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"Closing the Rings" and traveling across date line.
- Thread starter maxsmacs
- Start date
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I've only traveled once with my watch, from California to Colorado, so not really a big deal, one hour. Now, if I were to go to Europe, I would definitely try to reach my move/exercise goal before boarding and figure out the stand goal on the plane. I guess it does get tricky when you are talking about a 10+ hour time change + 10+ hour flight time.
I'm heading to Europe in March and then to Asia in May, so my flights are definitely 10+ hours in both flight and time zone crossed. I might need to do a manual time sync, instead of auto network sync.
Like you said, the Stand goal is doable on the plane. Move goal could be reduced to the absolute minimum. Exercise, might be a bit tricky. I guess you could do jumping jacks on the plane.
I've crossed the international dateline probably 25 times since I got my AW (Series 0) on transpac flights from the US to Asia. This is a 15 hour time shift plus about 30+ hours in door-to-door transit time.
I manually manage time on my phone (and watch) so that it remains in my original time zone while traveling. I try to get steps and exercise in prior to departing or during connections. If you set your watch ahead to the new timezone, you'll basically lose > half a day and probably be unable to keep your streak going.
Once on the ground, I set my phone to the local time and get to the gym ASAP. Not to complete my rings for the day, but to help with jet lag.
I manually manage time on my phone (and watch) so that it remains in my original time zone while traveling. I try to get steps and exercise in prior to departing or during connections. If you set your watch ahead to the new timezone, you'll basically lose > half a day and probably be unable to keep your streak going.
Once on the ground, I set my phone to the local time and get to the gym ASAP. Not to complete my rings for the day, but to help with jet lag.
That's tough. Transpacific flights are 12-15 hours. I try to get up at every opportunity for stand and I do in seat stretches. I also fly up front where it's easier to get up and move and even stand around if necessary. If flying in coach, depending on plane config you might find a galley passageway between aisles on wide bodies. This is good place to stand, stretch, pass gas, etc.
Exercise ring is harder to close -- I do it before or after flights running in place, walking around airports. Some airports (Changi) have full gyms, others you can usually use gym of attached hotel for a small fee, and still other airports have treadmills. But the easiest is just to walk briskly during connections. Guess it depends on what your goal threshold is.
I think you should put this in as a feature request.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html
This is something Apple could handle between the watch and iPhone. You should be prompted when you do - something to the tune of "Do you want to keep your activity on your home time zone?" - so you could easily do so without any overlap or gaps. By keeping the data on "real" vs relative time, you're keeping it cleaner.
Hi,
I'm very interested in this too as I've closed the rings every day since I got the watch at Christmas. I'm flying over the date line in a couple of weeks from Australia to California, ten days there and then back to Aus, which means the outward day will be super long, and I'll effectively skip a day on the way back, and I'm trying to find out if there's a way not to have that skipped day break my streak.
I think the answer might be to manually change the date/time on my phone to the skipped day and complete the rings bit by bit for that day during my trip, so when I hit 12 stands as normal I can change it to the skipped day and start to complete the rings for that day in advance.
Can anyone confirm a few things?
- Is the "Ring Day" (ie the date on which you get credit for move/exercise/stand) the date in the watch's current time zone?
- Once you've closed the rings on a "Ring Day" do they stay closed if you shift the watch's time zone, or does it recalculate based on the new time zone? I've seen reports of people's achievements coming and going as it recalculates what counts as a week/month...
- If you reduce the move goal drastically mid week do you still get a perfect week? I'm on 1,000 calories and there's no way I could do that on a plane, but I could probably briskly walk my way through 100 calories in the airport. Is there a minimum move goal?
Thanks for your help!
Tom
I'm very interested in this too as I've closed the rings every day since I got the watch at Christmas. I'm flying over the date line in a couple of weeks from Australia to California, ten days there and then back to Aus, which means the outward day will be super long, and I'll effectively skip a day on the way back, and I'm trying to find out if there's a way not to have that skipped day break my streak.
I think the answer might be to manually change the date/time on my phone to the skipped day and complete the rings bit by bit for that day during my trip, so when I hit 12 stands as normal I can change it to the skipped day and start to complete the rings for that day in advance.
Can anyone confirm a few things?
