual plan editor, manual food logging and syncing with Apple Health and Garmin. A subscription never changes how a number is computed — metrics are identical for free and paid users; Pro changes only which results and which AI narration are shown. Section 5 of the Terms lists both tiers in full.
- Plans. Shindo Pro is offered as a monthly and an annual auto-renewing subscription. Prices are shown in the App Store, in your own currency and with your local tax — that is the only accurate source, so we do not print figures here.
- Free trial. Both plans include a 7-day free trial where Apple considers you eligible. Eligibility is Apple's decision, per Apple ID and per subscription group: if you have already used a trial in the Shindo Pro group, you will not get another one.
- Cancelling. Subscriptions are cancelled only in your Apple ID settings — Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions, or App Store → your profile → Subscriptions. The app offers a shortcut that opens that same Apple screen. We cannot cancel for you: Apple is the seller of record and we have no access to your Apple ID. Cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends, or it renews. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription.
- Restoring a purchase. New iPhone, or reinstalled the app? Use Restore Purchases in the app while signed in to the Apple ID that bought the subscription. Once resolved, the entitlement works offline.
- Refunds. Refunds are handled by Apple, not by us, at reportaproblem.apple.com. We are unable to issue them. This does not affect any right you have under consumer law — see section 15 of the Terms.
Languages #
The interface is available in 12 languages: English, Czech, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Traditional Chinese. Shindo follows your iPhone's language setting; there is no separate language picker in the app.
The AI-written coaching text follows the same language. Everything on this website, and all four legal documents, are in English only.
How to delete your data #
Because there is no account and no server, most of this you do yourself, and it takes effect immediately. Do the steps that apply to you:
- Delete the app. This removes Shindo's local database — every metric, training plan, meal and journal entry it holds — from your iPhone.
- Revoke Health access. Open Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → Shindo and turn off the categories, or revoke access entirely. To remove the four nutrition totals Shindo wrote, delete them in the Health app itself — they belong to your Health record, not to Shindo, so uninstalling does not take them with it.
- Disconnect Garmin. Signing out inside Shindo erases every Garmin item from the iOS Keychain — your e-mail, your password, your two-factor method and all three tokens.
- Turn the two consents off. In Settings → Data and consent, switching AI coaching off stops any further data going to Google, and switching Product analytics off stops collection and deletes the random identifier this installation was known by. Both take effect immediately.
- Ask us to erase analytics already collected. Turning analytics off stops future collection but does not reach records already at PostHog. They are keyed to a random identifier that is not your name or e-mail, so write to [email protected] and we will delete the records for it. Do this before you turn analytics off if you can, since the identifier is destroyed on withdrawal; describe your situation if it is already gone and we will help.
Two things that survive deleting the app — and what to do about each. iOS does not always remove Keychain items when an app is deleted. Shindo therefore erases the Garmin credentials itself, both when you sign out and on the first launch after a reinstall, so a fresh install never inherits them. The analytics identifier is the deliberate exception: it is meant to survive reinstalling, so deleting the app does not clear it — turning analytics off does, by destroying it outright. Sections 5.3 and 7 of the Privacy Policy state this the same way.
Known limitations #
The ones people run into most, collected in one place rather than scattered through the answers above:
- No sync and no cloud backup. The app's own records live on one iPhone and do not migrate to a new device by themselves.
- No one-tap data export. Health data is exportable through Apple's Health app; Shindo's own database is not yet. Write to us if you need it and we will tell you what is possible for your version.
- Turning a consent off is not retroactive. Switching AI coaching off stops every further request, but a request already in progress is not cancelled, and AI text generated earlier and saved on your iPhone is not deleted — that is your own history, and there is no per-report delete in the app today, so removing it means deleting the app. Switching analytics off likewise stops collection and destroys the identifier, but does not by itself remove records already at PostHog; ask us for that. Section 6.3 and section 7 of the Privacy Policy have the detail.
- Declining analytics also means no crash reports. The crash reporter is part of the analytics SDK, so with analytics off we do not learn that Shindo crashed on you. Tell us instead and we will investigate.
- The Garmin integration is unofficial and can break without warning if Garmin changes its interface.
- AI text can be wrong. It is generated, and generated text can misread a situation or phrase something misleadingly. The numbers beside it are the deterministic ones; trust those, and treat the prose as commentary. The Health & Safety Disclaimer explains why this matters.
Reporting a bug #
Write to [email protected]. What makes a report actionable, roughly in order of usefulness:
- what you expected, and what happened instead;
- the screen you were on, and the steps that got you there;
- a screenshot — for a wrong number, one that shows it;
- the app version and your iOS version;
- whether Garmin is connected, and which watch you use.
If a metric looks wrong, please say which one and what you believe it should be. Every number in the app is produced by a deterministic engine from your data, so a wrong number is a reproducible bug and we can usually find it.