YHK - yet another hacker news clone

New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing

105 points johnbehnke 2 hours ago 92 comments

altairprime 2 hours ago | parent

For those who want to have a bottom line impact and have time & money to spare, purchase a scale or a blood pressure monitor from Apple Store online, try to set it up on your phone until you hit the new paywall, and then call and arrange to return it; when asked, explain that it requires a $100/year subscription for Apple HealthKit support and that you’re offended at Apple for omitting that. It’s quite possible that Withings made this change without notifying Apple, and a handful of such returns could lead Apple to pull all Withings products from their sales channels in response. Or it could just be wasted time, and Apple’s fine with it, but there’s no easier way to find out — and this sales channel is probably valuable enough to Withings that losing access to it might cost them their entire projected revenue gains from the fee.

cebert 1 hour ago | parent

I can’t wait till somebody figures out how to reverse engineer these with a LLM so we can just sync the scale data ourselves. I purchased one of these devices, but I am somewhat regretting my decision now.

tonyedgecombe 1 hour ago | parent

I'm coming to the conclusion that my life is improved the more I can leave these technologies alone.

in_cahoots 22 minutes ago | parent

This is the unfortunate truth. I've gone through 2 Withings scales because the battery basically had planned obsolecense. Then I bought a Quardio smart scale, but the company went bankrupt and all cloud syncing went down. Meanwhile my mom's $20 dumb scale works perfectly fine.

These days it's not true that if you pay for the item, you're the customer. Now you're just a potential revenue stream.

mijoharas 1 hour ago | parent

Used to be a thing before LLMs too.

Here is a starting point. It includes a link to instructions on how to reverse engineer a Bluetooth scale[0], and it looks like someone dumped some data already.

[0] https://github.com/oliexdev/openScale/issues/786

CamperBob2 1 hour ago | parent

True but it's good to see access to our own devices democratized, for once.

It isn't far short of magical to watch Opus hack a piece of connected hardware. Everybody should try to take advantage of that capability at least once, if only to see it in action before they nerf it.

eitally 1 hour ago | parent

I've had pretty good luck using Google Appscript to either access web APIs or screenscrape, then parse into a Google Sheet (which I either use as-is or as the source to populate a web app).

toomuchtodo 1 hour ago | parent

Reverse engineer anything with agents, from app behavior down to native binaries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50058850 - October 2026

https://github.com/morluto/rea

https://rea.tools

Analemma_ 1 hour ago | parent

I'm not as optimistic. I think we're in a very small golden window and once companies catch on that reverse engineering is taking off in a big way, they're going to panic and start demanding cryptographically-sealed binaries with remote attestation everywhere. And they'll probably get it, because what the consumer wants barely matters anymore.

Terr_ 1 hour ago | parent

Something something think of the children.

Except it'll all be locked down into a lower-bidder insecure state too.

itopaloglu83 1 hour ago | parent

We need an open firmware for these scales.

I just need a scale that syncs with my phone, and none of those subscriptions.

thway15269037 57 minutes ago | parent

I can't help but feel that something soon gonna break, and break big. Like, the decompilation stuff either gonna get criminalized, or forbidden in training, or I don't know. Current state of affairs became super imbalanced, where I can decompile 400k+ lines big game in a weekend and rip it's engine; or, as pointed in sister thread, as someone cloned music processor device in 2 hours.

The question is who and when first blinks.

MisterMunchkin 53 minutes ago | parent

I’m surprised it’s not already forbidden in training. They won’t even mention brands or characters because that’s wrongthink.

thway15269037 45 minutes ago | parent

I'm also surprised when reading stuff here like "agent harness app %X% is a new moat!". I mean, I can point even GPT itself on their own new app and it happily obliges in dumping all features, writing product doc or disassembling itself.

Not that I want it -- my tokens are not free -- but it's here. Up for grabs.

randomblock1 42 minutes ago | parent

What AI are you using? Image generators are kinda like this but AFAIK no LLMs do this. Maybe a little or warning about copyright at most for specific use cases.

jscheel 42 minutes ago | parent

got a link to that comment in the sister thread?

toyg 34 minutes ago | parent

Local AI will be made illegal under the guise of security, and then they'll just purge anything "revolutionary" from services. The endgame currently getting pushed by the big players is pretty obvious.