- Is the "Ring Day" (ie the date on which you get credit for move/exercise/stand) the date in the watch's current time zone?
- Once you've closed the rings on a "Ring Day" do they stay closed if you shift the watch's time zone, or does it recalculate based on the new time zone? I've seen reports of people's achievements coming and going as it recalculates what counts as a week/month...
- If you reduce the move goal drastically mid week do you still get a perfect week? I'm on 1,000 calories and there's no way I could do that on a plane, but I could probably briskly walk my way through 100 calories in the airport. Is there a minimum move goal?
Thanks for your help!
Tom
So I just finished a trip to Japan from the west coast of the US and crossed the dateline.
When heading west across the date line, you just lose some hours - the watch thinks you're in the time zone where you left until you land and it recalibrates the time of day. Any time you "skip" seems to get lost as far as the watch is concerned. I've got a day where I've only stood for 6 hours per the watch.... Make sure complete the circles before you land.
Heading eastbound, you're going back in time - and the watch gets confused because it already gave you credit for rings and now you've moved back in time. I started and ended Thursday before I landed on my return trip, but when I landed it was still Thursday. I think my watch is holding at what it things is around 3:00 AM - and it will wait there until I pass that time again when (hopefully) sleeping.
I guess the moral is, don't travel
When heading west across the date line, you just lose some hours - the watch thinks you're in the time zone where you left until you land and it recalibrates the time of day. Any time you "skip" seems to get lost as far as the watch is concerned. I've got a day where I've only stood for 6 hours per the watch.... Make sure complete the circles before you land.
Heading eastbound, you're going back in time - and the watch gets confused because it already gave you credit for rings and now you've moved back in time. I started and ended Thursday before I landed on my return trip, but when I landed it was still Thursday. I think my watch is holding at what it things is around 3:00 AM - and it will wait there until I pass that time again when (hopefully) sleeping.
I guess the moral is, don't travel
So I just finished a trip to Japan from the west coast of the US and crossed the dateline.
When heading west across the date line, you just lose some hours - the watch thinks you're in the time zone where you left until you land and it recalibrates the time of day. Any time you "skip" seems to get lost as far as the watch is concerned. I've got a day where I've only stood for 6 hours per the watch.... Make sure complete the circles before you land.
Heading eastbound, you're going back in time - and the watch gets confused because it already gave you credit for rings and now you've moved back in time. I started and ended Thursday before I landed on my return trip, but when I landed it was still Thursday. I think my watch is holding at what it things is around 3:00 AM - and it will wait there until I pass that time again when (hopefully) sleeping.
I guess the moral is, don't travel
Okay that's a biggie - but agree the watch gets a bit confused when it's already given you credit for hours now arriving...
Curious to know what ended up happening for you and what you found out as I'm headed to AUS at the beginning of next month (Feb 4th and my flight arrives in Melbourne on the 6th. I have a decent layover in LA on the 4th). When I leave I will have a 340+ day streak going (660 calories/day) and I don't want to lose it! I've given this a lot more thought than I probably should have and I think I've devised a plan and hoping it works (I posted over on reddit and got one confirmation that it will work but still unsure).
My big concern, similar to your first question, is that upon the time change forward to AUS it will pull head activity into the next day. My only thought is to do my first day's workout when my timezone (EST) and Australia are on the same day so if it pulls it ahead, the exercise & activity rings will just be later in the day (so, I would have to do it between 3am and 7:30am before departing). I realize that with this plan, I will likely miss my stand ring for the 4th and 5th but I'm OK with that as I had to miss one due to an issue updating my watchOS a few months back... Anyway, my plan is as follows:
- To start, my phone is set to automatically set time based on location
- On the day of the 4th, I fill my activity ring before leaving home and for the airport my watch registers the activity for the day of the 4th based on EST (and would also be registered on the 4th if I was in AUS as well).
- Upon arriving into LAX (before turning airplane mode off), I turn Date and Time to Manual and set to Australia, thereby getting my watch and phone to think it is the 5th.
