What is Visible?

Visible is a platform designed to help people live well with:

The Visible app is free to use without a membership or band and can help you understand your pacing and symptom patterns over time. With the free version of the app, you can log symptoms and track health data using your phone. The free app measuresheart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) once daily during the Morning Check-in.

Alternatively, you can purchase a Visible membership and band. The membership allows you to track your HR over the course of the day, collect PacePoints to visualize your energy budget and exertion patterns, and get activity insights and pacing notifications. These features can help you better understand your body's patterns and pace your day more effectively.

We hope this Q&A can help you decide if Visible can help you to support your pacing.

Visible was first designed for people with Long Covid or ME/CFS to support them in using pacing as part of a healthy lifestyle. Pacing is recommended by the CDC/NICE for these conditions and involves balancing rest and activities, or modifying activities, to stay within your "energy budget." We know that other conditions also benefit from pacing, including fibromyalgia, EDS, and POTS, and have expanded Visible to support people living with those conditions as well.

If you have another energy-limiting condition and experience worsening symptoms when you “overdo it,” activity pacing using Visible may still be helpful for you!

We suggest people use the free version of Visible for a few weeks. If you find it helpful for managing your energy, you can then upgrade to a Visible Membership.

The Visible app can track:

The Visible band can track:

Visible does not track:

Some trackable metrics cannot be implemented due to hardware limitations, while others are a choice by our team based on our goals for Visible.

A good example of this is ‘steps’. The general consensus among our medical advisors is that steps provide much less valuable data than heart rate changes. These are a better gauge of energy use, particularly for people who are not able to move around very much or walk very far. Heart rate can gauge the impact of activities that don't take many steps, like showering or cooking.

Pacing is a widely accepted strategy to help people live well with energy-limiting conditions as part of a healthy lifestyle. However, there is no guarantee that pacing will improve your condition. Although Visible can help you pace and track your symptoms and capacity over time, Visible is not a medical device and is not intended to manage, treat or cure any medical conditions.

While many of our members do see improvements while using the app and band, our goal is to make your invisible illness visible. We hope Visible will allow you to understand more about your body and energy levels, and make your own decisions about your health based on your body's signals and the insights the app provides.

The Visible Band 2.0, also known as the Polar 360, is a wearable sensor that connects to the Visible app.

It can only be used alongside a paid membership for the Visible app. Without an active membership, you cannot connect your band or view any of its data (heart rate data or PacePoints).This information is shown in in the app upon resubscribing to the membership.

The sensor comes with a wrist strap, but you can also purchase an arm strap via the Visible Shop.

The Visible band does not have a screen, and cannot receive notifications, make sound, or buzz. It tracks optical (light-based) heart rate and also has some movement detection.

For more information, take a look at our collection of articles on the Visible Band 2.0.

You can sign up for a Visible membership and purchase a band on our website or within the free app. The free app is available in the Apple and Android app stores in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, US and UK. The paid membership and band are only available in the US and the UK.

After you checkout you will receive a purchase confirmation email, and later on, an email to confirm your band has been dispatched. You will also receive an activation email to the email you entered when signing up for the membership. This email includes a link to activate your membership.

You do not need to activate your membership until your band arrives. When it does, you'll need to sign up for an account in the Visible app. If you have a free account already, you can sign in to this account for a seamless transition.

If your activation link doesn't work or the app states your membership is already claimed, head to Profile -> Member support and our team can help you.

Take a look at the Visible Membership section of our Help Center to learn more about purchasing a band and membership with Visible, including payment methods, shipping your band, and starting your membership.