I'm totally confused - Please help

[jwlbel]

It is totally confusing and I will try to explain the best I can since I do not understand what is going on with my watch.

First thing (which has never been a problem before) my spouse and I share the same iCloud Apple ID. The reason we have not gotten separate Apple ID's is we have Apple Music and we have the single user account and if we get separate ID's we would have to pay for a family plan. I rarely use the Apple Music, maybe once or twice a month. Only one of us can be signed on at a time and it has never been a problem. So this is why I do not want 2 different ID's

Now here is my problem. I updated my iPhone 7+ and my Watch (series 0) this morning. Then my spouse came home from work and updated their phone. I am not sure if my problem started before or after their phone update. I usually walk about 10 miles a day and today I was having a lazy day. I looked at my watch and it said 7.75 miles (I knew I had only walked maybe 5 miles max) I looked at my spouse's watch and it said the exact same as my watch. So their miles are on my watch. We tried to update the other watch and we kept getting an error message that it could not be updated. We unpaired and paired both watches. Then I went for a small walk and my steps and distance did not change even though I was using the outdoor app that showed I walked almost 2 miles. Then when I came home they went for a walk and it showed up on my watch. I looked at all my old workouts on my phone for this month and none of them are mine. We see our individual workouts correctly (when using the app) but our steps, distance, calories all are the same but if I look at the time the exercise was done on the graph that is correct.

When I look at my watch app on my phone it shows my watch serial number correctly.

So besides getting 2 Apple ID's what can we do? This has never been a problem before.

 

[Phil A.]

Apple intend Apple IDs to be personal and individual so I wouldn't be at all surprised if more strange things like this start happening.

On this specific issue, Health data can now be stored in iCloud and synced across devices so that's most likely what's happened here - checking your iCloud settings and turning off Health if it's turned on may help

Long term, though, I really think you'd be better moving to 2 Apple IDs

 

[Treebark]

.

So besides getting 2 Apple ID's what can we do? This has never been a problem before.

As Phil alluded to, it is going to be a bigger and bigger issue moving forward. This comes from somebody in your shoes who split their accounts out just a few days ago in preparation for watches. I know that isn’t what you want to hear, and you want help solving this problem. But the help truly is it is time to separate accounts.

Family plan for music is only $5 more a month. I use “only” because you’ve obviously purchased two Apple watches and have some disposable income....is $5 a month worth the frustration of battling all the issues that are going to be coming up more and more?

We actually had a main account to share app purchases, and individual accounts for reminders, contacts, calendars. Now that main account is the family account with the personal accounts invited to sharing. All still have the purchased apps, etc and everything except three areas work well.

Those three areas are the $5 more a month for music and $2 more for storage (backups), but the third is the biggest pain. Our photos are no longer going to the same camera roll. We can of course share albums, but that isn’t quite the same.

Good luck.

 

[sirenized]

It is totally confusing and I will try to explain the best I can since I do not understand what is going on with my watch.

First thing (which has never been a problem before) my spouse and I share the same iCloud Apple ID. The reason we have not gotten separate Apple ID's is we have Apple Music and we have the single user account and if we get separate ID's we would have to pay for a family plan. I rarely use the Apple Music, maybe once or twice a month. Only one of us can be signed on at a time and it has never been a problem. So this is why I do not want 2 different ID's

Now here is my problem. I updated my iPhone 7+ and my Watch (series 0) this morning. Then my spouse came home from work and updated their phone. I am not sure if my problem started before or after their phone update. I usually walk about 10 miles a day and today I was having a lazy day. I looked at my watch and it said 7.75 miles (I knew I had only walked maybe 5 miles max) I looked at my spouse's watch and it said the exact same as my watch. So their miles are on my watch. We tried to update the other watch and we kept getting an error message that it could not be updated. We unpaired and paired both watches. Then I went for a small walk and my steps and distance did not change even though I was using the outdoor app that showed I walked almost 2 miles. Then when I came home they went for a walk and it showed up on my watch. I looked at all my old workouts on my phone for this month and none of them are mine. We see our individual workouts correctly (when using the app) but our steps, distance, calories all are the same but if I look at the time the exercise was done on the graph that is correct.

When I look at my watch app on my phone it shows my watch serial number correctly.

So besides getting 2 Apple ID's what can we do? This has never been a problem before.

my sister and I have shared an account forever. when she got her apple watch in may we ran into both of us receiving the others messages. Simple fix according to apple was to create an apple id for my sister and link it on family share. still have access to music etc, but the watch is linked to her phone only.

 

[jwlbel]

Other reasons I like sharing our Apple ID is - Is if I put something on the calendar it shows up on both phones. Shared photos. So if one of us takes a photo it automatically shows up on both phones. Our phonebook/contacts are the same so we don't each need to add a contact. Besides me losing Apple Music I am sure there are more things that we will lose by doing separate ID's. As for the "only $5" more a month. True it is a small amount but by buying the LTE version that is going to add an extra $20 a month to our monthly expenses. Plus, I use Apple Music so little, I don't want to pay extra for it but I do use it sometimes so I don't want to lose it either. Plus I am paying for extra storage and I don't want to pay extra for both accounts.

 

[Lobwedgephil]

It sucks, but it is only going to get worse. You can use a calendar app and contacts can synch via gmail or something like that. Google photos as well can keep y'all with the same photos. So there are plenty of easy work arounds for you, but you are going to have to live with the issues or make some changes as they will be getting worse for you.

 

[porkrind]

Other reasons I like sharing our Apple ID is - Is if I put something on the calendar it shows up on both phones. Shared photos. So if one of us takes a photo it automatically shows up on both phones.

1. That’s what the shared Family calendar is for...
2. That's what the shared Family album is for...

 

[Mercenary]

You can actually sign into everything with your own apple ID and just use the same shared ID for music and the store. It's what we do in our house.

So for icloud use your own apple ID. If you dont have one get one.

Then in music and the store section of settings just enter your shared ID.