Apple watch exercise not counting

After I unpaired my watch, the steps seem to be working well, but the excercise is not working. I have not used the workout app again, but did a fairly strenuous workout and it didn't register a minute of exercise, but it tracked the quick run I made up the stairs to answer my phone. I don't get it.

I usually cycle outdoors and Outdoor Cycle has worked fine giving me credit always for the exact minutes of exercise. I crashed on my bike so while healing I decided to do Outdoor Walk for exercise. Even though I walk with an average heart rate of 115 to 125 for 30 minutes I have yet to register any exercise time when I save the workout. The summary that shows on the watch when I end the Outdoor Walk shows the correct time, distance and average heart rate is correct. After saving the green ring shows zero. I have latest software on both watch and phone and have them with me.

I have exactly the same issue — everything seems fine re: the Outdoor Walk *within* the Workout app, but the translation of data to the Activities app fails miserably. I've taken to using the Other option in the Workout app. I don't get distance, but I get everything else. Hopefully this gets fixed in the next update to the s/w.

II've had my watch three days, tried every fix under the sun with no luck. It's a mess. I miss my Fitbit too. May go back to that and just wear the watch for what is really is....a watch. Really disappointed in this Apple product. Just a fancy glass faced watch as far as I can tell.

I've had the exact same issue and it's really frustrating after you walk/run for 40+ minutes only to watch the data disappear and no credit for your daily goal. However, I've found a quick workaround that works, but it's kind of a pain and "slightly ridiculous". After putting in real mileage for the day and not getting credit, I'll wait until the evening and while watching TV, turn on the workout app.

From there select "Other" as your workout, then "Open" as the workout type. Click "Start" and sit back and enjoy some TV and there you go.

Based on what I've seen about 5 min of activity (or inactivity) will yield about 25-30 calories, around 2-3 min of "Exercise" credit and what's really odd is that I'll get credit for simply hanging out.

I completely realize that this is a ridiculous workaround, and I thought this watch was going to give me more flexibility over FitBit, Garmin, Nike Watch, and others that I've invested in over the years. However, doesn't seem to be the case unless Apple fixes this issue, as for me the workout and heart rate was the main reason I purchased.

Apple Team, PLEASE help!

My wife and I both got our Apple Watches and we will regularly take walks together. Her exercise ring will count 20-30 minutes and mine, on the exact same walk, will record 3 minutes! Super frustrating. Apple has hooked me on the crack of "rings" and then I get denied because of poor capture! Driving me nuts, I love my watch but this one thing is so disappointing. No, I do not have tats and I wear my watch pretty snug

Wow, this is frustrating! I just got my Apple Watch and went out for a 5km run today (and took my iPhone with me for the watch to calibrate). Well, I completed the 5km in 26 minutes. The Activity app reckons I only did 4.24km which I can maybe put down to it not having calibrated yet (though I would have hoped after the recommended 20 mins it would have corrected itself as I was running with a pretty consistent pace length and cadence) but it's credited me with all of 145 calories (compared to the 454 that Strava more realistically claimed) and on my activity ring it's only given me 13 minutes out of the 26, all of which were at a very active heart rate.

Pretty rubbish first impression I'm afraid.

Out of curiosity, are the 145 calories the 'active' calories or the 'total' calories? And, does Strava count all calories consumed during the exercise or just the active calories (i.e. the ones over and above the resting calories)?

It is my impression that many of the other fitness trackers report total calories.

George

I use quite a few different services for my exercise analysis, Strava being just one of them. They all use slightly different algorithms for calculating calorie burn, but all fall within about a 10-15% range (i.e. 420-460 total for this run), apart from the Apple Fitness app which reports 188. I realise that these other services have access to more data about my run than the Apple app does, and some of them license professional algorithms for the calculations so I'd expect them to probably be more accurate, but this discrepancy isn't what I'd consider a margin of error - it's just massively wrong!

The most basic calculation that's commonly used to calculate energy expenditure are Metabolic Equivalent Task (MET) values, which give a multiplier based on the level of effort required that you can apply to the number of calories normally expended at rest (BMR).

So, my watch is telling me that for this period my baseline energy use was 188-145 = 43 calories. The MET value for a 6mph run is 10, so my total energy expenditure for the run is 43x10=430 calories, actually almost spot on what the more precise calculations gave me. So if even such basic and generic MET values can get it right, how does Apple get it so, so wrong?

Ironically, this isn't really my biggest complaint - it was more that I only got 13 minutes activity ring credit for 26 minutes of running!

Hope this helps everyone, I tried the un-pair device and then re-pair as a new device and that seemed to work for about a couple of days and then it went right back to no activity even though I was going on long walks. I was able to figure out today that another way that seems to resolve this issue is to clear and re-calibrate your watch. You can do this on your phone via the following options.

1. Go to your watch icon

2. Select Privacy

3. Select Motion & Fitness

4. Select "Reset Calibration Data" in orange.

That is it, at this point it should start working.

I am having the same issue, but only with the Outdoor walks. I walked for 35 minutes today, and the app is showing 16 minutes of exercise time. this has been happening for a few weeks. It calculates about half the time I actually exercise on outdoor walks. One user suggested just using "other" so I'll guess that will have to do.

I Just read this today and may have found a solution. I too was frustrated with this and even sent watch in to apple and had it checked out. They said it was all good. i did however find a setting that changed the logging of the exercise ring. I golf 18 holes and walk it and I didn't get hardly any measurement on the exercise ring but today it did

Here is the setting that I changed. Go into your watch app - go to workout app - look for Pace/Speed View setting and change it to average. Today while golfing I logged 4 hours of exercise

I wanted to report another datapoint of running into this defect with newer hardware and software than the original poster. I do this to provide evidence that whatever fix Apple has attempted for this issue has not fully resolved it.

Hardware/Software:

iPhone 6S Plus, 128GB / iOS 10.0.2 (current as of my posting)

Apple Watch Edition, Series 2 / watchOS 3

Initial setup was done at the Apple Store using their setup wifi in Pudong, Shanghai, China.

Chose English as language, region as United States (which has to do with unit display formatting, as I understand it), and install all apps. Ran to completion at store, played with for another 10 minutes before leaving to see if I had any initial questions. So things were definitely "completed".

That evening and next day tried to do outdoor walks in open areas for extended period of time, no distance ever recorded.

After reading posts here, I unpaired and setup again at home, this time changing a few options:

Chose English as language (same), region as China (different), did not install all apps (different).

Distance tracking has now worked correctly for last three days. For those with a series 2 watch, it should not take 20 minutes to determine if distance tracking is working--I went outside right after re-setting up and distance tracking worked within mere meters using outdoor walk as the activity (thanks to GPS).

Hope this helps others who might still be seeing this issue even with recent hardware.

You can calibrate your Apple Watch to improve the accuracy of your distance, pace, and calorie measurements. Calibrating your watch can also help it learn your fitness level and stride, which improves accuracy when GPS is limited or unavailable. Calibration can also improve the accuracy of your calorie calculations in the Workout app, and the calorie, distance, Move, and Exercisecalculations in the Activityapp. Above is the list of basic troubleshooting, if your Apple Watch still does not track your complete activity then one of the users on Apple forum has a temporary fix which many users have found to be working.

www.imore.com/apple-watch-activity-tracking-5-tips-you-need-know

I have had the same issue since I first bought the watch. I have followed the steps you listed multiple times, with no consistent results. My watch this morning recorded that I walked 1.24 miles, but that I only exercised for 3 minutes! I know I'm not that fast!