- I fill my activity ring for the 5th by doing a workout from the airport during my layover
- I leave LAX and continue to let my phone think I'm on Australia time
- I land in Australia on the 6th and hit the gym sometime that day to fill my rings on the 6th
- At this point I can switch my phone back to auto set date and time
I went from LA to Orlando last month. It was only a 3 hour time change but it totally screwed up my activity app. Every single thing was pushed ahead 3 hours. So any calories that I got the night of my flight in LA after 9PM became calories for the next morning from 12am-3am. The activity app is not smart at all. I would have lost my streak of 435 days unless I didn’t go back to LA time and run a quick workout before 9PM the night of my flight. So I had to do some time traveling on my watch. For the activity app being almost 3 years old. It should understand time zones.
Essentially what happened was I got my move streak medal around 9:05PM LA times, so those 10 calories that I got from 9:00-9:05 became next day calories and it retroactively removed my move streak medal. Then by going back in time I added those 10 calories back before 9PM PST.
Yes, Ok. Thanks for the reply and it makes sense. That's why I think I have to fill my rings for the 4th before leaving for the airport in the small window of time when it would be Feb. 4th in both US and AUS.
When I manually jump to AUS time at LAX to get my Feb 5 activity, I don't think it won't be retroactively accumulated against the 4th because I won't be rolling back to EST time until almost two weeks later. I think the Activity app only looks at the "active day" activity with all these time changes. That's the hope at least.
After landing in Orlando and noticing the issue, I went through every day for the last 60 days on my activity calendar. Every single day changed. Any calories I earned after 9PM on any given day, became calories for the next day. The activity app is very stupid.
So basially if you travel across extended timezones, its always best to close things before hand.
Yes, but you have to do the math ahead of time to make sure that it is closed before the time change goes into effect. Thus traveling from PST to EST, you need to make sure everything is done by 8:59PM PST. Traveling to Europe or Australia (the latter more) on the other hand is where things get really tricky.
Since my post I’ve travelled from Sydney to LAX twice and London once. Only on my most recent US trip did I manage to preserve my streak... this is what I’ve learned...
1. On my first trip from Sydney to LAX I worked out that travelling east over the date line doesn’t matter. You end up with a giant day with 30 or so stand hours logged. It’s the “lost” day in the other direction that messes things up.
2. On my last trip I thought I’d be clever and keep my phone on Sydney time. This didn’t work. It kept resetting to local LAX time even though I had it on manual and even turned location services off. A couple of times I caught it in time and set it back to Aus time before the rings noticed, but then overnight it switched to LAX time of its own accord and activity followed suit so my second day in the US had a giant stand day. I have an iPhone X (11.2.1) and Apple Watch 2 (4.2). Not respecting the manual Timezone setting is clearly a bug, but I now don’t trust it (unless in airplane mode, see below). My plan was to have local time shown as a complication on the arch but to be honest that was a pain anyway.
3. You can set your calarie goal much lower for travelling days with no effect on your streak. I move mine to 200 and pace around the airport like a madman using an indoor walk activity to close my red and green rings.
4. You can cheat further by using the “other” activity which logs the green exercise ring minute for minute (ie not based on your heart rate), clocks up calories in the red ring at a predetermined rate faster than normal, and counts for movement so gets you a couple of stand hours if you do it from say 10:50 to 11:20 (you get the 10am stand and the 11am stand). You can therefore close the red and green rings from the “comfort” of your airline seat...
5. The time between midnight in the Timezone the day starts and midnight in the Timezone the day ends is what matters. I learned this going east from Europe to Aus via Singapore. I missed out on my move ring by 20 calories as my ring was no longer closed. Now I’m careful about completing the rings in the old Timezone before midnight in the new, important when going east and shortening your day, going west and lengthening the day doesn’t matter. Unless going over the dateline in which case going west shortens the day as you lose a day.
6. It doesn’t recalculate the rings other than at midnight for that day only. You can therefore have activity shown in the graph that isn’t counted towards the ring which is annoying. Badges are also messed up as it does seem to randomly recalculate those. I have more perfect week achievements than the number of weeks I’ve had the watch for.
My most recent trip was over NYE (which I didn’t get!) so I had the added complication of a change in month/year to content with and didn’t want to lose my December badge. This is what worked for me:
- My flight from LAX to SYD was 7pm LAX time on 31 Dec
- I closed my rings by 6pm LAX time on 31 Dec (9pm NYC time - see below, and 1pm Sydney time the next day)
- That was the 31st December dealt with and I got my December badge.
