> A bunch of my paddling friends recommended I try Strava. [...]
> The bad news is as I tried to create an account on Strava, all sorts of warning bells went off. The website is full of dark patterns, and when I clicked to deny Strava access to my health-related data, I was met with this tricky series dialog boxes
I noticed that most apps on the App Store all seem to want you to create an account. I get that that's how they primarily operate but I'm put off by it.
This might be a controversial opinion but I like that my runs with my Apple Watch are recorded in iOS on-device, without needing to use any of these third-party apps. And if you still want to share or even backup your runs, you can use apps like HealthFit¹ or RunGap² to export FIT files that contain GPS points and heart rate data, or export them directly via API to the service you want. If you _really_ want to DIY, you can write some scripts that extract them from the SQLite files in your iOS backups. But by default, everything is local only and you have the choice to do whatever you want with the data.
There’s also open source apps that can do this (but you have to build them and install using a developer certificate). It’s a shame though exporting workouts to gpx is not possible using the built in apps.
> The bad news is as I tried to create an account on Strava, all sorts of warning bells went off. The website is full of dark patterns, and when I clicked to deny Strava access to my health-related data, I was met with this tricky series dialog boxes
I noticed that most apps on the App Store all seem to want you to create an account. I get that that's how they primarily operate but I'm put off by it.
This might be a controversial opinion but I like that my runs with my Apple Watch are recorded in iOS on-device, without needing to use any of these third-party apps. And if you still want to share or even backup your runs, you can use apps like HealthFit¹ or RunGap² to export FIT files that contain GPS points and heart rate data, or export them directly via API to the service you want. If you _really_ want to DIY, you can write some scripts that extract them from the SQLite files in your iOS backups. But by default, everything is local only and you have the choice to do whatever you want with the data.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/healthfit/id1202650514
[2] https://www.rungap.com/