Switching to Badger

FitNotes on iPhone

The short answer is that there is no iPhone version. FitNotes is an Android app and always has been, so switching phones means picking something else to log in. That is an annoying answer, and the useful part is what happens next, because the years of training in it do not have to stay on the old phone.

Your log can come with you

FitNotes backs up to a .fitnotes file, and that file is a real database rather than a flattened export. Badger reads it directly, on the phone, with nothing uploaded anywhere, and Badger is on the App Store. So the move is three steps: back up while you still have the Android phone, get the file onto the iPhone, import it.

It is the same import code on both platforms, not an Android-only feature with an iPhone excuse attached. Nothing in it branches on which phone you are holding.

Doing it

  1. On the Android phone, before you let go of it. In FitNotes, go to Settings → Backup and write a .fitnotes file. Do this before you wipe or trade in the phone. Apple's switch-to-iPhone tools move photos, contacts, messages and the like, but not a third-party Android app's saved data, and there is no iPhone FitNotes for it to land in even if they did.
  2. Move the file to the iPhone. Email it to yourself, or drop it in iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive, or move it with a computer and a cable. AirDrop is not an option here, since it only talks to other Apple devices. Anything that ends with the file reachable in the iPhone's Files app will do.
  3. Install Badger from the App Store.
  4. Import. Go to Settings → Your data → Import from FitNotes and pick the file. It is the standard iOS file picker, so browse to wherever the file landed. The same import is offered during first-launch onboarding if you would rather do it straight away.
  5. Check the preview before you commit: exercises, workout days and sets. This is also where you tell Badger which unit the backup holds. It assumes kilograms, which is what FitNotes normally stores, so switch it to pounds only if yours does not. An older backup, from before FitNotes changed its database layout around 2018, carries the unit per set and needs no answer from you. Then import.

It runs more than once safely. Sets landing on a date you already have merge into that session and nothing already logged is overwritten, so if you find an older backup later you can add it without making a mess. Step-by-step detail is in importing from FitNotes.

What comes across

Because the backup is a database, considerably more survives the move than the sets alone:

  • Your categories, keeping the colors you gave them.
  • Your exercise library, landing back in those categories rather than in an "Imported" bucket.
  • Every set, with its date, weight, reps, distance, time and any comment on it.
  • Your body weight history, and your custom measurements with their units.
  • Your records, worked out again from the history once it lands, so the graphs start out full.

What does not: warmups as warmups, because FitNotes does not mark them and nothing can guess retroactively, and routines, which are a separate thing you set up in Badger. The full account, including the older pre-2018 backup layout and how pounds stay pounds, is on moving to Badger from FitNotes.

What you are switching to

Worth saying plainly, because a page that only talks about the import is selling you the door rather than the room. Badger is a training log with tools attached, not a coach that runs your program for you. If you liked FitNotes for being fast, free, offline and uninterested in your email address, that is the same list Badger was built against: no account, no sign-in, no subscription, no ads, and no sync you did not ask for.

On top of that you get routines that pre-fill each session with your last weights, programs that ship built in, per-machine and per-gym records, a plate calculator and a warmup generator that work from the plates your gym actually owns, a rest timer that starts itself, and graphs worth opening. And you can leave again whenever you like: every set exports to CSV, and the whole database backs up to a documented file format that is ordinary readable text. Neither is a paid feature. The promise is that written down where you can hold us to it.

What it needs

An iPhone running iOS 15 or later. Badger is an iPhone app only: there is no iPad build, because it has never been designed or tested for that screen and shipping it untested would be worse than leaving it out. It is free, with no paid tier to graduate to, which the no-subscription guide spells out against the trackers people usually weigh up.

If you end up with a phone on each platform, or move back later, Badger is on Google Play too and its own backup file carries the whole database between them. Moving to a new phone covers that.

About the name

FitNotes is the work of its own developer, and Badger is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to it in any way. This page describes compatibility and nothing else: Badger reads the backup file that their app writes. FitNotes is a good app, and the only thing wrong with it here is that it does not run on the phone you are holding.