Gigachad 19 minutes ago | parent

It'll be made illegal in the same way piracy is. Major platforms won't be able to host it but anyone who wants it will trivially be able to torrent the latest model and do whatever they want.

Other countries won't care and let people reverse engineer away.

k4rli 41 minutes ago | parent

Pretty sure it's already possible. I have a small service running on homelab that syncs all the withings data to garmin. Has needed no attention in years and just works.

randomblock1 39 minutes ago | parent

I give it at most a week. People freed the Whoop pretty quickly. I mean, you could probably do it yourself if you have the time and an LLM, it's probably not that locked down.

rootusrootus 20 minutes ago | parent

Maybe LLMs are going to help free us from enshittification. For now.

deivid 29 minutes ago | parent

I don't have the scale, but I got the protocol for the watch and it'll probably be similar enough.

Been using my implementation exclusively for months, seems fine.

https://github.com/davidventura/withouthings

TheCoelacanth 1 hour ago | parent

The entire economy is a grift now.

bigwheels 58 minutes ago | parent

That's late stage capitalism for ya.

msy 1 hour ago | parent

Sounds like some PM is jealous of Whoop and trying to launder the cost and boost adoption of their unwanted AI feature/subscription behind a heavily used existing feature.

alistairSH 1 hour ago | parent

Assuming the Withings app is on the same phone as the HealthKit account, there's no "cloud" involved. This is 100% grift. I hope nobody buys these.

iAMkenough 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah, I got turned off when I realized you can’t sync these devices via Bluetooth or LAN.

Required path is: Scale data -> WiFi -> Internet -> Withings app -> HealthKit

mikestew 1 hour ago | parent

Is that my problem? I figured that WiFi access was enough to hit my phone to update HealthKit, but I never gave the scale access to the Internet ("you can go live over there on the IoT VLAN with the other tattletale devices").

Well, fuck that. Now I'm really, really, really not going to buy a Withings product again.

iAMkenough 1 hour ago | parent

Mine died after a year, which I suspect is because my spouse used it after showers, and they’re not designed to handle bathroom moisture. Not even rated as water resistant.

Never again.

altairprime 1 hour ago | parent

There’s an HA integration path for the scale to HA but I don’t believe anyone has yet built the HA to HealthKit side of that.

iAMkenough 42 minutes ago | parent

Doesn’t that require using the Withings API (cloud)?

Looks like HA updated their documentation to reflect the $99/yr requirement: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/withings/

altairprime 30 minutes ago | parent

Whoever wrote https://didac.dev/blog/i-made-my-withings-scale-sync-to-home... apparently got it working with Bluetooth LE and an esp32 chip. Sadly, they didn’t share their code yet, and as I lack their social media options I can’t email them requesting they post it. Perhaps they’ll see this comment, or perhaps someone else will repeat the solution and post it this time — but without the HealthKit path, there’s not much gain to be had over just manually typing the weight measured into the Health app.

alistairSH 9 minutes ago | parent

Seriously? That’s awful by design. I figured it was BT from scale to phone app.

niels8472 1 hour ago | parent

But but... it has an "AI Connector" now (this is literally one of the reasons).

mikestew 1 hour ago | parent

Why do they even bother? This is going to hit the front page of every health/fitness/cycling/running blog site, there will be a big stink for a few weeks, then Withings will quietly (or loudly, "we've heard you!", as if they were listening in the first place) get rid of it. And they'll waste all this time, money, and customer goodwill for nothing, because no one could have possibly seen this backlash coming.

