How to use Apple Watch with treadmill desk?

I finally figured it out after four months!

you need to use the Workout App with the setting on indoor cycle. The indoor walk setting doesn't work with the walking desk because it needs the arm to be swinging.

I just turn on the indoor cycle setting and start the app. I monitor elapsed time which moves fast enough that you can switch to the move ring and actually see it increasing.

hope this works!

Same issue with Fitbit Charge was solved by sticking it in my sock. It matched up quite nicely in terms of steps and distance. I'm now trying both sock and pocket with the Apple watch. The sock method was off by a fairly wide margin -- 4 miles on the treadmill desk was seen as nearly 6 miles on the watch Workout app. Next test is putting the watch in a pants pocket.

The test of the watch in the pocket was a failure. The workout app recorded no additional distance after I switched from my arm, where it was tracking a little distance when my arms moved, to a pocket.

Another alternative is to push a rubber band through one of the watch band holes, pull it through until the two ends are even and then connect the two ends of the rubber band to the watch band post. This acts like a stretchy extender for the watch band which gives it enough extra length that you can then wear it on your lower leg. That will pick up the treadmill motion and should be able to read your pulse through your leg skin rather than your wrist skin. Not sure if this leg method is more or less accurate than the indoor cycle option. I guess I need to test both.

Buy an XL band and wear it around your ankle. I did the same when I had a fitbit charge.

I've been struggling with this for quite a while and finally found a solution. The armband that Twelve South makes for the Apple Watch (they call it the ActionSleeve), works perfectly. Played around with the placement a bit and at least for me I seem to get the best accuracy with it placed just above my elbow. Higher and I was getting too many steps counted and just below the elbow seemed to count to few. Not sure I understand why higher up overcounted but YMMV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've had good success attaching the apple watch to a hip belt loop while using the treadmill desk. Experimenting between the step counter on the LifeSpan treadmill desk and the Apple Watch attached to the belt loop I notice <500 step differential per 12000 steps---( the watch is a little higher than the treadmill tracker) but that is I think much better than wrist or pocket wear. Im still tweeting it---ill report back

No wrist worn activity tracker is going to handle this well as they all rely on the the movement of your arm to measure paces while walking. There is really no way around this limitation. As long as your arms are more or less stationary (on your keyboard, etc.) while using a treadmill desk, the watch has nothing to measure as far as activity goes.

My own setup is similar but worse: I don't want to keep my iPhone on me as I treadmill-it--I want it charting on my (non moving ;-) desk....

I'll give it a try.

This worked great. Showed up in my Activity App and on my phone. Thanks so much!!