Disable Heart Rate in Watch Settings

[Bob190]

Does anyone know the rationale behind not allowing you to turn off the heart rate sensor from the watch?

I personally really don’t care to track my heart rate 24-7. But as a runner and a cyclist I do want to track my HR during workouts.

It is beyond frustrating to be ready to start a run or ride without your phone and realize you didn’t enable the HR sensor in the iPhone watch app.

It really doesn’t make any sense that you are unable to turn it on/off from the watch.

 

[kitenski]

Why not just leave it on all the time? It will give you useful recovery info like HRV and rhr

 

[Bob190]

I agree @kitenski (HRV and Resting HR), are useful metrics, but knowing that my heart rate is 48 while sitting at my desk at work really isn't. I was an early adopter of all-day heart rate tracking with the Basis B1, and the early versions of the Apple Watch (Series 0, 2). It just got to a point where I really didn't care what my heart rate was throughout the day.

So regardless, I think the ability to disable it on the watch should be available for those of us who want to track our HR during workouts, but not any other time. It just a hassle that you always have to remember to enable it on the phone, prior to your workout.

As @rifanna mentioned above, all Garmin watches give you that ability .. I also own a Vivoactive 3.

 

[deeddawg]

AFAIK there's no way to do what you want. Here's Apple's feedback portal for you to make your suggestion/request direct to them - https://www.apple.com/feedback/

I suppose your motivation is battery life savings?

How many hours are you finding you extend the battery life by turning off the HRM? (I've frankly never thought to do that as my AW's have always had all-day battery life except for certain circumstances)

 

[Bob190]

I suppose your motivation is battery life savings?

How many hours are you finding you extend the battery life by turning off the HRM? (I've frankly never thought to do that as my AW's have always had all-day battery life except for certain circumstances)

No, actually, I tend to have a bit of health anxiety, so years ago I found myself scrutinizing every detail of my heart rate constantly .. that in itself became unhealthy. If it was higher than 50bpm at certain times of the day, I started worrying about it. Same with my sleeping heart rate, if I saw a spike during the night, that brought about some anxiety.

Actually, during a physical my doctor said to stop tracking it to remove that as a source of anxiety .. and haven't tracked it since and don't care to. I am a lifelong competitive runner/cyclist and in pretty good shape for my age (55).

I sure you get a little extra battery life, but probably not much. BTW, my battery life on my Series 5 is absolutely terrible. Can barely get thru a day, even with the HR sensor off.

 

[deeddawg]

No, actually, I tend to have a bit of health anxiety, so years ago I found myself scrutinizing every detail of my heart rate constantly .. that in itself became unhealthy. If it was higher than 50bpm at certain times of the day, I started worrying about it. Same with my sleeping heart rate, if I saw a spike during the night, that brought about some anxiety.

Actually, during a physical my doctor said to stop tracking it to remove that as a source of anxiety

Gotta do what you need to. I appreciate the explanation, that's not a reason I'd have thought might be the case. I still don't know that there's any way to achieve it other than just not look at the data. Which probably is far easier said than done in your case.

I sure you get a little extra battery life, but probably not much. BTW, my battery life on my Series 5 is absolutely terrible. Can barely get thru a day, even with the HR sensor off.

I suspect there's a software issue with WatchOS6 -- even people with prior generation watches are reporting bad battery life since upgrading. Also, I've seen reports from developers with 6.1 beta claiming much improved battery. Perhaps Apple will push it through to release quickly.