- My problem was that the 1st January was a lost day thanks to the date line, and I wanted to sleep a bit on the plane so I couldn’t wait until midnight LAX time to “exercise” and close the ring for the 1st Jan so I fooled the watch by moving it west via NYC time to pick up activity on the 1st that wouldn’t otherwise have been counted.
- After 9pm LAX time (midnight NYC) and 2hrs into the flight I manually changed Timezone to NYC. This stuck as I was in airplane mode and I didn’t have the problem of it resetting time zones of its own accord. I did a cheat 200 calorie other activity whilst eating the crappy airline food, and closed the red and green rings for the 1st Jan on NYC time. I wasn’t fussed about the blue ring and couldn’t be bothered to stay up 12 hours just to close that.
- Before 8am NYC time (midnight SYD) I moved the Timezone to Sydney time thus starting the 2nd Jan.
- to check things had worked I also did a cheat 200 calorie other activity, and it recognised my streak including 31/12, 01/01 and 02/01 so success!
- landing early morning 02/01 in Sydney I reset the target activity to normal and closed the rings properly during that day. I got the streak badge again when I closed it for the second time that day, but on the 3rd Jan everything was normal.
- there were some weird things going on though when I changed time zones in the air as some activity had been registered on the 3rd Jan (and it wasn’t 3rd Jan anywhere in the world). However this disappeared as it ticked over midnight onto the real 2nd Jan Sydney time.
This is a bit of trial and error and I’d really like to test it out on another trip. Hope it works for you!
WOW! Thanks so much for your detailed and thoughtful response. It is certainly helpful and has shed a lot of light on how this activity tracking works with time zones and how best to proceed when I travel next month. I've done a bunch of web searching and this is the most extensive discussion I've found about this topic (even more than the Apple support community discussions).
There are a couple interesting/important things I've picked up on from your experiences that I think will be helpful: 1) the lowered activity target during travel (to AUS) days, 2) the "hack" for the Other category work out, 3) keeping the phone in airplane mode tip while having manually changed time zones, and 4) flying back home, east across the IDL will be no problem.
So, it seems my plan of pulling ahead to Melbourne time while at LAX (if having achieved the streak for my departure day: 4-Feb) and getting activity for the next ("missed") day (5-Feb) is very similar to what you did on the plane. The difference being, I plan to jump to Australia time for the "missed day" activity rather than Eastern Time (NYC) thereby only having to do one time change. Seems if I can get the activity while at the airport, then after I leave and during the flight, I will "book" the streak on the 5th, my watch will roll over to the 6th and upon arriving in Melbourne I can turn my phone on, have it sync with local time (which should then match what my watch already says) and then go about getting my activity on the 6th after I hit the office after the airport.
One question: did you turn on airplane mode on your phone AND your watch or just your phone. Seems I would want to keep airplane mode on my watch off so it can send the activity back to the phone but airplane mode on for the phone to avoid the time change bug you allude.
Thanks again. Glad to see I'm not the only one who's been a bit obsessed about this.
The issue with putting the Apple Watch to airplane mode (and the phone connected to it) is that you can't use them [Lest you connect them by mistake]. You'd have to travel with two phones.
Will turn off airplane mode in Melbourne and it should just pick up on local time to match the watch to the time it has already been set to!
Travelled back from Croatia to the UK yesterday. Closed all 3 rings by 8 UK time. Got my perfect week achievements. Woke up this morning to a summary saying I’d only done it 6 times. Looked at Activity, yep. Lost 100 calories. The 100 calories I’d done between midnight and 1 in Croatia, Croatia is an hour ahead of the UK.
I am bummed out. That’s blown a 70 odd day streak, my perfect month and my September achievement which was to get a perfect month.
I am bummed out. That’s blown a 70 odd day streak, my perfect month and my September achievement which was to get a perfect month.
Going East completely screws up the watch. This being the 3rd year (almost 4th) of watchOS, I’m shocked it is still a problem. Once it’s completed on a previous day, changing time zones should not affect it. It should be set in stone.
I went to Florida last year, coming from SoCal, so all calories earned after 9pm were lost on that day and moved to the next.