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Apple watch counting too many stairs

My apple watch recently began counting a ridiculous amount of flights of stairs climbed when I am not climbing any. I literally usually average a couple flights of stairs a day because I do not have any stairs at home or work. But recently it has began counting over 200 flights a day. I saw a post to restore my watch as new. I have unpaired and restored my watch and made sure it was up to date already. The post I saw before had someone by the name of fieryjack reply saying that it might be a software issue in my back up when I restore. So, I am just confused how to restart my watch as new without using my back up an without losing all my data (awards, stats, activities)


I am hoping fieryjack will see this and be able to help me out!


thanks!!

Apple Watch Series 4, watchOS 6

Posted on May 18, 2020 11:03 AM

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Posted on Jul 7, 2020 1:06 PM

Does it mess up our overall caloric burn reading?

8 replies

Jun 2, 2020 11:42 AM in response to Manderson019

I stumbled on an accidental fix. Try this: let your Apple Watch battery die. After that, wait 3 or more hours before charging it again and see if that resolves the Flights Climbed over-counting issue.


Below is the full story:

For about two months my AW4 was way over-counting Flights Climbed. Yesterday morning I noticed that Flights Climbed was 0 after I made my breakfast instead of the usual 10 or so. I have been monitoring since and I can confirm that the issue has been resolved. Story below and I would be interested to hear how it started (and hopefully ended) for you as well.




On April 4th I was working on a large yard project and decided to run continuous heart monitoring through the Cardiogram app. I ran it for 10-12 hours. Flight over-counting started precisely on that day, over 200 flights climbed (in reality it was probably less than 10). Watch continued over-counting till May 31st. 


On the morning of May 31st, I decided to do a 45 mile bike ride, which is more than any exercise activity I have recorded on the watch previously. The watch activity app ran for 4 hours, 3 of which I was active. Watch continued to over-count flights that day.


May 31st night, I decided to sleep with my watch on without realizing that the battery was critically low (due to the 4 hour activity). Watch died around 2:15AM, or at least that was when the last heart rate reading was taken. I put it to charge when I woke up at 5:00AM and left it till 8:00AM. Since then, over-counting has stopped. The only two special events that happened prior to this resolution were the extra long exercise and the battery death. I am leaning more to believe that the battery death is the culprit.

Aug 14, 2020 11:12 AM in response to Manderson019

Hi the same issue here no matter what you do the watch juts cannot count stairs correctly.


it counts stairs as you walk and move about.


My watch went twice to the repair centre and came with issue could not be duplicated 🙄


seriously, this issue doesn’t occur in a $100 fitness tracker and Apple cannot find a fix for this despite so many people talking about.


May 18, 2020 11:35 AM in response to Manderson019

You can unpair and and erase your watch and when your re-pair choose set up as new and not from a backup,this will return your watch to factory settings and there is no loss of data,your health and fitness data is kept on the phone in the health app and the activity app not on the watch.

I have setup as new a couple of times and I haven't lost lost a single byte of data in over 5 years.

You will have to setup your watch faces etc again but that's all.

Apple watch counting too many stairs

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