Activity GPS issues after watchOS 7 and iOS 14 updates

I finally got it to work with the help of Apple support. Everything now works as it should, but I’m still disappointed this happened in the first place, and tHat it took almost hAlf a day to get everything set up back the way I like it.

here were the steps that worked for me:

1. unpair apple watch
2. make an iCloud backup of the phone
3. go to the health app, click on your profile (top right) and look at the bottom when the data was last backed up - it should be the same time as thE Back up above.
4. erase all Contents and settings of your iPhone.
5. set up your iPhone by restoring it from your last backup
6. finally pair your watch again.

then wait until everything is restored, it will take a while until all apps are downloaded again, also until all health data is fully restored. I thought for a while that I lost most of my data, but it might take 24 hours until all data is back.

it will not correct any missing map data from past runs. But today’s run shows the course I took.

last gripe: I was on a steak of 811 days of making my move target. But because the prior days calorie data was the last to be restored, it appeared like I didn’t make my target yesterday, and the streak ended. Although by now all the data is back, it looks like the count is starting over.

It was my issue. on my watch 4 Maps only display the starting points after updating to watchos7 and ios14

these are steps i did(worked)

1. reset network settings on iphone
2. enable and disabled location services
3. enabled motion calibration settings
4. before i disabled apple maps. I re installed again
5. unpair and re pair the apple watch

after that i tried outdoor walk activity and now maps route is showing perfect like before

i didn't reset my mobile iphone xs max

I have fixed the issue by:

• Full iPhone (and AW) iCloud Backup
• Un-Pair Watch - Retain Cellular
• Re-Pair Watch with Restore from latest backup

Did a test walk and it now has the map. Will see if it lasts more than a day as some people mention it reverts to not tracking the map on subsequent days.

Update* issue fixed steps I took*

iPhone 11, 14.0.1, watch 3 series, 7.

1. back up phone
2. unpair watch
3. erase all content and settings
4. set up phone from back up (step 1)
5. repair watch

Now works map with GPS route info.

The reset and erase all content on phone worked for me. It did not bring back old map routes but gps map tracking worked on my run today and importing to strava finally worked for me again. Have not been able to do that since IOS 14

1. Unpair watch
2. make an icloud backup
3. erase all content and settings on your phone
4. restore phone from icloud backup
5. pair watch

Restoring apps and especially the fitness app takes awhile especially syncing all the previous fitness data. Hope this works for some.

iPhone XS v14.0.1 + Apple Watch series 4 v7.0.1

Noticed no route capturing for Apple Watch Workouts since I upgraded to v14.0 + v7.0. I also upload walks to Strava and that was warning no route data too. New minor software updates to v14.0.1 and v7.0.1 didn't fix it. Found this thread and have done the following:

Attempt 1:

1. Unpaired Apple watch + re-paired - Didn't work

Attempt 2:

1. Backup iPhone
2. Unpair Apple watch
3. iPhone - "Erase all content & Settings"
4. Restore iPhone from backup
5. Re-pair iPhone
6. Double check all sharing permissions between Strava <> Apple <> MyFitnessPal

From iPhone > Health > Workouts > Show All Workout Routes - I can see ALL previous workout routes are STILL MISSING (even after waiting 12 hours for iCloud to restore everything.

However, trying a new Apple Watch Workout 'Walk' this morning shows it now has the gps route tracking info... yes!! I'm hiking in the Peak District today so fingers crossed it had better record all that!

Apple bug fix required to restore all my previous route data please

There’s no way around it, unless Apple comes up with a fix in the next couple of days. The definitive way to fix this problem is to reset your iPhone.

This is an iOS 14 problem, not a WatchOS 7 problem. As others have already stated, you’ll want to (assuming WiFi only Apple Watch) -

• Carve a couple of hours out of your day to complete this task.
• Copy off all photos on your device - they will be deleted from the iPhone at the end of this process unless you’re also backing up your photos to iCloud (I was not).
• Get your WiFi password. Put it to paper - you’ll need this later.
• Make sure your phone is fully charged or plug it in to keep it charged (forego wireless charging).
• Unpair your Apple Watch from the phone. This will erase local data from the Watch but your health data should all be intact and backed up from Step 2.
• Disable Find My (maybe not required but I chose to do that, just in case).
• Reset EVERYTHING. Choose to reset all data and settings. Don’t just do a Network reset or anything. This needs to be a “I’m selling/giving away my phone to someone else” reset.

Once the phone is back and you get the “Hello” screen in multiple languages, set everything back up and that means writing down (or having other access to) your WiFi password. Make note of this before you start.

