Release notes · Bokedex 1.6
Bokedex 1.6: dog walks, and training from your wrist
Bokedex has always been about reading your dog and training together. Version 1.6 takes it outside, with a walk tracker built around the dog, an Apple Watch app and a round of training upgrades.
What's new at a glance
- Walks. The route, time and distance, with one-tap notes for pee, poo, sniff stops, water, treats and the dogs you meet.
- Apple Watch. Today's training sets on your wrist, a hold timer you feel, the daily checks and a watch face complication. With Premium, walks start from the watch too.
- Training. 19 skills with the new Calm around dogs, 3D clips for Sit, Down, Stay and Place, puppy rules, Quiet minute and Problem moments.
- Your dog. Their photo on the Dex card, and you can edit or delete a dog at any time.
A walk tracker built around the dog
Most walk trackers count the person: steps, pace, calories. A dog's walk is something else. It's a chance to sniff, to go to the toilet, to meet other dogs and to practise manners somewhere that isn't the kitchen. So Bokedex tracks the route, time and distance like any tracker, then gives you seven big buttons for what actually happened: Pee, Poo, Sniff, Water, Treat, Met a dog and Barked or pulled. Each tap drops a pin on the map.
Lock your phone and keep walking. The route keeps recording, and a Live Activity shows the time, distance and dogs on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with a Pause button. Pausing stops the clock and the GPS. At the end, the summary shows the map and every note, and the walk joins this week's total. See how the walk tracker works.
Why log pee, poo and sniff stops?
A walk log sounds like busywork until you need it. Three reasons it pays off:
- House training. With a puppy, knowing when they last went is half the job. If today's House training check is still open, the walk summary asks whether this walk counts. You answer; it never ticks itself.
- Spotting changes. How often your dog pees or poos, and when, is one of the first things a vet asks about. A tap on the walk is more reliable than trying to remember last Tuesday.
- Sniffing is the point. In a 2019 study, pet dogs who did two weeks of nosework judged an ambiguous bowl more optimistically afterwards, while dogs who practised heelwork didn't change. Counting sniff stops is a small nudge to let your dog read the neighborhood.
Meeting other dogs gets its own button too. Mark each meeting Calm or Not quite, and after two tense ones the summary points you to the new Calm around dogs drill, which builds calm passes from a distance. For pulling, our loose leash walking guide covers the basics.
Short walks for puppies
Puppies tire quickly, and a long walk can leave them more wound up, not less. Add your puppy's birthday and Bokedex suggests a walk length for their age: about 10 minutes at three months, plus about 5 for every month after that, until they turn one. When you reach it, the walk says “Good time to head home”. Treat it as a guide, not a target: if your puppy is restless after walks, they're probably doing too much. Our puppy foundations guide has more on the first months.
Train on the walk, not just before it
Some skills only become real outside: sitting at a curb, walking past a dropped sandwich, coming back in the park. Bokedex 1.6 knows which training steps happen on a walk, like Sit on a walk, Loose leash on a short walk and Leave it on a real walk. When one is next in your plan, the walk screen offers “Practise on this walk” and runs the set right there. A skill counts as solid once it works in two different places, and walks are where the second place comes from.
Bokedex on Apple Watch
When you train a dog, one hand holds treats, the other holds the leash, and the phone is on the floor. The new Apple Watch app moves the coach to your wrist. Today shows your dog, the week and the next skill. Start a session and mark each rep as it happens; on Apple Watch Series 9, Ultra 2 or newer with watchOS 11, a double tap counts as Did it. For holds like sit and stay, tap In position and the watch taps your wrist when it's time to treat, so your eyes stay on your dog.
The watch runs today's sets itself with the same rules as the iPhone, and sends the results back, so your plan stays in one place. Daily checks like “Out after every nap today?” are a tap away, there's a clicker on your wrist, and a complication puts your week on the watch face. With Premium, walks start from the watch as well: the time and distance on one screen, the log a swipe away, and the walk runs as a workout so it keeps going with your wrist down. More about Bokedex for Apple Watch.
Training upgrades
- See every step. Tap any step to see what to do and what to try when it gets hard. Sit, Down, Stay and Place have short 3D clips that show the move from start to finish.
- Calm around dogs. A new distance ladder in the Walks goal, which brings Bokedex to 19 skills.
- Puppy rules. With a birthday set, puppies get 3-minute sessions and start with name, handling, following and recall. Sit and Stay drills wait until six months.
- Quiet minute (Premium). The phone listens and buzzes “Treat now” after a quiet stretch; a bark restarts the clock, so quiet is what pays.
- Problem moments (Premium). Log what happened just before and after barking, jumping or nipping. After three of the same, Bokedex suggests why it keeps happening.
Every step is still reward-based, short and easy to reset. See how training works in Bokedex, and read about the training fixes in 1.6.
Private, like the rest of Bokedex
Bokedex asks for your location only while you use the app, never Always, and uses it only from Start walk to Finish. Routes stay on your iPhone: they aren't uploaded or synced, and there's no Bokedex server to send them to. Saving walks to Apple Health is optional and off by default, and Bokedex never reads your Health data. The privacy policy has the details.
What's free and what's Premium
Walks are free with one dog: the map, time, distance, log and pause, with your last 30 days of walks. Training on Apple Watch follows your plan, so anything you train on the iPhone, you can train from your wrist. Premium ($9.99 a year in the US) adds several dogs per walk, your full walk history, walks on Apple Watch and Save to Apple Health, on top of unlimited reads, every skill, the camera coach and Home monitor.
Get Bokedex 1.6
Bokedex 1.6 is on the App Store now, in English and Italian. It needs iOS 17 or later; the watch app needs watchOS 10 or later. If you already have Bokedex, update it from the App Store, then find it in the Watch app on your iPhone. If you try a walk, I'd love to hear how it went: get in touch.