Introducing Watt Lock: Hold Your Target Power

What's New? Zwift Game
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Want to hold a steady wattage during your ride? Watt Lock uses your trainer’s ERG mode to help you maintain a target power while you pedal.

How to use Watt Lock

  1. Ride at the wattage you want to hold. You’ll need to be producing at least 50 W to enable Watt Lock.
  2. Open the in-game Action Bar or Zwift Companion Action Bar and select Watt Lock.
  3. Once enabled, a lock icon and your target wattage will appear on the in-game display.

To turn Watt Lock off, select it again in either Action Bar. It will also turn off automatically if your cadence drops below 25 rpm.

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wattlock_hud
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Adjusting your target Wattage
While Watt Lock is active, you can adjust your target using:

  • The in-game or Zwift Companion Action Bar: Increase or decrease your target by 1 W per click.
  • Using the +/- keys on your keyboard will allow you to add or remove 1 W per click.
  • Compatible Zwift controllers: Shift up to increase your target or shift down to decrease it. Each shift adjusts the target by 1 W.
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Where can I use Watt Lock?
Watt Lock requires a connected trainer that supports ERG mode.

It’s available in:

  • Free rides
  • Rides with a RoboPacer
  • Meetups
  • Group rides, including banded group rides
  • Fondos

Watt Lock isn’t available in races, workouts, group workouts, time trials, or team time trials.

Any time you disable watt lock, it chooses default virtual gear (based on trainer and setup) - an upcoming game release will restore whatever gear you locked in at.

FAQs

What happens if I join an event where Watt Lock isn’t available?
Watt Lock turns off automatically when you enter the event’s starting pen. The control won’t appear in the Action Bar during that event.

Will Watt Lock stay on when I teleport?
Yes! Watt Lock stays active when you teleport to a RoboPacer, a friend, or an event where Watt Lock is available.

Can I use Watt Lock in a banded group ride?
Yes. Keep pedaling to stay with the group. If you stop pedaling, you’ll drop out of the banded group and Watt Lock will turn off.

What happens during a Coffee Stop?
If you stop pedaling during a Coffee Stop, Watt Lock turns off. When you return, ride at your desired wattage and select Watt Lock again. FAQs

What happens if I join an event where Watt Lock isn’t available?
Watt Lock turns off automatically when you enter the event’s starting pen. The control won’t appear in the Action Bar during that event.

15 Likes
Game Update v 1.124 [October 2026]
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Looking forward to trying this feature out. A few questions:

  • Will Watt Lock be available during the ‘cooldown time’ of an event which does not allow Watt Lock? (i.e. I’ve just finished a race or a TTT and want to use Watt Lock to cool down in a controlled way during the 5/10min time.)
  • Can the watt target increase/decrease in variable increments? i.e. a single click is one watt, two clicks is +/-5 watts, press and hold is +/- 10 watts?
    (Although having granular +/- 1w sounds good, in practice it takes too long or too many clicks to get to your desired target so some sort of variable increments works best).
  • Are there any keyboard shortcuts available for enabling and disabling Watt Lock?

EDIT: I see Eric has already answered (and confirmed) some of the questions / suggestions . → Zwift Update Version 1.124 (167630) Released | Zwift Insider

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1 watt is excessively granular especially since 5w is the smallest step you can get in erg workouts.

6 Likes
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Massively appreciate that this wasn’t locked out to purely open-world.

I also think 1w is beyond too little of an adjustment, but it won’t prevent me from wanting to use it.
And a keyboard shortcut to enable it would also be massively appreciated. (or… just giving us the ability to set our own shortcuts for say everything on the hotbar and be able to disable the hotbar cough cough) … who remembers keyboard skins? lol

My question though: does enabling WattLock disable gradient changes on things like the Wahoo Climbr, Garmin Alpine or Kickrbike when activated?
I hope not.

Also curious how the disabling works; stated at 25RPM and below. Is that an easy way to shut it off without going through the menu system I wonder; just stop pedaling? But for how long?

