Why do the Health App and Activity App show a different number of steps

Hi

If it is not already listed as the primary source, then it may help to move your Apple Watch above your iPhone in the data sources list for Steps:

On your iPhone, in the Health app, go to: Health Data > Activity > Steps > Data Sources & Access > Edit.

Just jumping on this thread as I have a similar problem.

For me the Health app shows a much higher step count than my Activity app. It is only noon, and while the Activity app (i.e. my Watch) counted 3130 steps, the activity app shows 5383, i.e. 2000 (!!) more steps.

I think I also figured out the reason: looking at the data, it appears that the Health app (i.e. my iPhone as far as I can tell) counted these 2000 steps during my bicycle commute to work. And as I bike every day, my step count is never even close to being accurate.

Is there a way to tell the Health app when I am on my bike? Shouldn't the Activity app, or better the Workout app (in which I start and stop my bike workouts) communicate with the Health app and not count steps during a bike workout??

Any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

Hi

If you would like to submit feedback - including feature requests - to Apple, then you can do so here:

Feedback - Apple Watch - Apple

(You are not talking to Apple here - this is a user-based technical support community).

I was wondering the same thing and now I'm using the Apple Watch's step count as the primary source.

I would hope that there would be an option to automatically choose the highest step count in the Health app. Usualy the highest step count comes from my Apple Watch. However, there are days I don't wear my Apple Watch all the time but I do have my iPhone with me. In these situations I would hope that the Health app would automatically show the highest step count. In this case it would probably be my iPhone.

Or maybe it could compare my steps from the iPhone and Apple Watch. Compare that information to the time I have taken those steps. If there are times it sees that I have taken 500 steps using the Apple Watch and 0 steps using my iPhone it could automatically combine the correct steps and automagically give me a more accurate step count.

I would like to see my average daily step count for each week. The Health app provides me this information. However I'd like this info in a more "user-friendly" way. Maybe the Activity app could give this in the future or is there already a good app for this?

Hi,

Appreciate your time and efforts and suggestions, but what if you’re only source is the Apple Watch and this is showing many more steps compared to the Health App? Any ideas?

Also maybe a really dagt question but I was wondering whether adding the resting calories and active calories will give you the total calories spend of the day (24hr timeframe)?

Thanks!