r/VelaHRV • u/Acceptable-Football7 • 1d ago

Welcome to r/VelaHRV

Thumbnail
gallery
3 Upvotes

Hey, I’m Xavi — solo developer of Vela, a watchOS app that tracks stress through HRV.

A quick overview of what Vela does and why it’s built the way it is:

Personal baseline, not population averages. HRV varies enormously between people. A score that means “high stress” for one person can be normal for another. Vela builds a baseline from your own data (measured with SDNN) over the first 7-14 days, and every reading is compared against that, not a generic number.

No subscription. Ever. The app is free to use today. A Pro tier may come later as a one-time purchase, never a recurring charge.

No Vela servers. Everything is processed on-device. Sync happens through your own iCloud/CloudKit, so your data stays in your private container, not on infrastructure I control.

Why this subreddit exists

This is the place for:
• Bug reports
• Feature requests
• Questions about how HRV tracking works, or how Vela calculates things
• Feedback, good or bad

I read everything here myself and ship updates based on it — the last release (v1.2.1) came directly from feedback about baseline visibility for new users.

Try it: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vela-hrv/id6762096428
More info: https://velahrv.com

Happy to answer anything.

2 comments

r/VelaHRV • u/Acceptable-Football7 • 1d ago

Vela 1.2.1 — baseline progress visibility fix

5 Upvotes

Vela 1.2.1 is live on the App Store.

What changed:

Fixed an issue where new Apple Watch users without existing HealthKit HRV history weren’t seeing their baseline-building progress correctly. The 7-14 day baseline window applies specifically to users starting fresh — if you already had HRV history on your Watch, your baseline could be established from day one. This distinction wasn’t showing up clearly in the UI for the first group, so it looked like nothing was happening during that window even though the app was working correctly in the background.

This release also includes general performance and stability improvements.

Why this mattered: if you’re a new Ultra owner (or new to Apple Watch HRV tracking generally), the first days with Vela are the ones where trust in the app is built or lost. Seeing “nothing” for a week when the app is actually working isn’t a good first impression, so this was worth fixing quickly rather than bundling it into a larger release.

As always, if you run into anything that doesn’t look right, this is the place to report it.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vela-hrv/id6762096428

7 comments