A complete walk-through: your desk-stretch coach on iPhone and Apple Watch, screen by screen.
User guide · version 1.9 · prepared for people who sit at a desk
What MotionCue is
MotionCue is a gentle stretch coach for people who sit at a desk. A reminder arrives, most often on your wrist, you tap it, you follow a short guided stretch, and you are done in under a minute. No gym, no floor, no leaving your chair.
Here is the one idea that explains the whole app: the stretch comes to you, right where you already are, and every single movement is backed by a real clinical source (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Harvard Health, and the American Physical Therapy Association). You are never guessing whether a stretch is sound. It is watch-first by design, so you can do it without picking up your phone, and the phone app is the fuller companion for your library, your progress, and your settings.
The Home screen: a warm greeting, a calm scene, when your next stretch lands, your water for the day, and the stretches queued up. This is the Classic theme.
Getting around: the five tabs
The phone app is organized into five tabs along the bottom. You will spend most of your time on the first one.
Home is your daily front door: today's stretches, your streak, your water, and the illustrated scene.
Library is the full catalogue of stretches, grouped by body area, each with its source.
Progress shows your streak, your active days, and where you have been focusing.
Circle is an optional, private group you can invite people into, to cheer each other on.
Settings is where you choose your themes, focus areas, reminder schedule, and everything else.
Tap a tab to switch to it. Nothing you do here is destructive, so feel free to explore; you cannot break anything by looking around.
Your Home screen
Home answers one question at a glance: what does my body need right now, and have I done it yet?
At the top is a greeting that changes with the time of day (Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening) and today's date. Below the illustrated scene, a line tells you your status: whether you have a stretch waiting, or that you are All caught up today, along with when your next one is scheduled and which area it targets.
Under that sits your Water tracker, showing today's total against your goal. Then the day's stretches: each row names the stretch, its cited source, and how long it takes (most are 30 seconds). Tap any stretch to begin it.
Once you have worked through the day's set, Home shows "All caught up today." Tap Up next to preview what is coming, or Completed today to see what you have already done.
Tip. You do not have to wait for a reminder. If you have a spare minute, open Home and tap any stretch to start it right away.
Doing a stretch: the guided session
Tapping a stretch opens the guided player. This is the heart of MotionCue, and it is built so you can follow along without staring at the screen.
A calm animated figure demonstrates the stretch, so you can see exactly how to hold it. The instruction and a short form cue appear alongside.
A timer counts down the hold. It is based on real clock time, so if your wrist drops or your screen sleeps mid-stretch, the count stays honest rather than freezing.
For a two-sided stretch, MotionCue signals you at the halfway point with a Switch sides cue: a chime plus a firm buzz, so both sides get equal time.
When the stretch finishes, another cue tells you it is done, and the session moves to the next stretch or a short rest. At the end you see Session complete.
You can tap Pause at any time and Resume when you are ready.
After a multi-stretch session, MotionCue may gently ask "Water since your last check-in?" so you can log a glass while you are thinking about it.
Follow along without watching. The switch and finish cues are a soft chime plus a firm buzz, so you can keep your eyes off the screen and still know where you are. The buzz works even when your phone is on silent. If you like a little sound while you stretch, turn on Session music in Settings for a soft, theme-matched bed that mixes gently with your own audio.
The Stretch Library
The Library tab, titled Stretch Library, is the whole catalogue: 36 seated desk stretches, six for each of six body areas.
The areas are Neck, Shoulders & Upper Back, Chest & Posture, Wrists & Forearms, Lower Back & Hips, and Lower Body & Ankles. Each stretch shows its instruction, a form cue, its duration, and a tappable link to the authority it comes from, so you can read the source yourself if you want to.
Browsing the Library is a good way to learn the moves, but you do not have to build your own routine here. MotionCue assembles each day's session for you from the focus areas you pick in Settings.
Progress and streaks
The Progress tab is your encouragement, not your report card.
It shows your current streak as a number, your longest streak so far (Longest: N days), your Active days, and a small Where you've focused breakdown of which body areas you have been stretching. Before you have done anything, it reads "Finish your first stretch and your streak starts here." The moment you complete your first stretch, your streak begins.
Tip. A streak counts a day you showed up, not a number you have to hit. One stretch keeps it alive.
Circle and pacts: move together
Circle is an optional, private way to keep a small, encouraging group with people you invite. It stays off until you create or join one.
