The Default Name Is Useless at Busy Gyms
Out of the box, every WHOOP device broadcasts a Bluetooth name based on a fragment of its serial number — something like WHOOP4B2F or WHOOPA31C. When you're sitting alone at home pairing it to your phone for the first time, this is fine. When you're standing on a treadmill at a commercial gym trying to connect via Bluetooth ANT+ or the equipment's built-in pairing, it is immediately a problem.
Modern gym treadmills, bikes, and rowing machines from brands like Life Fitness, Precor, and Technogym support Bluetooth heart rate connections directly — you don't need your phone in the loop at all. But when the machine scans for devices, it picks up every Bluetooth heart rate sensor in range. At a busy gym, that scan might return four or five different WHOOP devices, all named some variation of WHOOPXXXX. There is no way to tell which one is yours from the list.
Renaming your device to something unique — your name, a nickname, anything that's clearly yours — makes it immediately identifiable.
How to Rename Your WHOOP
Open the WHOOP app on your phone. Tap the menu icon in the upper left corner, then go to Device → My Device. You'll see your device's current name with an edit option next to it. Tap it, type whatever you want, and save. The device will start broadcasting the new name over Bluetooth almost immediately — you usually don't need to restart anything.
Pick something that is obviously yours. Your first name works. A short nickname works. Something like Yonah-WHOOP or just Yonah is enough to distinguish it from a sea of WHOOP4B2F entries in a Bluetooth scan list. It doesn't need to be clever — it just needs to be unambiguous.
When This Actually Matters
If you only ever use WHOOP with your phone and you never connect to external equipment, the default name doesn't matter at all. The WHOOP app pairs to your device by device ID, not by Bluetooth broadcast name, so the app will always find the right one regardless of what it's called.
Where it matters is any time you're connecting WHOOP directly to a third-party device — gym cardio equipment, a Garmin watch, a rowing machine, a bike computer, or anything else that shows a Bluetooth device picker. The moment you're looking at a list and trying to identify your device by name, a custom name pays off.
I use WHOOP connected directly to treadmills for heart rate zone training, and the first time I tried it at a gym I was genuinely stumped — three WHOOP devices, no way to tell which was mine. I renamed mine that same day and haven't had the problem since.
It Takes Two Minutes
This is about as low-effort as WHOOP tips get. If you ever use gym equipment that supports Bluetooth heart rate connections, rename your device now before you need to. It's the kind of thing that seems unnecessary until the exact moment it isn't.
Affiliate disclosure: Links may earn a small commission.