Health app isn't counting all my steps from Apple Watch.

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Level 1

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Health app isn't counting all my steps from Apple Watch.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that a regular walk I do, about 2.25 miles door to door, wasn't totalling as many steps as I'd thought, only showing about 7.5K. I added another loop to it, and that still only came up to 8K and change. Then I added a much longer loop, making the total over 3 miles, and it was still not 10. My total in the health app yesterday was 9512 steps for the whole day, including that walk.

So I looked at the underlying data, and found that sure enough, the morning walk was well over 10K all by itself. The increments here add up to 11,905 steps before 10AM.

I see people complaining about their steps not getting counted at all, but in this case they're just getting undercounted.

Any advice?

[Edited by Moderator]

iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 18

Posted on Sep 3, 2025 11:48 AM

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Answer 1

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IdrisSeabright

Community+ 2026

Level 10

190,913 points

Sep 3, 2025 12:48 PM in response to ChicagoAl

ChicagoAl wrote:

Thanks, moderator, for editing the info or whatever you did, to hopefully get it more responses.

But in the meantime, I may have figured out the answer myself, just by looking more closely at the screenshot I provided.

In the left margin are little icons representing the phone and watch, and the step counts are evidently what the health app is receiving from both inputs. (I didn't see this on the watch itself as they're tiny.) So what must be happening is: the app gets the step input duplicated from the two devices, and obviously it's not going to use both when giving the total.

Also I just looked up 'how many steps in a mile' and get figures from 2000-2500. So no wonder 3 miles isn't nearly as many steps as I thought.

If I could delete this query, I'd do so, as it makes me look pretty dumb, but maybe someone else will have the same issue, see this, and save themselves the embarrassment of asking this question. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It doesn't make you look dumb! It's a really good question. And great job figuring it out on your own. People often don't understand how the system handles input from both devices for the same time period.

You can't delete the post, but that's okay because, as you surmised, it may help someone else.

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Answer 2

ChicagoAl Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 3, 2025 12:43 PM in response to ChicagoAl

Thanks, moderator, for editing the info or whatever you did, to hopefully get it more responses.

But in the meantime, I may have figured out the answer myself, just by looking more closely at the screenshot I provided.

In the left margin are little icons representing the phone and watch, and the step counts are evidently what the health app is receiving from both inputs. (I didn't see this on the watch itself as they're tiny.) So what must be happening is: the app gets the step input duplicated from the two devices, and obviously it's not going to use both when giving the total.

Also I just looked up 'how many steps in a mile' and get figures from 2000-2500. So no wonder 3 miles isn't nearly as many steps as I thought.

If I could delete this query, I'd do so, as it makes me look pretty dumb, but maybe someone else will have the same issue, see this, and save themselves the embarrassment of asking this question. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Health app isn't counting all my steps from Apple Watch.

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