PulseCheckGuide
How to check your resting heart rate at home
The number matters far less than the routine that produced it. Here is how to take a resting reading that is worth comparing to the one you took last week.
PulseCheck keeps a Resting tag and a plain trend line. Free, rated 5.0 out of 5 from 1 rating on the App Store.
This page will not tell you whether your number is good. PulseCheck is a fitness and wellness app, not a medical device. It does not diagnose anything and it is not a substitute for a doctor, who is the right person to ask what a reading means for you.
What resting actually means
Resting does not mean sitting on the sofa after climbing the stairs. It means your body has had time to settle: awake, still, calm, and not in the middle of digesting a large coffee. The classic moment is the first minute after you wake up, before you get out of bed, because that is the one time of day nothing else has happened yet.
If mornings are chaos in your house, the second best option is any repeatable moment: five quiet minutes at your desk before you start, or the same slot every evening. Repeatable beats textbook.
A routine that makes readings comparable
- Same time of day. Your pulse has a daily rhythm of its own. A morning reading and an evening reading are two different measurements, not two attempts at one.
- Same posture. Lying, sitting and standing give three different numbers, and standing up alone changes it within seconds. Pick one and keep it.
- Settle for two minutes first. If you have just walked in, sit and do nothing for a couple of minutes. Your pulse falls fast, so a reading taken immediately is a reading of the walk.
- Before the coffee, not after. Caffeine, a heavy meal and alcohol the night before all show up. So do a short night and a hot room.
- Tag it. In PulseCheck, choose Resting. Only readings tagged that way feed the trend line, which keeps the comparison clean when you also measure after a run or after an espresso.
- Do it again tomorrow. One reading is a data point. Ten readings taken the same way are the first thing worth looking at.
Why one number tells you almost nothing
A resting pulse moves constantly. It rises as you breathe in and falls as you breathe out. It reacts to a short night, a warm room, a stressful message, a cold, dehydration, alcohol, and to standing up. Two readings ten minutes apart can differ by several beats without anything at all being different about you.
That is why a chart of the same measurement over weeks is worth more than any single result, and why PulseCheck draws a plain line over 7, 30 or 90 days with no target zones, no colour bands and no verdict written underneath it.
What this page will not do
It will not give you a table of normal ranges. Published ranges exist, and they are broad, because a resting pulse depends on age, fitness, medication, illness, temperature and sleep at the same time. A number that is unremarkable for one person is not for another, and a website has no way of knowing which you are.
PulseCheck works the same way on purpose. It never marks a reading as high, low or abnormal, and it never colours one red. If you want to know what your number means, take the question and your readings to a doctor. Settings has a CSV export so you can bring the whole history with you.
What PulseCheck gives a resting habit
- A Resting tag on every saved reading, alongside Post-Coffee, Post-Exercise, Stressed and any label you type yourself.
- A morning reminder in Settings, off until you turn it on, set to 7:30 until you move it.
- A trend line over 7, 30 or 90 days built only from resting readings, with a count underneath telling you how many you actually took.
- Neutral patterns. Once a tag has at least three readings and you have three resting ones to compare against, the app states how far that tag sits from your resting average. It states the gap and stops there.
- A widget on the home screen showing the last reading, so a morning check is one glance and one tap.
- Your data stays yours. Readings live on the iPhone itself, export as CSV, and go to Apple Health only if you switch that on.
Free, no subscription, no sign-up.
Common questions
Should I measure before or after getting out of bed?
Before, if you can manage it, because that is the calmest and most repeatable moment of the day. If not, pick another moment and always use that one.
How often should I take a resting reading?
Daily is plenty and a few times a week is enough to see a line form. Measuring five times in one morning mostly produces five slightly different numbers.
My reading is different every time. Is the app broken?
Probably not. Your pulse genuinely changes minute to minute, and a camera reading also depends on light, on how warm your hands are and on how still you sat. Check the signal label on the result: a weak signal is shown as a range rather than a single number precisely so you can see when a reading was not clean.
Can I get my readings out of the app?
Yes. Settings has a CSV export that goes through the normal share sheet, with date, beats per minute, the range where there was one, the signal label and the tag.