iPhone 7/Plus iPhone health app and cycling

[venomx999]

Is it accurate for bike riding ? All I need to know is my mileage per day

i had it set to running and walking so just changed it to cycling. Would this make any difference?

thanks

 

[ericwn]

That surely will make a difference, I guess when calculating your calories at least. I used to cycle 15 to 20 km a day and tracked with the watch - the routes were always roughly the same length. Now, my watch is pretty old so I assume later ones do this even better.

 

[venomx999]

Ok well I changed it to cycling but it doesn’t track your mileage, you have to enter it manually
It does however keep a track of walking and riding at all times

 

[lkalliance]

Hm. I didn’t realize the the Health app had added cycling. Good!

I use a third-party app that connects to Health as a data source. The app I happen to use is Ride With GPS, but there are others that will do the job as well. So I just use the app as normal for each ride, and it feeds the data into Health.

(I have several years worth of data in Ride with GPS, and once I connected it to Health it sent the entire history over)

I don’t know if Health can automatically sense if you’re cycling and just measure without your interaction, like steps. Perhaps someone else has some insight? I figure if Health requires interaction for each ride, I’d just as soon keep using Ride with GPS and let it feed the data into Health.

 

[areyes163]

Ok well I changed it to cycling but it doesn’t track your mileage, you have to enter it manually
It does however keep a track of walking and riding at all times

If you have a series 2 or later your watch will track your distance. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207934

 

[venomx999]

Ok I downloaded a cycle app and went for a bike ride to compare it to the iphones health app and got two completely different figures. The most accurate one was the bike app not the iPhone health one

 

[lkalliance]

Ok I downloaded a cycle app and went for a bike ride to compare it to the iphones health app and got two completely different figures. The most accurate one was the bike app not the iPhone health one

That does't really surprise me, actually. Bike apps that have been around a while, like Ride with GPS and Map My Ride and Strava have had years to perfect it. And, really, the Health app is meant as an aggregator of your health data, it's not designed well for manual input. That's not its function. You have the apps you like for each activity, and they send the data to Health. Then Health becomes a repository for everything.

(Actually as I understand it, you could have an app that is designed better for DISPLAYING health data, and it can use Health as its own source. So perhaps you have an app for, say, easy input of your blood glucose readings. And you use that, and it goes into Health. Then you may have another app that does an outstanding job for displaying that data in useful ways, but has an awful data input. So you have Health feed it that data and you can use it for all your visualization. That's the theory, though I have not yet seen that in practice.)