3 Likes
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Looking forward to giving this a try when I start my sub up again in November.

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I am really glad they are adding Watt Lock, this will replace a lot of my longer steady state custom workouts, and I can see popping in and out of it - using it for when I either want to zone out and not pay attention, or to stop me from chasing after riders passing by.

2 Likes
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no, but holding down the shift button moves it up or down faster than clicking it a bunch of times.

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Not at this time, but we can work on this idea if there’s enough support for it.

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I support

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Other than my gradient question; one other thing.

I’m sure many would disagree potentially, but it could be handy to know if people have Wattlock enabled with a lock symbol for example under their name where steering and companion app are located.

Could potentially help leaders or folks when people freak out wondering why their trainer is “stuck.”

1 Like
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for Watt lock - When you “lock in” a wattage, does zwift auto create a new lap interval until it ends or do i have to hit the lap button beforehand? Also, can you hit “lap” button to end a watt lock interval or have to go to menu to end? Thanks!!

Game Update v 1.124 [October 2026]
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Or a giant lock icon the same size as other power ups. Imagine getting lockmaxxed and coffeemogged at the same time

6 Likes
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Preferably not that obvious!

We can already see if someone has steering or is doing a workout. I feel like this is reasonable and a good place for it.

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when it is enabled it clearly says Watt Lock in the upper left blue box under the other metrics, so that is a pretty big clue for the person if they have it turned on. I don’t think we need any symbols for it.

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@Dru_Matey
Lap intervals are independent from Watt Lock. You should continue to hit the Lap button as you do now to start / end a lap interval.

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I haven’t gotten the new update yet so can’t test, but for the <25rpm is it instantaneous or over some period of time? I’ve been doing a version of this with wahoo app and for whatever reason I might stop pedaling for 3-5 seconds and then will resume. The erg wind-up isn’t great but with a kickr v2+ it makes that much smoother and doable. Hoping that it knows the difference between 0 rpm and <25rpm, if not perhaps that can be a future improvement. Or give the option to auto-resume the prior watt lock once back up over some rpm threshold.

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You would just set the lock again when you got up to your target power. If you drop down below 25 rpm it turns off (and the spiral of death is very much a part of watt lock)

1 Like
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I’m afraid that’s a significant step backwards then from using the wahoo app directly with the trainer. Obviously there is a lot more free-wheeling outdoors than indoors on zwift, but imagine if every time you stop pedaling outdoors you then had to reset. Do folks not free-wheel at all at times on zwift when riding casually? Get back to the right power, bring up the menu bar, select watt lock, toggle to adjust wattage slightly as needed - that seems like a usability nightmare for those that may take a brief pause in pedaling for a whatever reason (tighten shoe, got an itch, reach for water bottle, change the channel on tv, etc etc). Hopefully zwift can consider a toggle option as a future CIP.

edit: I guess why I was asking if it’s an instantaneous check <25rpm is even on the trainers without the soft ERG restart there is typically a short time window in my experience of a couple or few seconds where you can pause and restart without being in grid-lock of death.

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That could be said about this entire feature from the beginning and how long it’s taken to arrive…

I think this is why some hotkey would be far superior than having to skim around the hotbar for this, which is annoying enough as is for those of us with keyboards. But some of us have been fighting for hotbar changes for literal ages now with zero change despite repeat after repeat after repeat.

The way I see it, stopping my pedaling is going to be the best and easiest way to disable it when I want to without having to menu-hunt.

Since apparently giving us keybinds is such a hard thing for ZHQ to comprehend.

Heck, even an entire popup page on Companion would be fantastic.
Give me a whole page on companion when watt-lock is enabled that shows my watts, HR, and two FAT buttons to increase or decrease the required power so they’re hard to miss, along with an off button.

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Yes, I would love more keyboard shortcuts and some for this in particular. And like your ZCA page, could be similar to the workout popup.

1 Like