Apple watch exercise not counting

Yep. Did all of that. Even sent series 2 watch back to the mothership cause the update broke some stuff on it. I have tried swinging my arms above my head, air boxing, and all sorts of things while walking. Nada. No exercise during walking workout.

Sad to see there's still no fix. With both my original and now the series 2 watch, Outdoor Walk is guaranteed to not count any exercise. I did a test yesterday, the same walk twice, first as an Indoor Walk, then as Outdoor. Same time to within 10 seconds even. Indoor counted every minute, Outdoor none. I've seen this with Elliptical too -- I think I could go take a nap and get every minute counted in the Elliptical workout. If I had to guess then (and I have to since Apple won't say what their criteria is) maybe it has something to do with GPS? Especially in the Indoor vs. Outdoor walk, that's got to be the only difference. Maybe it's because I'm short and not hitting some hard coded pace lower limit that's appropriate for someone with much longer legs than mine?

Are any other apps capable of filling the exercise ring, or does Apple reserve that for the workout app? I'm really thinking about going back to Strava or something like that.

I found this thread as I have the same problem, my watch doesn't register any exercise minutes when I start an outdoor walk session and am walking at a decent pace. I don't think it can be due to height either as some have said as I am over 6ft tall. :(

Cardiogram is the app I found that will put the watch in exercise mode. I dont use it unless I've done my walk and not gotten exercise credit.

also, I found I got about a half an hour of exercise from my one hour walk this morning by twisting my wrist on my arm swing. Didn't do the twist the whole time, so I think it worked for about half my walk.

when swinging arm up, twist wrist so that your palm is pointing up and the watch face is pointing to the ground. Then twist back to normal on downswing. That may nudge the accelerometer to pay attention.

I'm not sure if this even applies but I have found that after walking, I open an App called Human. If the rings haven't updated when I open this App, they all update and show what looks like the proper data. I have no idea what's going on but it seems to work.

I turned on the write to Health from Human and sure enough the workouts are there but for me it duplicated everything so my workout minutes are doubled for the time I'm on Elliptical since I happen to keep my phone on me while exercising. Oh well I guess until they fix it I won't worry about the walk counting as exercise and continue to use the Other option which *****

I would really love to know how to fix this issue. I have tried multiple workouts in the activity app and none of them register my full activity time. So frustrating as I have tried all of the suggestions and nothing is working. The workout is logged under my workouts but it won't update my ring/activity time. Not acceptable Apple since this is a big reason why people pay money for your watch.

Just came back from a 2 week Mediterranean cruise. My watch stopped tracking any workout activity on day 2. Chatted with apple support which had me un-pair, re-pair, re-pair as new. Nothing worked. Went to Apple store in south of France, had me reset my iphone settings. worked for 15 minutes, then problem reappeared. Got back to US Saturday evening. On Sunday watch was working properly, tracking all workouts. Went to local Apple store yesterday. Nothing they can do since it is now working. To be clear, the activity training (concentric circles was working), specifics of workout (distance, calories, etc all showing as zero). There is clearly some sort of bug in their software. Location should have no impact.

I've been having this problem with outdoor walk ever since I got this watch 7 month ago, it does not count outdoor walk , I choose hiking instead , Apple doesn't seem to care , we brought it up to them but their excuse is not convincing , they certainly have a bug .

I think I've found a workaround, at least for series 2 watches: shut off bluetooth on your phone during the workout.

I've still been having this problem (on an original Apple Watch, a new Series 2, and three phones) -- recently I've started walking at a place where the walk involves steady climbs and keeps my heart rate high, and not even that would count (unless I choose indoor walk instead). Then I got a new bike and started using the cycling workout and it was even worse, it would say "GPS not available" and not record any distance or speed. In troubleshooting that problem I accidentally discovered that if the phone is off or just bluetooth is off, if the watch can't talk to the phone, the cycling workout started working. Yesterday I tried my usual strenuous walk with bluetooth off on the phone, as an outdoor walk, and every minute of it counted.

I believe this bug is related to having both the watch and phone on the same workout and your turning off BT seems to support that theory.

If I do an outdoor walk, with no iPhone, I get the full credit. If I also take the iPhone I get about 10% of the credit - if I'm lucky. I tried re-ordering the data capture for all the sources in the health app, so Apple Watch was the primary input when multiple devices were present, but this did not cure the problem.

I am Series 2 and iPhone 6S all with the latest OS revision.

My take aware is leave the phone at home!

Anyway, if I walk slower one day and my heart doesn't go as fast, but I walk 90 minutes, that should count.

Says who? Apple set a standard for the Green exercise ring that is in accordance with WHO and other organizations who's research shows that 30 cumulative minutes of brisk exercise has a positive affect on your health.

If you walked 90min and got only 10min of Green ring activity (exercise) then either your Watch is defective or you failed to meet the criteria of the Green ring because 90min of slow walking with a slow heart rate is not the same as 30min of brisk walking with a faster heart rate. If it was then 100min of sitting on the couch or window shopping would be the same as 30min of actual brisk exercise. So no, little to no credit just because you did 90min.

To help insure you get credit from a brisk walk, make sure you let your arms swing naturally. Keeping your hands in your pockets reduces the accuracy.

Very interesting. I have just travelled from U.K. to India and on day 2 the Exercise mins stopped counting the actual walk mins. Did 51 min walk and it read only 26 mins out of 30 on the daily exercise for that day. The walk itself reads the full 51 mins in its recording. I hope is starts working again when I get back to the UK.

Out of interest when outside the USA did you use just wifi or actually roam on the foreign mobile signal?

I am wifi only in India.

As far as I know Apple failed to fix the issue of outdoor/indoor walking count ,apparently Apple does not consider walking as an exercise!!! Even if I walk 5-10 miles , their excuse is the average heart rate should be over 110-115 bpm , ridiculous , if I choose hiking or yoga it will count where the heart beat is 60-80 bpm , all other smart watches are fine with walking as an exercise, to me this is

a failure in part of Apple !

My solution for now , I added RunnerKeeper to the watch , I just open it in my iPhone for walking , at the end I have everything recorded on the watch !

How frustrating that two years have gone by and Apple still hasn't addressed. My husband and I went for a walk this morning. I logged into the workout app, made sure that the motion calibration was on, and started my outdoor walking. My husband didn't use his watch with the workout app but rather just let it count via the steps and get the credit with the rings. We finished with a 33 min walk, my ave BPM was 128, did 1.63 miles on my watch, and on his it was over 2 miles! His exercise ring shows 34 mins, 113%, mine shows 7 min and 23%. We have our goals set exactly the same. I shouldn't have to re-pair my watch, I've had it 4 days! So clearly Apple has dropped a turd on this, as I should have met my goal easily on this and completed the ring, same as hubby.