Questions, bugs, or a swing that won’t track.

Frequently asked

How should I film a swing?

Record in slow motion. On iPhone that means the Slo-mo mode in Camera (240fps at 1080p gives the cleanest frame stepping), or recording inside Strobe, which asks the camera for the highest rate it supports. A 30fps clip will import and analyse, but a golf downswing lasts about a quarter of a second — at 30fps that is roughly seven frames, and neither you nor the tracker can see much in seven frames.

Beyond frame rate: film in good light, put the phone on something steady, and frame the whole body with a little room above the club at the top. Down-the-line (behind you, looking at the target) and face-on are both understood. The same advice, with pictures, is inside the app as How to film, on the record screen and in Settings.

Leave audio on when you record inside Strobe. The sound of the strike is how a clip finds its own swing: recording stops on its own a moment after impact, and each clip is cut to the swing around it. A long take with five swings in it, recorded or imported, lands as five clips. If a clip still needs a hand, the trim screen marks every strike it heard.

The app picked the wrong camera angle

Face-on and down-the-line are told apart automatically, and once in a while a clip lands on the wrong side. Open the clip’s menu and choose Camera angle to set it yourself; the analysis re-runs for that view and the choice sticks to that clip.

Why does my clip say tracking was poor?

Body tracking needs to see you. Low light, a busy background, clothing close in colour to the background, a camera that moves mid-swing, or a body partly out of frame will all reduce confidence. When confidence drops, Strobe says so on the clip rather than quietly reporting numbers it does not trust. Re-film with more light and a steadier phone and it usually clears up.

What does “estimated” mean on a metric?

A single phone camera measures pixels, not physics. Anything that requires real-world scale or depth — club head speed, for instance — is derived from tracked positions plus assumptions about club length and your distance from the camera. Those numbers are marked as estimates and shown as a range instead of one confident figure.

Treat estimates as relative, not absolute: the useful question is whether today’s swing is faster or smoother than last week’s, not whether the number matches a launch monitor. Metrics that come straight from the frames — tempo ratio, joint angles, the frame each phase starts on — are not estimates and are not labelled that way.

How do I set up AI coaching?

Coaching is off until you choose one of two ways to have it. Strobe Pro is one purchase, no subscription, with a monthly allowance of reviews and nothing to set up: buy it and the Coach button works. Or connect an account of your own: in Strobe, open Settings → Coach → Coach setup and follow the three steps — what the coach runs on, getting a key from Anthropic, OpenAI or Google, and pasting it in to verify. The key is stored in the iOS Keychain, and from then on the app talks to that provider directly from your phone.

The coach setup guide walks through it with all three providers’ consoles step by step. Remove the key at any time in the same screen and coaching switches off.

Does my video get uploaded anywhere?

Not unless you say so. Video is recorded, stored and analysed on your iPhone. What leaves the device is what you send yourself with the share sheet, and, if you ask for a coaching review, the metrics, key frames and recent notes described above. One switch changes that: Send the clip to the coach, off on every install, sends a trimmed copy of that one swing in place of the stills. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

Can I get my swings out of the app?

Yes. Any clip exports as an annotated slow-motion video through the standard share sheet, and a whole session exports as a single file containing the videos, the analysis and any coaching, which another copy of Strobe can import intact. Deleting the app deletes everything it stored.

What do I need to run it?

iPhone · iOS 26 or later. High-frame-rate capture and on-device tracking depend on the camera and Neural Engine, so a recent iPhone gets noticeably better results — but you can import and analyse slow-motion clips filmed on any camera.

Is this coaching?

No. Strobe gives you swing feedback from video estimates. It is not professional instruction and not medical advice. If something hurts, stop, and talk to a person.

Something is broken

Email stathis.alexander@gmail.com and say what you did, what happened, and which iPhone and iOS version you are on. If it involves one particular swing, exporting that session and attaching it makes it far easier to reproduce.