After you set up Touch/Face ID, you can log back into your iPhone with your Apple ID and that will allow you to restore everything. Make sure to pick the latest backup - which should only be a few minutes old.

Re-pair your Apple Watch.

Re-add your credit cards to Wallet. You’ll need your physical cards for the security code (3 digits on the back for non-Amex, 4 digits on the front for Amex).

Re-add the cards to the Apple Watch wallet (use the wallet App inside the Watch app on the phone.

Lots of steps but that should cover you.

TL;DR: restoring the phone seems to have fixed it for me.

Like many others, I finally succumbed to trying a phone reset. AW S4 LTE on 7.0.1, and iPhone 11 Pro Max on 14.0.1. Watch has earlier been un-paired and re-paired both from backup and as new watch, to no avail.

Last night I did:

1. Unpair the watch
2. Backup phone to iCloud
3. Erase all content and settings
4. Restore phone from iCloud backup
5. Re-pair watch (I chose to restore from backup, not as new)

I was rather nervous for a while: in Fitness, there was a notice "restoring activity data from iCloud" which never seemed to go away. I've data going back to 2017, so I get that it might take a while.

In Health, I could see stuff being processed and restored; various historic bike and walk activities went past under one of the headings.

Finally, it seemed to settle where I could see pre-update workouts with their maps and everything OK.

The last week's workouts are a mess, some are still missing altogether, some have no heart rates and maps, and many stand-hour-columns look weird.

But best of all: all bike and walk workouts I've done today look exactly as they should: heart rate, maps, everything is there.

A final oddity: I have closed my circles every day this year (not yet today, but I will soon). Yesterday was the 272:nd day of 2020, and the award for longest streak says right now "You have earned this award for your longest daily Move streak, 267 days up to 2020-09-28. Your current streak is 272 days." I don't really give a cr*p about this because I know what I've done; maybe it straightens itself out tonight when I close them again, we'll see.

I too had this same issue.

I've been working with Apple Support and engineering to fix this, well my problem at least.

I'm happy to say that all is fixed for me, my maps, awards, move streaks are all there and showing.

To start, make sure your data is really there. Look in your health app on the phone.

go to Workouts then scroll all the way down to Show all workout Routes

Tap that and see if the data is really there.

If it is here are the steps that Apple gave me to follow and it worked.

This involves wiping the watch and the phone.

You must use the iCloud back up

1. Make sure that under iCloud, you have toggle on Health Settings>your name>iCloud>Health>make sure this is toggle on
2. UnPair your watch from the phone (Watch>All Watches>Your watch tap the !> then tap unpair Apple Watch
3. Perform an iCloud backup Settings>your name>iCloud>Backup>Tap back up now
4. In the health app, tap your picture bubble on the top right, scroll down to the very bottom and make sure that the data has been back up. If this does not show the correct date, do nothing else as it will fail and your data will not be correct.
5. iPhone>Settings>General>Rest>Erase all contents and settings
6. Restore iPhone from iCloud backup
7. Repair your watch to the iPhone
8. Restore Watch from iCloud back up

This is what I was told to do and it worked.

Proceed at your own risk.

I have now done the exact “erase all” as per the official Apple workaround (which is a horrendously bad ‘solution’). This has not fixed the issue.

The map is now back on the bottom left corner of fitness for all my workouts but they all only show the green start pin whether the workout was before or after iOS Previously,

• for all my pre iOS 14 workouts,, the map had disappeared completely and
• for all my post iOS 14 workouts, the map was there but only the green pin.

I’m on iPhone XS IOS 14.0.1. Watch series 2 and watchOS 6.2.8.

A follow up: it's now been about two weeks since I reset my 11 Pro Max from iCloud backup. Everything concerning Fitness and activities is back to normal after the reset. (Watch is an Nike S4 LTE). I only use the built in Fitness/Exercise app in the Watch.

After the restore:

• All activities sync flawlessly to the phone.
• GPS tracks and heart rate diagrams always work.
• Energy at rest is back to values similar to before the iOS 14 update.
• Some, but not all, exercises during the troublesome week never synced to the phone and I consider them lost.
• All pre-iOS14 exercises have their maps restored, but those done during the week of trouble still lack GPS data and often also heart rate diagrams (that is, those that did sync to the phone). I see in the thread that not everyone is equally lucky in this regard.

My current longest streak achievement was messed up for several days - after the restore. It somehow mentioned two different numbers of days in the streak - but eventually it sorted itself out so my current streak of 285 days is intact and ongoing. Despite the trouble, I managed to close my circles every day during the week-or-so it lasted.

