Elevation is WILDLY wrong in watchOS 10

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Elevation is WILDLY wrong in watchOS 10

On both new watches and old—and I’ve checked this on about a dozen watches at this point—the elevation measured and displayed in the compass app and elevation complications is wildly inaccurate. And I don’t mean it’s off within the margin of error, I mean it’s off by hundreds of feet in some cases. Also, it’s not predictably off, it’s different on each and every watch! I had two Ultras sitting next to each other last night. One claimed the elevation was about 200 feet above sea level. Three inches away the other watch claimed 100 feet below sea level.

Partially I’m curious if others have been experiencing this. I’m also hoping Apple will acknowledge and fix it. Quickly.

Apple Watch Ultra, watchOS 10

Posted on Sep 28, 2023 8:23 AM

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Answer 1

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Branta_uk

Level 7

33,164 points

Sep 28, 2023 8:29 AM in response to Aaron Peabody

I suspect Apple is already aware of the problems.

Elevation is measured by atmospheric pressure, which means the watch needs to look up the base pressure for the current location. For this it needs to know location (Latitude and Longitude) which have been a problem in the Compass app on Ultra 2 and the first release of WatchOS 10. Location is fine in many apps, but Compass and Weather have experienced problems so it is probably a permissions issue.

Two things to check:

Look around in the Compass app, see if you can see numbers for your Latitude and Longitude.

CHECK AND UPDATE the software versions in your iPhone and Apple Watch(es)

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Elevation is *WILDLY* wrong in watchOS 10

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Elevation is WILDLY wrong in watchOS 10