About
I’m Max. I make Brolift.
Brolift is a free workout log for iPhone. It has been on the App Store since April 2020, and it’s the only app I have there.
About me
I’m Max, an independent developer. I publish Brolift through my company, POWERUP GAMING LLC.
Brolift is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases. There is no Brolift account either. Your workouts stay on your iPhone and in your own iCloud, where I can’t see them.
The screenshots on this site use demo data, so the numbers in them are not my lifts or anyone else’s.
Brolift’s history
The first version of Brolift came out on the App Store on April 1, 2020. Before 2.0 it was an account-based app: you signed in, your workouts were stored online, and there was a social side with friends, a feed and comments.
Updates from 2021 to 2023 added basic mode, photos and videos on sets, a Progress tab, a change to how PRs are calculated, account deletion and a Media tab on the Dashboard. Version 1.2.20 came out on July 22, 2023.
After that there were no releases until July 24, 2026, when 1.3.1 shipped with a new UI. It was built on a new code base that I started in November 2025 from a fresh Expo project.
Brolift 2.0
Brolift 2.0 came out on October 16, 2026. Its release note opens with this line:
“Brolift 2.0 is a new app under the hood and a lot nicer to use.”
Here is what changed:
- Workouts live on your iPhone and sync with your own iCloud. There is no Brolift account and no sign-in.
- Heart rate from Apple Health was redesigned: a chart across the whole session, with a marker for every exercise.
- Describe a workout in a sentence and Brolift builds it on your iPhone with Apple Intelligence, on iPhones that support it.
- If you used an older version, tap “Used Brolift before?” on the Dashboard to bring your workouts, planned workouts, custom exercises, measurements, photos and videos into iCloud. Nothing on the old account is deleted. The import steps are in Help & FAQ.
- Friends, comments and the feed are gone. 2.0 has no social features, and the import does not bring them across.
Release timeline
Selected releases, with the dates the App Store lists.
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Brolift goes live on the App Store.
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A new friend profile page, better exercise filtering and a better workout view.
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Basic mode, a simpler way to use the app.
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Attachments on sets.
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A Progress tab to see your progress over time.
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A change to how PRs are calculated.
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An updated Comments section.
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Delete your account from the profile page.
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A Media tab on the Dashboard, and notes that are easier to see.
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No releases.
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A new UI. The release note in full: “New UI!”
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A new app under the hood: workouts on your iPhone and in iCloud with no account, a redesigned heart-rate chart from Apple Health, and workout generation on device.
How Brolift is built
This is Brolift 2.0 as it ships today. For 2.0 I moved storage to SwiftData with CloudKit, and replaced the old workout generator, which sent your text to Google’s Gemini, with Apple’s on-device model.
React Native, plus a Swift module
The app is written in React Native with Expo. Storage, workout generation and photo and video processing run in a native Swift module inside the app.
Photos and videos are re-encoded before they are saved, so they take up less of your iCloud storage.
SwiftData and your private iCloud
Workouts, sets, planned workouts, measurements, Health readings, photos and videos are stored with SwiftData and mirrored to a private CloudKit database in your own iCloud account. Your iCloud account is the identity, so there is nothing to sign up for, and I can’t read that database.
Without iCloud, the app works on that iPhone only and shows a “Not backed up” notice. The storage module needs iOS 26, and so does Brolift 2.0.
Workout generation on device
Generation uses Apple’s Foundation Models framework, which runs the Apple Intelligence model on your iPhone. It gets your sentence, the app’s lists of muscle groups and equipment, and your PR weights for up to 12 exercises, so it can base its weight suggestions on what you lift.
It returns 1 to 12 exercises with weights in whole pounds, each matched against the exercise library. Nothing you type leaves your iPhone. It needs an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence.
Apple Health, read only
Brolift asks Apple Health for read access and never writes to it. It reads heart rate, active and resting energy, and your Health workouts, which help you pick a workout’s time range.
Heart rate from an Apple Watch comes in through Apple Health; there is no Brolift Watch app. Health stays off until you turn it on in Settings › Preferences › Apple HealthKit Sync.
1,081 built-in exercises
The exercise library ships inside the app: 282 body-only, 187 barbell, 148 dumbbell, 84 cable, 75 machine and 62 kettlebell exercises, plus bands, medicine ball and more, across 17 muscle groups.
If something is missing, add it as a custom exercise from the exercise picker or Settings › Workouts › Custom Exercises.
PRs and estimated 1RM
PRs are worked out on your iPhone. For weighted exercises Brolift keeps a record at every weight: a set is a PR when it matches or beats your best reps at that weight, and a weight you have never lifted counts as a PR. Body-only exercises count reps, and timed ones count time.
Estimated 1RM uses the Epley formula, weight × (1 + reps/30). You can try it in the one-rep max calculator.
What Brolift doesn’t do
These come from the privacy policy. They cover Brolift 2.0 and this website.
- No account. You don’t sign up, and I don’t get a copy of your workouts.
- No ads, analytics or tracking. The app has no advertising or analytics SDKs and no crash-reporting service of its own, and I don’t sell data.
- Health data is never used for advertising. It is only used to show your own workouts and is never sold or shared with third parties. Brolift never writes to Apple Health.
- Prompts don’t leave your iPhone. What you type to generate a workout isn’t sent to me or anyone else.
- No in-app purchases or subscriptions. Brolift is free.
- No tracking on this website. brolift.app doesn’t use tracking cookies or third-party analytics.
Contact
Questions, bug reports and feature requests go to support@brolift.app. If you are writing about Brolift, the press kit has screenshots, the app icon and the wordmark.
Brolift is free on the App Store. It needs an iPhone with iOS 26 or later.
Download on the App Store