I had another interaction with Apple Support yesterday. I can also appreciate the comments in this thread around the quality of Apple Support. Ever since this started, I had three people (two advisors, one senior advisor) in Apple Support tell me that local backups are the same as iCloud backups. Thanks F_E_C_V for explaining the differences between iCloud and local backup!

As I'd like to keep hope alive that all workout information will be restored eventually and also use somewhat functional product in the interim(like seeing maps for new workouts), I created two backups, iCloud and local encrypted backup on my Mac, and restored to see what data would come back.

• Restoring from iCloud gave me a health database of ~1.93GB of documents and data in the Health app (data was ~650GB), starting pins in the route map for workouts prior to the iOS 14.0 upgrade.
• Restoring from local encrypted backup gave me ~2.03GB of documents and data in the Health (data was ~750MB), no starting pins on the maps in workouts prior to iOS 14.0 upgrade.

I called Apple Support with this information and the question which backup to restore from in order to maximize possible workout data retention. The senior advisor didn't understand the problem really, claimed that iOS 14.0 was still in beta, and oddly favored a restore from local encrypted backup over restoring from iCloud backup. They claimed that activity data and workouts are only stored in the local encrypted backup - even though my test showed that activity data is the both types of backups. They were really most concerned about resetting the workout calibration.

Anyway, I ended up restoring the phone from iCloud and subsequently restored the Watch. I can see a new map for a run last night (Watch only, no celluar), I can also see the activity bars in the Fitness app on the phone now matching the Activity app on the Watch. It looks like the problem appears to be addressed moving forward.

MayoTom - The senior advisor didn't instill confidence that maps from workout prior to the iOS 14.0 upgrade would come back. But then again, they were off on a lot of things.

This was a terrible experience yesterday, it was the first of its kind with Apple Support in a decade of being a customer. I hope this is not becoming the norm moving forward.

Third post.

1 - Time to put our money where our mouths are. I have bought and now wear a Garmin Fenix 6X Pro to replace my Apple

2 - My 5 will go in the drawer to use when I fancy a change, but is no longer my daily wear

3 - The 6 Titanium I bought has been returned, 1K + inc care

4 - The offshoot of that is I have signed up for Spotify in order to use podcasts on the Garmin, more revenue loss for Apple

5 - I'm one use case, I know they likely do not care, which is a shame for all their sports pretentiousness.

To be clear - Garmin has it's challenges - Garmin Express is still pants, but for serious sports use, it is a night and day experience/ I have a 16 day battery, I have multiple customisable data screens, I have GPS that workouts and tracks my map, our main whinge on this forum. For rides and runs it's been amazing so far, as was my Fenix 5 that I sold to replace with Apple.

They are also very different watches - one is a smart watch that (used to) do sports. The other is a sports watch that does (some) smart things.

For sure the Apple is more "wristable" for smarts and Garmin "wristable" for Sporty types.

Some notes for future posters:

• Only iCloud restore works. Full stop. It also necessities a load of setting back up of Apple Pay and logins. Don't do it.
• Use Strava app instead on your watch. Works fine, tracks GPS, with or without phone. If you're serious about sports you will have all your data there anyway.
• The issue is the phone, not the watch.
• 14.1 DOES NOT fix the issue. 14.2 may, it may not - they have been very silent and one month in their smart watch that does sports is just a smart watch. Clearly the fix is massive else a minor update would have been out well before now. Ball well and truly dropped by the dev, QA and gold release team.

Bonne chance and so long and thanks for the fish.

Didn‘t work out for me to say.

i ( iPhone X, Apple Watch 4) actually tried a plethora amount of possible fixes. What I‘ve (unsuccessfully) tried so far.

1. un-pair and pair again
2. switch off activity tracking and rebooting, then tick it on again
3. set up my watch as a new one
4. rebooting both devices several times
5. making usage of flight mode in various combinations on both, my iPhone and my watch.

No. 3 made it even worse. Beforehand at least the activity tracking worked and synced with my phone. Let alone only certain workouts synced as well. Right now, nothing works at all.

The strangest thing of all is the fact that it seem to track in the background. You can check this within your Health App under Browse -> Name icon upper right corner -> Devices -> Your Watch‘s name. There‘s plenty available, but unused.

What I didn‘t give a try so far is a complete reset of my iPhone from a backup as it is way too much effort. And frankly way over the top for this problem.

Ios 14.2 GM released today. Notes does mention a fix for:

• Workout GPS routes or Health data are prevented from syncing between Apple Watch and iPhone for some users

wait and see I suppose when it released to the general public.