iPhone 6 with Health App / Cycling tracking broken?

Here's the thing:

At the introduction of the iPhone 6, Phil Schiller stood up and said that M8 could tell the difference between walking/running and cycling. As of iOS 8.1 it cannot. So in essence they are breaking their promise on that. Whatever, that kind of automated tracking was likely never going to work anyway without using GPS IMHO. If you'll ever tried the app "Human" it attempts to do this, and the results are mixed honestly, for example, when I went on a downhill section that was fast with no pedaling, it would say I got in my car do it!

Now, this shouldn't be a problem for people like me who use HealthKit enabled cycling apps such as Cyclemeter or Strava while cycling. However, in this use case the Pedometer simply doesn't work. Every time I ride my bike, the pedometer continues to count my pedalling motion as steps, and my hill climbing as "floors climbed", so I see big spikes and bad data.

Now if HealthKit could figure out that it shouldn't count the steps that are taken while I'm on my bike that would be great, especially as I'm using an app that tells it when I'm on my bike. In fact, Cyclemeter has a built in pedometer that seems to do this, and it's values for steps taken always seem quite realistic (it uses m7/m8 to do this) compared to Health's values on days when I ride my bike, presumably as it's smart enough to know that when I'm riding my bike, I'm not walking at the same time.

As of now, iPhone 6's / HealthKit's pedometer is broken for cyclists IMHO.

Agreed. For anyone who rides a bicycle, the Health App is essentially broken. Even if one uses a separate app to record bicycling, the built-in Apple Health App misconstrues distance pedaled as steps walked or stairs climbed. All the data is corrupted by this shortcoming.

I have the same situation as discussed here. Iphone 6, ios 8.1, will not recognise cycling. It shows as steps. I use Map my Ride+ and was glad when they updated the app to link to the Health App. However the only options available to share are "active calories" and "Workouts". So still nothing in cycling distance. There is also no data element called "workouts" in the health app.

I have Map my Ride linked to My Fitness pal and it correclty now shows the how long I rode and the calories used estimate from Map my ride. My Fitness Pal is linked to the Health App and all nutrition etc flows through to the Health app.

So why cant Map my Ride supply kilometres rode to Health app directly

Balrog48: That's a different issue. I don't use MapMyRide, but Strava and Cyclemeter do both correctly add Cycling Distance to the Health app. They show up fine, not sure what the problem you're having is. Perhaps you should ask the MapMyRide people for support on this.

The problem described here is that despite Health(Kit) knowing that I was cycling for an hour, it still counts "steps" (presumably related to my pedaling motion, they do agree with my pedal cadence on order of magnitude estimates) and hill climbs as flights of stairs, making the pedometer statistics for any day that I ride my bike (i.e. most days) completely wrong.

"Here's the thing:

At the introduction of the iPhone 6, Phil Schiller stood up and said that M8 could tell the difference between walking/running and cycling. As of iOS 8.1 it cannot. So in essence they are breaking their promise on that."

Well, technically, there is a difference between distinguishing walking from bicycling (which the M8 MIGHT be able to do, as was promised), and logging to Health.app, which clearly it is not doing. That M8 ability might be designed for other apps to take advantage of. In either case, things are not right and the Health.app developers have some fixing to do.

I don't really care if Health can recognise the difference between cycling and walking etc, as I use Strava to log cycling data, which is then automatically imported into Health. However, Health ALSO logs the same activity as steps, so overall I get a duplication of effort. That is a problem if this whole Health app thing is going to work - you need to be able to tell it that that something it has recognised is not what it thinks it is.

The way the Health app displays data is generally pretty unappealing, so when people are talking about 'wanting to track cycling in the Health app', I have to ask... why? Just use an app that is designed for it like Strava that displays your rides far more usefully. Health app should only be considered a data repository, used as a middleman to facilitate the consolidation of multiple data sources and flow between various apps.

I've had the same issue since the day I bought my iPhone 6. Kind of annoying. I tried using MapMyRide which has a setting that is supposed to sync to Health App, but that doesn't work either. At least all my cycling information is within MapMyRide, but I have to go back and forth if I want to compare all other health data vs cycling. Hope this gets fixed soon, because I'm starting to care less and less to the point where I would expect to not care about HealthKit altogether if it offers me zero benefits but I nonetheless establish a good health routine in my life.

Same problem, has never worked on my iPhone 6, I have to enter data manually, details from my bike trip computer. Still too many broken things (or never working as promised) with iOS 8 and new iPhones.

This is fairly normal!

& everyone blames everyone else! I have got Strava to sync cycling data with Health occasionally but it is never stable for long. Usually it shows 'no data' but sometimes it shows data from many weeks back but not recent data, sometimes only today's entry etc. (the original doubling problem seems solved). You can reset by:-

- restarting the phone (which forces Health to reset)

- deleting Strava, including the data in Health when requested and reinstalling (App store/purchased/not on this phone), then relogging in to Strava

- note that Strava should be linked again to Health and include at least cycling plus 'workouts' (this matters).

- if Health still cannot see Strava data (which should go back many weeks) try restarting the phone again.

Any of this might work but does not always - but if you keep fiddling it will eventually work, only to die again soon, probably when you add another ride. I suspect the core problem has to do with timing/clocks as between Strava and Health, based on some odd values sometimes, but I am not really sure. Since Health defaults to 'No Data' whenever it has problems it is hard to know. I suspect Apple is more guilty than Strava but again hard to be sure...

I am having a similar issue with logging runs.

When I try to manually log a 4 mile run, for example, the health App will distribute teh 4 miles across several days as if I ren 0.2 miles every day for several weeks.

I also use the sportstracker app whic is supposed to transfer cycling and running to the Healtyh App -- but that does not work either.

I have already been tracking other health data -- BP heartrate etc, and hate to restart the app and lose all of that data.

Has anyone seen any explanation or advice from Apple?

We where (sort of) promised that Healthkit could tell the difference between walking and cycling.

What we got does not.

While I agree it might be a bit difficult to distinguish and track cycling without another app. What we want is for it to NOT count our cycling as steps and/or stairs.

That might require some filtering on their part and possibly interpolating with GPS data. But GPS data IS available. So interpolate away. Don't just wave your hand and say use another app.

Especially when using another app doesn't stop it from recording stairs while cycling.

I track my cycling extensively via other apps. Don't want or need that data in healthkit. But I like to track walking and stairs. And currently that is simply broken. And meaningless when every ride I take pushes my normal dozen or so up to 150 plus. Making the overall average and the graph useless.

I was hoping the new release of iOS time to coincide with introduction of Apple Watch would fix this. Unfortunately, it does not. I downloaded the iOS update this morning and then went for a lunchtime bike ride. The Health App is still showing no data.

Confirmed. Updated last night, didn't track any of my two bike rides to / from work 7.6 mi each. This seriously *****.

Agreed - but you can fix by deleting Strava AND ITS HEALTH DATA re-installing and re-linking (though as good idea to restart the phone too). This always works but is a drag. What we need is a trick to delete the data already in Health and make I start again. All suggestions welcome!

And still broken. I was hoping the latest update had fixed this but instead of my regular cycling being picked up the App thinks I walk a bloody long way each day, 40k's+!