Open the Circle tab and tap New Circle to start one (name it something like "Family" or "Work crew"), then tap Share invite link and send it to the people you want in. To join someone else's, open their invite link or tap Join with a link. You can belong to several Circles at once, and joining one never affects the others.
Your Circle: everyone's name, streak, and whether they moved today, with a tap to send a cheer.
Tap someone in your Circle to send a cheer (Love it, Proud of you, or Nice work). They feel a soft buzz on their wrist and a small bloom appears on their card.
Make a pact
Inside a Circle you can go one step further with one person. A pact is one partner and one promise: a shared minute, like weekdays at 3. Tap Make a pact, choose your person and your minute, and from then on both phones cue at that same moment, so you are moving together instead of reporting in afterwards. The minute is editable later, and moving it never costs you what you have grown.
The garden you grow together
Every day you both move grows a shared watercolor garden. It is deliberately forgiving, and these rules are the whole design:
It never dies and it never resets. Growth comes from your together-days, and those are never taken back.
A missed day only softens the color. The garden fades toward a floor, never to nothing, and coming back revives it.
A day in progress cannot count against you. Today can only add.
Watering hands color back. If your partner's side has gone quiet, tap Water the garden. You get two a week, so it means something when you use one.
Your pact sits at the top of the Circle tab: the promise, the garden you have grown, and a button to water your partner's side.
The Sunday Letter
Rather than a stream of pings, a pact sends one small letter on Sunday morning about how the two of you did that week. There is no failure copy in it anywhere: the quietest possible week reads "The garden rested this week." The first letter arrives the Sunday after you make the pact. To end a pact, tap Dissolve pact; the Circle itself is untouched.
A rested week, in the letter's own words. There is no failure copy anywhere in it.
Private, by invite only. Only the people you invite are ever in a Circle.
A name and a streak, nothing more. Your Circle sees the display name you choose, your streak, and whether you moved today. Never which stretches you did, your reminder schedule, or your hydration.
Yours to leave. You can leave any Circle at any time, which removes your presence from it.
Circle is stored in your own iCloud and shared only through Apple's private sharing, so it never passes through our servers and we never receive a copy. Using it requires being signed in to iCloud.
On your wrist: the Apple Watch app
MotionCue is watch-first, and this is where it shines. The whole point is a stretch you can do without reaching for your phone.
The watch home mirrors your phone in miniature: a greeting, the same calm scene with the little seated figure, your water for the day with a plus and minus to log a glass from your wrist, and your progress through today's set.
The Apple Watch home, shown here in the Nagomi theme: greeting, scene, water with a quick plus and minus, and your progress line.
When a reminder fires on your wrist, tapping it takes you straight into the stretch, and the buzzes land at the right moments as you hold and switch sides. It works offline, so you do not need your phone nearby.
Your watch is the reminder source when you are wearing it. To avoid a double buzz, when your watch is on your wrist MotionCue lets the watch handle reminders and the phone steps back. If your watch is off or not worn, reminders come from the phone instead.
Reminders and how they reach you
Reminders are the engine of the habit. You control how often they come and when they stay quiet, all under Settings.
Two reminder styles
MotionCue asks which you prefer the first time you set it up, and you can switch anytime under Settings > Reminder style.
Move Me is the lighter one, and the one you start with. Instead of a scheduled session, it nudges you to do a single quick stretch, then lets you get back to work. Nudges land at varied gaps rather than on a metronome, so they feel like a tap on the shoulder: by default no sooner than 12 minutes apart, no later than 30, up to 16 across a day. Nudge no sooner than, And no later than, and Most per day are all yours to set.
Classic break is the original rhythm: a reminder on a fixed cadence to run your whole routine. Choose it if you would rather sit down to a full session. Reminder every then sets your spacing, anywhere from every few minutes to a longer gap across the day.
Nudges that wait until you sit down
With Move Me on, Settings offers Time nudges by stillness. Turn it on and MotionCue anchors your next nudge to when you actually stopped moving rather than to the clock, so it is far less likely to reach you while you are already up and walking. It is off until you choose it, and switching it on is what asks iOS for Motion & Fitness permission.
Your step counts are read at the moment MotionCue plans a nudge, used to tell sitting from moving, and then discarded: nothing is stored, nothing syncs, nothing reaches us. Decline the permission, or use a device with no step data, and nudges simply keep their normal varied rhythm. One honest limit: timing is decided when MotionCue plans, so if you get up right after it planned, a nudge can still occasionally arrive mid-walk. It re-plans often enough to make that uncommon.
