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Exercise minutes not registering after iOS 13/watchOS 6

J

Jim Lahey

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Apr 8, 2014
2,758
5,746
Hi. Since iOS 13 and watchOS 6, my series 4 Apple Watch is barely registering any exercise minutes. To get 30 minutes from a walking workout, I have to walk for at least an hour. I'm aware of all the usual workarounds and supposed fixes, but nothing is having any effect.

I am starting to wonder if watchOS 6 battery optimisations for AOD mean that the watch is relying solely on my iPhone for movement data and the phone (8 Plus) isn't moving around enough as I walk with it in a jacket pocket? I don't think GPS data alone is enough to count as actual walking, since you could be in a car or similar.

As I type it's just occurred to me to try my next walk without the phone, thus forcing the watch to use its own internal motion sensors. Any thoughts from the good people of Mac Rumours?

Thanks for reading.
 
Yep. Tried everything besides restoring the watch. This morning, twenty minutes into an outdoor walk, the watch had registered six minutes of exercise :confused:

EDIT: Actually to be fair, on this morning's walk the phone was in my pocket, not in my hand (it was pouring with rain) but holding the phone in my hand yesterday did not fix it for today. It really feels as though when the phone is present, the watch is not using its own motion sensors for the walking workout.
 
Last edited:
Same problem here. Wife and I have a regular route of 1.85 miles. A moderate pace always got my exercise ring closed about 3/4 of the way through. After update, I got home and still had several minutes of exercise ring to close. Last night, it was much closer to completion on this route, but I went brisk pace for a few minutes to help, so can’t say for sure. They may have tweaked the exercise algorithm in this update.
 
xdhd350 said:
They may have tweaked the exercise algorithm in this update.
Click to expand...

Possibly, but let's hope not. Otherwise they may as well remove walking from the workout app.

Tomorrow I will do my walk without the phone to see if it makes any difference. I suspect they are trying to save battery life in the watch to mitigate the AOD in series 5 if the iPhone is present during a walking workout.
 
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I've had the same issue since Series 0. The programmer(s) of this exercise ring needs to be replaced.
 
Jim Lahey said:
Possibly, but let's hope not. Otherwise they may as well remove walking from the workout app.

Tomorrow I will do my walk without the phone to see if it makes any difference. I suspect they are trying to save battery life in the watch to mitigate the AOD in series 5 if the iPhone is present during a walking workout.
Click to expand...

I always have my phone with me. Who knows. Maybe they just want us to work a little harder. 😂
 
So I went for a walk this morning without the phone and was awarded every single minute of exercise, corresponding with the duration of the workout. Hmmm. Can’t draw any definitive conclusions, but it seems to support my initial theory.
 
For those still interested or for anyone stumbling upon this through a search, after doing the walking workout without the phone, I have since been out again with the phone and everything now appears to be fine. It’s difficult to say for sure what caused the issue, and it should be noted that in between these two events the phone has been updated to 13.1. Whether or not the phone update could have affected the watch reporting the correct exercise minutes, I cannot say, but on the face of it, just going out without the phone has fixed the issue for me.
 
Scrub that. It's bricked again. So basically watchOS 6 killed my Apple Watch as far as exercise minutes go. It seems the only solution for now is to workout without my iPhone present. Not particularly impressed :rolleyes:
 
So in the interest of thread completion, I have finally concluded that Apple have indeed simply changed the algorithm that determines exercise minutes awarded in a walking workout. I've upped my pace slightly and now seem to be getting all of my minutes consistently. It now appears that I need to maintain a pace of around 11m/km or quicker. Quite a bit faster than was previously necessary in watchOS 5. HOWEVER, most irritatingly, I can now also accumulate an 5 extra minutes simply by sedately pushing a trolley/cart around a supermarket with (obviously) no workout selected. What's that all about!? Ha!

Anyway I'm now walking a bit faster which is probably the whole point, and not a bad thing.

Case closed.
 
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