Ever since the launch of the Fitbit Air last month, interest in screenless fitness trackers has skyrocketed.
However, one product that has been drawing plenty of criticism lately is the Whoop fitness band.
Unlike traditional smartwatches, Whoop takes a much more passive approach to health tracking, similar to what Fitbit Air is trying to do.
The band stays on your wrist, or even other parts of your body, and quietly tracks your health metrics and vitals throughout the day.
However, the biggest criticism surrounding Whoop has always been its subscription model.
The Fitbit Air costs just $100, and Google’s $10-per-month Google Health subscription is entirely optional.
Whoop, on the other hand, is built around a subscription-first model. As long as you’re paying monthly or annually, you get access to all the data and insights the band collects. Stop paying, though, and the device turns into a very expensive paperweight.
Because of that, many users have wondered whether it would ever be possible to build an app that could access data from a Whoop band without requiring an active subscription. Now, a developer has finally made that happen.
An Android app called Noop lets you pair a Whoop device with your phone and continue viewing much of the data it collects without paying a subscription.
I’ve been using the Noop app on my Oppo Find X9 Ultra for the past four days, and it should make the makers of Whoop at least a little nervous.
The app mentioned in this article is not an official Whoop product and has been created by an independent developer. It’s also not available through the Google Play Store, which means you’ll need to sideload it manually.
As always, proceed with caution when installing software from third-party sources. It’s also worth noting that Whoop states that using unofficial apps, products, or services may violate its terms of service.
This app lets you use an inactive Whoop band without paying
An unofficial app gives old Whoop bands a second life
Before I tell you more about the Noop app, it’s worth noting that Whoop does not officially support third-party apps or services.
That said, you can download Noop directly from the developer’s GitHub release page and install it on your Android phone by sideloading the APK.
The Noop app offers several advantages over the official Whoop experience.
The biggest one is that all data processing happens locally on your device and never touches the cloud. And unlike the official Whoop platform, it’s completely free to use.
I had a Whoop 4.0 lying around ever since I upgraded to the Whoop MG last year. After I transferred my membership to the newer band, the Whoop 4.0 became completely unusable.
After pairing it with Noop, though, I never really felt like I was missing out on the official Whoop experience.
Noop recreates most of what I used Whoop for
Almost everything Whoop does is here, and then some
Just like the official app, Noop starts building your recovery, strain, and sleep metrics over time.
If you’ve used Whoop before, you can import your historical Whoop data as well as Apple Health and Health Connect information, so the app has something to build on.
Or you can simply start fresh and let it learn your data from scratch.
The app includes four tabs at the bottom:
- Today: Shows your key metrics.
- Trends: For long-term data analysis.
- Live: Displays real-time metrics while also handling band pairing and syncing.
- Sleep: Tracks your recent sleep performance.
Compared to the official Whoop app, Noop isn’t quite as feature-rich or polished. There are still a few bugs here and there, and occasionally the app refuses to reconnect to the band.
That said, the pace of development has been genuinely impressive. I started using the app on version 1.07, and since then, the developer has released dozens of new builds, fixing bugs and adding features.
You can track everything from recovery, sleep, strain, and workouts without paying for a membership.
Like the official Whoop app, you can start workouts directly from Noop and even integrate AI coaching, although you’ll need your own OpenAI or Anthropic API key for that.
There’s also a Breathe section that offers haptic-guided breathing sessions designed to help reduce stress.
The unofficial app actually beats Whoop in a few ways
You can set vibration alerts for notifications and calls
Speaking of haptics, this is one area where Noop goes beyond the official Whoop app. It lets you assign haptics to notifications from specific apps.
For example, you can configure apps like Gmail and Slack, so when the band vibrates, you know it’s an important notification that you need to deal with.
It can’t display notifications because the band doesn’t have a screen, but the haptic alerts still work surprisingly well.
You can even enable vibrations for incoming calls, which is something the official Whoop experience doesn’t currently offer.
Noop is something that should have Whoop worried
After using Noop for the past few days, I’ve come away genuinely impressed.
More than anything, it proves that older Whoop hardware can still be incredibly useful even without an active subscription attached to it.
And now that more developers have access to AI-powered coding tools, Whoop may need to do a better job justifying the value of its subscription.
After all, developers can increasingly reverse-engineer products and build alternatives like this much faster than before.
Still, the app isn’t perfect, and there are bugs and occasional connection issues. But for an unofficial open source project developed by a single developer, it’s remarkably capable.
If you have an old Whoop collecting dust in a drawer and don’t mind sideloading an APK, Noop might be the closest thing to giving that hardware a second life.
- Battery Life
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14 days
- IP rating
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IP68
- Health sensors
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PPG sensor, ECG sensor, Blood pressure sensor, Accelerometer, Temperature sensor
- Display
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N/A
- Dimensions
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34.7mm × 24mm × 10.6mm
- Price
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$359/year
The Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG are screen-less fitness trackers aimed primarily at fitness enthusiasts and sports people. Fuss-and-distraction free, it can be worn all day without a problem.