Doesn't matter to me, neither their POS blood pressure cuff nor their scale will sync to HealthKit anyway (oh, how I've tried), I'm not losing anything. So stomping my feet with "I'm never buying another Withings product!" won't make any difference, I was not going to buy their POS products again anyway. :-)

Hamuko 1 hour ago | parent

I used to have issues with my Withings scale not syncing to HealthKit, but I just checked and it had all of my weightings in there just fine. Can't even remember the last time I checked the Withings app.

wat10000 1 hour ago | parent

Will they get rid of it? It seems more likely that they'll do damage control to wait out the news cycle (the official comment on the linked post is an excellent example of corporate deflection) and change nothing.

js2 38 minutes ago | parent

This change sucks (but as a long time Withings user doesn't affect me... for now), but I haven't had trouble with either the scale or BP cuff syncing to Apple Health. I don't have any suggestions besides double-checking the Withings app has permissions to write to HealthKit. I don't see any settings in the Withings app itself besides a prompt to check "Settings > Privacy > Health > Withings App".

Sorry if this isn't helpful.

Aside: all BP cuffs and their apps sorta seem to suck when it comes to sync. I also have an Omron. At least mine measure accurately. Make sure to validate yours with your GP.

techdiff 1 hour ago | parent

This is up there with BMW charging a subscription for heated seats.

netsharc 1 hour ago | parent

I don't see the appeal of heated seats, I've never turned the ones in my cars on. OK, I suppose when you've left your car in below zero weather it's useful.

Heated steering wheel on the other hand; that's heavenly.

I suppose if I ever find a BMW attractive enough to buy one despite this consumer-hating behavior (their grilles help me stay away), I'd figure out if I can unplug the seat from the control unit, and just plug it straight to a different power supply to get the heat. Or will they use something like HDMI's Digital Content Protection to prevent "heat piracy"?

Anyway it's all theoretical, it seems they've given up trying to pick your pocket for heated seats, but for other features they're still going to mug you: https://www.drive.com.au/news/bmw-admits-heated-seat-subscri...

lokar 45 minutes ago | parent

I see you did not grow up going out to the driveway to start the car before breakfast :)

netsharc 43 minutes ago | parent

Grew up in a warm place. Currently my car sleeps in a relatively warm underground carpark of the apartment block.

lokar 32 minutes ago | parent

We had to plug our (gas) car in at night. I don’t recommend it.

cogogo 41 minutes ago | parent

If you do not have a garage and live in a cold weather climate they are fantastic. Heat up almost instantly when the engine might not warm up entirely to get the heat going for a good 15 min.

JumpCrisscross 27 minutes ago | parent

> when you've left your car in below zero weather it's useful

Yup. Getting back from any snow sport where you wiped out and all the snow decided your butt's where it's going to hang out sells the product.

eps 17 minutes ago | parent

> Heated steering wheel on the other hand; that's heavenly

Twice I tried it on rental cars it freaked the hell out of me. This is what I'd imagine people experiencing some exotic neurological collapse feel like - part of hands feeling warm, while surrounding bits feeling frozen. Mixed signaling, really bizarre dissonance. So now when I get a new car, I get pretty much every option except for the heated steering wheel.

lokar 46 minutes ago | parent

You can buy the feature outright when you order the car.

This is just them figuring out that if they pre-install the HW in every car they get enough payments to cover the units never used.

It has two obvious consumer benefits: second hand sales (the new owner may really want it), and very occasional use.

haute_cuisine 1 hour ago | parent

I honestly don't have anything against them moving apple sync behind the paywall. It's really hard to justify doing any kind of ongoing maintenance and rnd from one-time sales. If they ship good durable things, there might not be enough people willing to buy that stuff, they're also forced to constantly find new customers.

ebtebt 1 hour ago | parent

What?! How about providing value so that it is actually worth purchasing a subscription?

haute_cuisine 38 minutes ago | parent

Subscription isn't required to use the device.

wat10000 1 hour ago | parent

What ongoing maintenance is required beyond what would be needed to keep their app working for future sales anyway?

lokar 41 minutes ago | parent

They do need to keep up with API changes. But that’s not that hard. Even then, they could expose a stable local API so someone else can maintain the adapter.

wat10000 36 minutes ago | parent

Right, but they need to keep up with those changes to support their continuing sales anyway, so it’s “free” to keep supporting the existing installed base too.

haute_cuisine 33 minutes ago | parent

Why would someone else maintain the adapter? Would they be charging for maintenance (or selling data / network) as well? What company should give their business to somebody else?