Everything above, in one place: Settings > Schedule with Move Me chosen.
When they stay quiet
Quiet from and Quiet until set your do-not-disturb window, so nothing buzzes overnight or during a set block. Both styles respect it, and both stick to the days you have marked active.
Stretch reminders arrive as Time Sensitive notifications, the kind iOS will show during a Focus mode so a nudge you scheduled is not silently swallowed. If you'd rather Focus win, quiet them with MotionCue's Break through Focus toggle or the iPhone's Time Sensitive notification switch.
If your wrist has been quiet. The strength of the buzz on your watch is controlled by Apple, not the app: on your watch, open Settings, then Sounds & Haptics, and turn on Prominent Haptic or raise Haptic Strength if you want a firmer tap.
Hydration
MotionCue also nudges you to drink water, because the same desk day that stiffens your neck tends to dehydrate you.
Set your Daily goal and your Units under Settings, and log a glass from either the Home screen or your wrist. You can also turn on separate water reminders; when one arrives you can log a glass straight from the notification without opening the app, and tapping the reminder itself takes you to your water rather than somewhere else. If you would like your intake to show up in Apple Health, turn on Sync with Apple Health in Settings; MotionCue will then write the water you log into Health.
Tip. The water tracker is optional. If you only want the stretch side of MotionCue, you can simply ignore it.
Making it yours: themes and settings
MotionCue is meant to feel calm and personal. Under Settings you can change the entire look, and set your watch apart from your phone.
Themes
Each theme has its own colors and a hand-drawn scene: Neutral (calm dunes), Nagomi (cherry blossom), Classic (a green meadow beneath the mountains), Aegean, Lagom, Hygge, Toscana, Marrakech, Greenland, and Amazon, with new ones landing in the app over time. Pick one under Theme and the whole app, including the little seated figure, takes on that world.
Nagomi: cherry blossom and warm rose.Marrakech: spice and sand.
A separate look for your watch
You can dress your watch differently from your phone. Under Settings, Watch theme chooses which theme the watch uses (or Same as phone), and Applies to decides how far it reaches: Home card themes just the illustrated card while the rest of the watch stays clean and high-contrast, Whole watch themes everything, and Off keeps the watch in its plain default look.
Sound, cues, and music
Under Sound you can pick your reminder tone: Bloom, MotionCue's own signature tone and what you hear out of the box, or Chime, Wood tap, Marimba, or your device's System sound (custom tones play on the phone). Chime and haptics turns the in-session switch and finish cues on or off. Session music plays while you stretch: each theme has its own composed two-minute piece in that place's musical voice, koto for Nagomi, oud for Marrakech, and so on, looping seamlessly. It mixes with your own audio and respects the silent switch.
Your session
Focus areas lets you choose which body areas MotionCue draws from, and Session length sets how many stretches a session includes. This is how you shape what shows up on Home each day.
Your subscription
MotionCue is a subscription, offered as MotionCue Monthly or MotionCue Annual, and it starts with a free trial.
On the subscribe screen you will see the two plans and a button to Start 14-Day Free Trial (the exact trial length shown is set by Apple for your account). During the trial you have the full app: every stretch, every theme, your reminders, and your progress. If you have paid before, on a new device or after a reinstall, tap Restore Purchases to bring your subscription back. The screen also links to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Managing or cancelling. Subscriptions are handled by Apple, not inside MotionCue, but MotionCue now takes you straight there: tap Manage Subscription in Settings. You can also go the long way, opening the Settings app on your iPhone, tapping your name at the top, then Subscriptions.
Health and safety
MotionCue is built to be gentle and well-sourced, but it is a stretching app, not a doctor.
The first time you open it, you are asked to read and accept a short health disclaimer by tapping I Understand and Agree. Every stretch cites a recognized authority, and you can open that source from the Library. Still, stretches should feel like a gentle stretch, never pain. If something hurts, stop.
Please check with a professional if this applies to you. If you are pregnant, recovering from an injury or surgery, or managing a medical condition, talk to your doctor or physical therapist before starting a new stretching routine. MotionCue does not diagnose, treat, or replace medical advice.
Questions? The Help & FAQ link in Settings takes you to motioncue.fit/faq.html.
