What is Withings?
Withings is a French health-hardware company — registered in Issy-les-Moulineaux, founded in 2008 — and its catalogue is much wider than the part Strava cares about. There are hybrid watches with analog hands and a small digital window (ScanWatch 2, ScanWatch Nova, ScanWatch Light, and the older Steel HR and Pulse HR), smart scales that do body composition, a mat you slide under the mattress to track sleep, blood pressure cuffs, and BeamO, a handheld that takes an ECG and a temperature. All of it reports into one phone app, called the Withings app since version 5.14 and Health Mate before that — Strava's own help article still uses the old name.
Exactly one of those product lines talks to Strava: the watches. Link the accounts and any workout you start on a Withings watch — or start in the app — uploads to Strava automatically, with time, distance, map and heart rate. Nothing else makes the trip. Strava's help article is blunt about it: the app records other things like steps and sleep, and that data isn't transferable. A scale weigh-in doesn't reach Strava, and neither does a night on the sleep mat or a blood pressure reading. If you bought Withings for the scale and hoped it would feed your Strava profile, it won't.
There is one small flow in the other direction, which is unusual for a wearable brand. Once the accounts are linked you can turn on a Strava – Weekly distance screen on the watch, so the digital window can show your Strava weekly total on demand. That's the whole of Strava-to-Withings: a distance number. No segments, no routes, no live gap to the leader.
Key Features
Automatic workout export, and only forward
You link it in the app: Share tab → scroll to Apps → Strava → Link with Strava, sign in to Strava, authorise, then turn on Activate Sharing. From that moment, workouts sync on their own. Two limits worth knowing before you connect. Only future activities upload — nothing backfills — and Strava's help article says there is no way to sync or export an individual activity at all, so a session that misses the boat is gone unless you export the file and upload it by hand. Unlinking later doesn't remove what already synced.
Eighteen activity types, with gaps
Withings publishes the list of what exports: walking, running, hiking, skateboarding, BMX, cycling, swimming, surfing, kitesurfing, windsurfing, weight lifting, Swedish gym, elliptical, golf, yoga, skiing, snowboarding and ice skating. Indoor running is explicitly excluded. So is anything you added to the app by hand after the fact — a workout you typed in never exports, only one you actually launched.
The Strava screen on the watch
Withings app → Devices → Screens customization → tick Strava – Weekly distance. ScanWatch 2's own list of available screens ends with "The Strava screen (if paired)", so it's current hardware, not a legacy feature. One catch on a shared account: only one user of a Withings account connected to Strava can activate the screen on a device, and only workouts from the account's main user export at all. Family profiles and Strava don't mix well here.
Connected GPS, not a GPS watch
No Withings watch has its own GPS chip. ScanWatch 2 tracks distance-based outdoor activities — walking, running, biking, canoeing — using your phone's GPS over Bluetooth, which means you carry the phone or you get no map. Withings also warns that tracking fails if your phone's location is off or battery-saver mode is on. For a Strava rider used to leaving the phone at home, that's the real trade-off, not the sync.
Which devices are actually on the compatible list
Withings names ScanWatch, Move, Move ECG, Steel HR / Steel HR Sport and Pulse HR. Strava names Steel HR, Steel HR Sport, Pulse HR, ScanWatch and ScanWatch Horizon. Both lists are stale — neither mentions ScanWatch 2, ScanWatch Nova or ScanWatch Light, even though ScanWatch 2's own documentation covers the Strava screen. Treat the lists as out of date rather than as evidence the newer watches are excluded.
Heart rate needs a permission on Strava's side
If your workouts arrive without heart rate, the fix is in Strava, not Withings: Profile → settings cog → Data Permissions → allow access to heart-related data. Withings' troubleshooting article points at this first.
Withings+ gates the analysis, not the sync
The subscription is $9.95 a month (€9.95, £8.95 in the UK), or the yearly plan — which Withings' own two support pages list inconsistently as $99.95 and $99.50. It unlocks the Health Improvement Score, the premium AI insights, the Readiness score, having an ECG reviewed by a board-certified cardiologist, and a nutritionist consultation. Withings says the rest of the app stays free, and the Strava connection is part of the free rest. Subscribing inside the app gets a two-week trial; buying hardware from the Withings web store includes a month.
Who It's For
- People who want a watch that looks like a watch and will accept phone-dependent GPS in exchange for a 30-day battery and real hands on the dial
- Withings scale or sleep-mat owners who should know up front that neither of those devices sends anything to Strava — the watch is the only bridge
- Anyone tracking blood pressure or ECG alongside training, since that's the half of Withings' range Strava has no equivalent for
- Not serious runners or cyclists — no onboard GPS, no Strava Live Segments, no training load, and indoor runs don't even export