I assume writing and maintaining apps across all stack of devices is real work that someone has to do full time with a decent level of quality. Unfortunately, you can't just ship software and call it done, even without adding features, new devices are getting released, new OS versions are getting released, new security updates are getting released, server infra has to be maintained and patched.

I feel that all this work isn't getting appreciated and many think that this should be offloaded to somebody else to be done for free. They already offer a free app with free CSV export.

Also, they just might have taken on too much scope and paying for all that scope isn't sustainable from hardware sales alone, unless people continue to buy, but at some point all who would buy will have their devices and scope can't be covered anymore.

lokar 20 minutes ago | parent

I would give it a shot. Home assistant is full of adapters like this.

I though the CSV export was manual, you can’t automate it.

mikestew 1 hour ago | parent

It's really hard to justify doing any kind of ongoing maintenance and rnd from one-time sales.

What kind of water-carrying excuse is that? Multibillion dollar companies have been created doing exactly that for decades. Withings has somehow managed to stay in business for nearly 20 years...doing exactly that.

haute_cuisine 20 minutes ago | parent

What if their model is sustainable only when new people keep buying? Once all who would buy bought, they can't survive on existing customer base.

loloquwowndueo 1 hour ago | parent

What’s withings?

Dunno man, I just hop on the treadmill, do the thing for an hour, and hop off. Every day. I don’t need to count every single second or calorie I spend on it. Why all this paraphernalia around it all is needed is beyond me.

brador 47 minutes ago | parent

Best thing about minimalism is realising you don’t need mental load junk.

jkestner 42 minutes ago | parent

But how do you know when to stand?

loloquwowndueo 34 minutes ago | parent

You don’t stand on a treadmill. Ever. That’s how I know.

jkestner 27 minutes ago | parent

I love how the Apple Watch patronizingly congratulates me for standing in the morning. Can’t wait til the battery dies and I can get a Swatch.

PSNapier 1 hour ago | parent

Fun story: when I got my Withings watch 5-6 years ago couldn't get it Bluetooth paired with my phone. Contacted support.

Me: hey bluetooth pairing isn't working I've tried A, B, C and here's additional context. Withings support: [over 24 hours later] Have you tried A? :) Me: ...Yes? Withings support: [over 24 hours later] Have you tried B? :) Me: As I said initially, yes. Can you please batch things to try to expedite this since replies are so slow? Withings support: [over 24 hours later] We have to do this in order. :) Have you tried having a different phone even though your phone meets our listed requirements? :) Me: ..................... Me: I debugged it myself in Android dev mode and got it working, I had to do X, perhaps you can relay the issue to your engineers. Thanks for nothing. Withings support: [over 24 hours later] oh

And as a bonus after an update a couple years ago it looses track of time within a couple weeks and has to be manually set.

Very pretty product once upon a time with horrid customer service and software.

TomAnthony 1 hour ago | parent

The Withings app has just got consistently worse and worse over the last few years. I just wanted some scales that would sync to my phone and record my weight over time.

Now the app is absolutely bloated and I can barely find my weight, and the syncing has become _much_ less stable, and the app is constantly asking me to sign in again.

Amazing how they were from good, to bad, to terrible.

rpdillon 1 hour ago | parent

This is sort of an old-man-yells-at-clouds comment, but I recently realized that most of the new stuff companies sell is pretty much a solution in search of a problem. Apple's whole announcement this past week was like this, but I'm feeling the same way about smartwatches, smart homes, and the like lately as well.

For most folks, I feel like spending 20 minutes a day on Darebee would be more effective than their $20/month subscription to their $600 smartwatch.

https://darebee.com/

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

Why does everything on this website have to be a bait-and-switch funnel to some kind of (self-)Promotion.

malfist 56 minutes ago | parent

Tell me, what part of your workout program you're pitching can inform me how much I weigh? How about my body fat percentage? Can it tell me my heart rate?

ShakataGaNai 57 minutes ago | parent

#1 - If you bought the product with Apple Health sync in mind and it doesn't do that for free, file a complaint with your OAG. It's false advertising.

#2 - If you have the apps today, you should warn other users with a review (which may or may not be 1 star).

