BUG: Exercise app time not showing in Activity app

What I have noticed is that for most exercise types in the Exercise App, I do not get "full" credit in the Activity App. I ALWAYS get full credit if I log exercise type "other", however. I noticed this after using a stair stepper and logging it under "stair stepper", which gave me very little credit and suggested I had burned something like 49 calories after 30 minutes on the stepper. Right. Now I log everything under "other" and much of the time I also use a heart rate monitor on a strap, paired to the watch. That works beautifully! I get credit for every minute and every calorie, and the heart rate is super accurate. Note that I do not NEED the external heart rate monitor to get the credit using "other". It works consistently.

My fitness activity on my Apple Watch worked at first. Now it stops after a few
minutes. I can save it and start again. It stops again. It also isn't showing
all the activity on the exercise circle either.

The entire activity/exercise/health tracking experience across the Watch and the iPhone is an INCREDIBLY BROKEN user experience. It is very frustrating, since Apple now has two very different paradigms and they don't stay in sync across the devices.

I really got used to using the dashboard in the health app to track the totality of my activity and other vital stats. It has done a great job over the last year tracking steps, stairs, etc. Now I have the watch and all of a sudden I have the activity tracker. Although there is an app on the phone and on my watch for it, I only get "credit" when the activity happened, while wearing the watch.

My watch has a nice leather band, so I still continue to go for long runs with my phone, come home, and then put on the watch. I went for a 5 mile run this morning, climbed 500 stairs, while running, and by noon the activity tracker (watch and phone) says I've done jack all day. The Health app is perfectly clear in the assessment of activity (60 flights of stairs, steps, etc), but the activity app on both devices is a big self esteem downer.

Apple needs to figure out how to get these apps in sync and make it meaningful, especially for all those people with the blinged out watches who aren't wearing them in the gym or on a hot sweaty run.

Side note: I've been running with the phone 3-4 times a week for the past few weeks and this problem sustains. It never "re-syncs" like some have reported. I don't even get stand credit for the long runs. Ugh!!

I switched from Android to Apple just for this watch, and specifically to track exercise. I was hoping it would help me in my motivation to get rid of the middle-aged fat. If the exercise ring and stand ring had never worked in the first place, I guess I would just feel confused or convinced that I'm doing something wrong. The thing is that for the first several days, I DID get those rings to complete. Now, the stand reminder NEVER occurs, and the exercise ring never records, even when I correctly start and stop a workout (and had an elevated heart rate). I have turned the watch on an off, and all the switches for reminders for the apps are on. It did work, but now is failing. VERY disappointing because it wasn't just the $399, it was also the $749 for the phone too. I miss my galaxy (it definitely could do more), and now think I should have waited until Android figured out how to make a watch that was as appealing aesthetically as Apple's.

I have been playing with the watch in spin class. Listening to someone else about heart rate, I started monitoring it. According to calculations it should be 126 and up to count. However, that is not the case. For my spin class to count as exercise on the activity ring, I have to keep my heart rate at 140 or above. It can not drop under for even a second or it does not count. If you go to your apple iPhone health app, hit heart rate, and then show all data, it will show you the break down of recorded heart rate. During the time your selecting exercise, it counts your heart rate 12 times a minutes, all 12 of those times, has to be 140 or higher for it to count towards the activity ring for me.

Yesterday I walked inside. I set my Apple Watch to Other and my walk was recorded. I will have to try this again

Defintely a software bug. I've always been doing the same Indoor Workout (on the Heartbeat page) on a treadmill while checking out the Activit app for progress. It worked fine the first two weeks I had the watch but has started failing this week. I exercise for 40 mins with heartbeat well above my 70% range but exercise ring only recorded 20 mins.

During another workout I noticed the same problem starting to happen so I stopped the workout, turned off/on the Watch and started a new workout. This time exercise ring was updating flawlessly.

Until they fix this bug I recommend powering your watch off/on before a workout.

I'm also having problems with the Indoor Cycling setting in the Exercise Watch app. My indoor cycling machine has arm levers -- for every turn of the pedals, I also push my wrist back and forth -- so I don't think this is about lack of movement of the Watch itself.

I just did a 15-minute session at a fairly strenuous level and ran Exercise on the Indoor Cycling setting, and it gave me zero minutes of credit. Yesterday I rode my bike to the grocery store at a more casual level of effort, tracked it using Outdoor Cycling, and got full credit.

I think the Indoor Cycling setting is just broken. Outdoor Cycling and Outdoor Walk definitely work; haven't tried any of the others yet. I will try the tip others have suggested to use the "Other" setting for indoor cycling until this bug is fixed.

Hi LKoch,

Whistl most of the issues described in the above posts are indoor cycling/ spinning related, I did notice a bug with the Outdoor Walking workout as well. I am training for half-walking marathon and on Saturday went for my 8mi long walk with my watch and iPhone one. Firstly I noticed that the Watch was off by 0.5mi throughout my speed walk as compared with RunasticPRO and Argus, both running on my Watch and iPhone In the background. The 3-rd party apps were highly synchronised in terms of distance, pace, duration and calories burn. Watch was slower by 0.5mi, making me to have to extend my walk for another 6-7 minutes just to catch up and have the workout ring complete. So in total I was little over 2hrs when the Outdoor Walking ring completed the 8mi circle.

However, only 45min were recorded by the Exercise ring, which was quite disappointing. Wondering what people who are doing full marathons have experienced so far with these ridiculous defects. All of this was done before the official calibration of the Watch as per Apple suggestion, so I went for the 20-min calibration walk tonight with Outdoor Walking and running Argus in the background. This time Watch did better, I saw all my Activity and Workout data updating and syncing correctly.

I have the same problem, it worked well the first few days i had the watch then stopped working.

thanks for telling us about the update to the software, I wouldnt have known otherwise as didn't get a notification. I haven't had a chance to test it yet but was thinking that the whole activity monitoring is flawed, it says I have never burned more than 200 calories a day (less than a sandwich!) and only average 5000 steps a day. I rarely sit down for more than a few minutes at a time and am very active, I showed it to a nutritionist who said it is clearly wrong. It has also told me to stand up quite a few times when I am already standing and walking. I hope Apple will address this too. Has anyone else had these problems?

Ive had 4 different watches now. In one of them the Activity app was not recording the activity done while using the Workout app. I exchanged it. I think this is a hardware failure and you should contact Apple to get it fixed or replaced.

Thanks, I really hope its not a hardware issue because I contacted Apple about this shortly after I got it and they said to get a replacement I would have to send this one back first then wait 6 to 8 weeks for a replacement, they said just check it is tightly on your wrist and may be a software issue.

Just so I know whether it is likely to be hardware or software, how many active calories and steps do other people have? I started off by saying I was moderately active which was 450 calories but have never got close to this even though I am active throughout the day. How do I know if it is software or hardware or just how it is meant to be?

I have been having trouble with receiving Exercise credit on my Apple Watch. Today, I went on a 2+ hour hike totaling 6+ miles, including a 1300 ft ascent. I had the Workout App running the entire time, as an Outdoor Walk with no goal. During the ascent, I kept a brisk pace and noticed that my heart rate was averaging 130+ bpm. However, I received absolutely no minutes of exercise credit for the ascent, and only around 9 minutes for the entire hike (all earned in the descent, where I was moving more quickly but at a lower heart rate). While I walk regularly, it seems entirely unreasonable to credit 9 minutes of Exercise for this effort.

As another reference point, I am currently at 530 active calories, 25,795 steps, and 10.98 miles total for today - with 11 of 30 minutes in my ring.

I am on the latest version of iOS and Watch OS.