Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

GoodHealthIT

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 10, 2017
50
17
Adelaide
Has anyone else experienced their 'Move' calories going backwards? I've had this happen a few times lately and with all the other 'Challenge' bugs, I'm ready to give the AW up and return to a proper fitness tracker.

So today, I've done a 65 minute walk (making it 72 exercise minutes) and reached 572 Calories for the day so far, but then 5 minutes after completing my exercise the calories has dropped down to 248 Calories, even though the exercise minutes remains at 72, and the activity is still showing in Health. The calories burnt during that hour are showing up as grey instead of red.

Each time this has happened I've logged a Bug Report with Apple and submitted a SysDiagnose, but of course I don't ever hear anything back! So now I'm left with having to fudge the figures by leaving it running as a 'Other' exercise just to get my calories back up again.
 
No third party app being used - I was using the Watch by itself.

The calories are showing up as grey. This is a marker of a third party app being used. Perhaps one on your iphone?

Go into the Health app, see what sources are showing up under "Active calories". It should only be your watch(es), but it probably isn't. I stopped using apps like Human because of its interaction with apple watch.
 
Nope, it was only the Watch. The only apps under 'Data Sources' is Apple Watch and Zwift Mobile which is showing up as a Companion. ZM is showing as 'inactive' anyway as I haven't used it since October and the Zwift app itself isn't installed anymore.

Like I said, this isn't the first time it has gone backwards, and doesn't happen all the time. I did the exact same walk yesterday and it worked without issue...
 
Nope, it was only the Watch. The only apps under 'Data Sources' is Apple Watch and Zwift Mobile which is showing up as a Companion. ZM is showing as 'inactive' anyway as I haven't used it since October and the Zwift app itself isn't installed anymore.

Like I said, this isn't the first time it has gone backwards, and doesn't happen all the time. I did the exact same walk yesterday and it worked without issue...

How does the "greyed out" portion appear exactly in your Activity app on iPhone?

Example with a workout added manually in the Health app:

IMG_8DEF012A20A0-1.jpeg
 
Here's what it looks like - just a standard exercise but the grey lines with no indicator as to what passed the data. I know this is a Watch problem because when I have used my Garmin in the past (for Tri's), that always indicated as 'Connect' or 'Strava' depending on which one uploaded first.

So I do know what I'm looking for, it's just that in this case there is no third party app running. Connect and Strava aren't installed on this phone currently.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1409.PNG
    IMG_1409.PNG
    290.1 KB · Views: 281
Here's what it looks like - just a standard exercise but the grey lines with no indicator as to what passed the data. I know this is a Watch problem because when I have used my Garmin in the past (for Tri's), that always indicated as 'Connect' or 'Strava' depending on which one uploaded first.

So I do know what I'm looking for, it's just that in this case there is no third party app running. Connect and Strava aren't installed on this phone currently.

To rule it out - do you have multiple phones?

I had an issue with my phone yesterday and rebooted it... but lost half an hour of data for some reason (my walk to work). The watch kept the calorie totals, but never synced the calories back to the health app. Thus I ended the day with 600 on the move ring, but only 550 according to the health app. And one hour less for standing, 8 minutes less for exercise etc. Does the "active calories" reading in the health app match the total on the move ring in your case?
 
How does the "greyed out" portion appear exactly in your Activity app on iPhone?

Example with a workout added manually in the Health app:

View attachment 755696
Can I ask a slightly off topic question? The one time I added a workout through the health app I got the grey bars for the calories but I got zero credit for exercise. How did you get exercise credit?
 
Can I ask a slightly off topic question? The one time I added a workout through the health app I got the grey bars for the calories but I got zero credit for exercise. How did you get exercise credit?

Did you do that a while ago? I think it didn't used to add exercise minutes, but now it does. I have exercise minutes credited from my iphone as the source, lining up exactly with the times i added the workout (in this case they weren't necessary because I had all the data from the watch, just not the workout itself because ti crashed).
 
Did you do that a while ago? I think it didn't used to add exercise minutes, but now it does. I have exercise minutes credited from my iphone as the source, lining up exactly with the times i added the workout (in this case they weren't necessary because I had all the data from the watch, just not the workout itself because ti crashed).
I did it last week. Oh well. No big deal.
 
Okay, so now it gets weirder. I've had the Watch and iPhone on charge overnight, and after putting it on this morning the notification says that I doubled my move goal yesterday! Going into the Activity on Watch it has added another 500 Cal to the total from the picture, even though I pretty much sat on the couch after that image... No changes to the actual graph though, still a grey, unnamed portion between 2:45pm and 3:40pm.
 
Okay, so now it gets weirder. I've had the Watch and iPhone on charge overnight, and after putting it on this morning the notification says that I doubled my move goal yesterday! Going into the Activity on Watch it has added another 500 Cal to the total from the picture, even though I pretty much sat on the couch after that image... No changes to the actual graph though, still a grey, unnamed portion between 2:45pm and 3:40pm.

Yikes... did you do a workout for the walk by the way, or just rely on natural activity tracking? Does the workout show up?

The weird thing is the numbers are based on the apple watch numbers, but the graphs are actually based on the data in the Health app.
 
did you do a workout for the walk by the way, or just rely on natural activity tracking? Does the workout show up?

No, I just walked without setting it as a workout, and didn't have my phone with me. I suspect there is a bug in my system as I've had issues with the monthly challenge calculations as well and rarely get awarded them despite beating all the targets. I even double checked that my Garmin was switched off and it has been as I haven't used it for a couple of weeks.

I'm going to do the exact same walk again this afternoon so we'll see how it goes.
 
Okay, so it's taken a few days to get back onto this, but I've been experiencing a huge number of problems with the counts over the last few days. These all seem to be getting worse since the last update. Just a sample of the issues:
  • My 'Stand' hours is always one more than I've actually achieved - for example the count currently shows 4 but the graph shows only 3.
  • My 'Outdoor Walk' activity yesterday appears on the Workouts but didn't count toward my Exercise minutes or my 'Move;
  • My March 'Move' Challenge hasn't been awarded because I discovered the Calorie count went backwards on one day making me 12 short...
  • I achieved my March Challenge but have not been awarded the Badge (no big deal, but still a flaw)
Think I'm just going to give up and switch back to the Garmin.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1422.PNG
    IMG_1422.PNG
    163.5 KB · Views: 165
Finally gave up on Apple Watch and confined it to the archives. Ran a half marathon yesterday and received all the awards (Stand, Exercise, Move, 200%, 300% & 400%) but 30 minutes later it dropped my Move back down by more than half to 234 Calories (my target is 520).

Not only that, but my monthly challenge is now dropped 2 days instead of the 1.

I'll stick to the Garmin now - doesn't have the same level of challenges and badges, but it at least is consistent in how it treats and calculates data.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.