#3 - If you haven't reviewed the product on Amazon, you should warn other users with a review (which may or may not be 1 star).

itopaloglu83 53 minutes ago | parent

Nowadays, companies see the users of their platforms as captive audiences, and they try to extract as much money from them as possible.

This completely destroyed the resale value of this product as well. It's not a product we own, but it's their product we happen to use, and we're still subject to all kinds of ads and traps for subscriptions etc.

rectang 42 minutes ago | parent

Tricking the customer into an exploitative subscription is more profitable than earning loyalty by providing good value.

sheepscreek 40 minutes ago | parent

Oh John, what have you done.

APPLE enshittifying its platform was not on my bingo card.

hhh 32 minutes ago | parent

this isn't Apple though?

JumpCrisscross 34 minutes ago | parent

> file a complaint with your OAG

Honestly one of my new favourite uses for AI. Little things I wouldn't ordinarily complain about I can now engage the regulatory state on. (Currently pursuing LG under Wyoming's wiretapping statute.)

Though heading that off might be why this is only "starting from October 13th, 2026" and in respect of "any new Withings account."

MisterMunchkin 54 minutes ago | parent

And this is why we buy apple products. Imagine buying a third party slopwatch and then being told you have to pay $99 to read your own data.

tibbon 53 minutes ago | parent

Reminds me of Chamberlain and their garage door openers...

rootusrootus 48 minutes ago | parent

And that will be the end of me buying anything more from Withings. Good job guys, I was happy enough with the scale, but I do not pay yet another subscription just to get the readings put into Apple Health. Bye.

baxtr 44 minutes ago | parent

Has anyone vibe-coded a reverse engineered clone app yet? Should be doable today.

dawnerd 43 minutes ago | parent

I was gonna say, I’d be shocked if it already wasn’t from the home assistant community.

deivid 27 minutes ago | parent

For Android+watch, yes, scale likely compatible with some small amount of work

https://github.com/davidventura/withouthings

Gigachad 16 minutes ago | parent

I wish ios would allow sideloading because the current model makes this stuff not viable. Few people are going to pay $100/year to host a free reverse engineered app.

MiroslavPokorny 43 minutes ago | parent

Counting steps or any thing else on a Apple Watch is sad, just like this.

Pointless accounting, life is not an account or stock graph.

diego_moita 36 minutes ago | parent

Buy a Pebble, is a better watch.

And it is all open-source, the best guarantee against enshitification.

ben1040 24 minutes ago | parent

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines

4.10:

You may not monetize built-in capabilities provided by the hardware or operating system, such as Push Notifications, the camera, or the gyroscope; or Apple services and technologies, such as Apple Music access, iCloud storage, or Screen Time APIs.

rubyfan 9 minutes ago | parent

Nordictrack does this with iFit as well. Can’t sync to Apple Health without a paid account. Syncing is somewhat janky too.

michaelhoney 19 minutes ago | parent

I will bet that $99 they can’t make it stick. 1990s business practices in an age of reverse-engineering LLMs

fintler 17 minutes ago | parent

Back in 2016, an update bricked my Withings scale. I don't think I've considered them again since.

TrainedMonkey 16 minutes ago | parent

I do not care for Withings software or subscriptions, but their hardware is so nice.

mortenjorck 15 minutes ago | parent

I was actually in the market for a scale to replace my Wyze (still works, but the app is just not very reliable) and was strongly considering a Withings Body Smart.

With Withings firmly off the list, what's the best alternative for something that's accurate and reliably syncs with Apple Health?

jmbwell 11 minutes ago | parent

Withings opened my eyes. I’d been using cheap crappy devices that didn’t do much at all. “Upgraded” to withings and holy crap, the new user experience was a complete tour of my personal health data they wanted to ingest and control. I was finding no way to opt out. I couldn’t use the thing until I answered all the questions. It’s clear they’re all-in on vacuuming up data for their own purposes. I went back to a dumb scale and dumb bp cuff. I’d love to have things that automatically connect and record in my software of choice. But you can see what withings feels that costs them. They want you to pay not even to escape their confines, but just to allow your data to go to your own system. This shit has to end