I Went for a 20 minute outdoor walk today using the Workout app, with my phone GPS on And I didn't get credit for even one minute. I had my hands in my pockets because it was cold but given I was using gps, shouldn't it have given me credit in the exercise ring?
So I did end up going to the Genius Bar, and showed them all my data. They agreed it was odd, and sent it to The Depot to have the software reloaded and retested. They sent it back after doing so and said it tested fine. This time, they did tell me that it could take 7-10 days to "learn" my habits, so I should make sure to give it that much time. I gave it a full 14 days, but was having the same issue. I was about ready to bring it back and tell them I wanted a new watch, when I decided to try one more thing in desperation.
I blew up ALL the data. I had to kind of play around and figure out what order to do stuff in, but ultimately I think it's this: You unpair the watch from the phone first, then you restart the watch, and go to the watch settings and reset it so it gets reset as if it's new from the factory. It will say "are you sure you want to delete all of the data from the watch?" and I replied yes. I also deleted the watch app and the activity app from the phone, then shut down the phone and restarted it. After that I erased all content and settings on the phone...yep. Desperate! I did try to remove the watch from the phone without doing that, but it seemed like it kept the data in the phone and wouldn't accept the reset. What's really weird tho, is that I did a restore on the phone data from a back up, and it pulled the watch app back in, but not the data. Anyway after I FINALLY cleared out all the crap data, the watch has worked like a dream. My actual activity time has been spot on every single time from the very first day, down to the minute.
There may have been an easier way to do this, but at least it works. Too bad Apple couldn't get to this solution with me.
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!
I have been having issues with the exercise ring with walk options. Apple seems to know there is a problem. I use the "other" option for now. Works for me until they get a fix.
Continuing from my reply on 6th Sep. I tethered my phone to another phone and then roamed in India and the mins then counted fine, either tethered or roaming, although I think they were still a few mins short. I therefore conclude the phone needs to be connected to the web.
On returning to the UK mins could walks plus a few mins, probably from walking round the house and office.
As for Apple stating the heard rate needs to be more that 110-115 that doesn't seem right. Checking my walks i vary from 104 up and the all count as walks.
To those loosing mins do you all have good signal and actual data connections during your walks?
Also do your mins fall short on day 1 or day 2 of no connection? I think there's a buffer of 24 hrs in the fone following 'no signal' because if I walk in the UK with no signal it counts correctly but in those cases I did have good connection in the 24 hrs before the walk.
I’ve tried that Calibration thing before it did not work , now I just calibrated the watch as you said , I went for 30 mins walk , the result was 0,96 miles , average heart rate 105 bpm , average pace 20.49/mile which is 3-4 miles faster than my regular pace , time recorded on watch was 18 mins . Here you can say it did work, the Q is it gonna keep working if I do my regular pace 23-25 / mile ?
Let’s wait and see , I will update ! Thank you
On The 29 of September I did the reset and calibration of the watch , 20 minutes walk , the watch recorded 18 mins out of 20 , ( not bad) bpm average was 105 , pace average was 20.49/mile . Today I did 45 mins walk bpm a erage 105 , pace average 20.52/mile , recorded 26 mins only out of the 45 mins !!! Apple should take care of this existing issue almost with every one !!!!
Apple watch exercise not counting
