Apple Fitness+ Layoffs Signal Potential Major Changes

Apple has laid off a small number of employees from its Fitness division, primarily affecting teams that create audio content for the Apple Watch. The cuts, described as affecting a "handful" of staff, were reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and cited by multiple outlets. The layoffs specifically impacted teams working on popular audio features like Time to Walk and Time to Run, which are designed to motivate users during workouts. According to the reports, new audio releases for the Apple Fitness+ service are expected to slow down, though the features themselves are not being eliminated. The move is widely seen internally as the beginning of potential major changes and cost-cutting for the service. Apple Fitness+ is a subscription workout platform that competes with services like Peloton and requires constant new content to retain subscribers, making it costly to maintain. This latest round of job cuts follows a larger layoff in August 2026, when Apple cut more than 200 jobs across teams working on Siri, Vision Pro, and its Intelligent Systems Experience software engineering unit.