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watchOS 3: How to Share Activity With Your Friends

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Apr 12, 2001
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When watchOS 3 launched alongside iOS 10, it brought a handful of feature additions and speed improvements to the Apple Watch. One of the new social features is a way for users to share their Activity Rings with friends and family through "Activity Sharing."

Mainly focused in iOS 10's Activity app, the ability to share workout data nevertheless requires an Apple Watch updated to watchOS 3, and for you to be comfortable with certain people receiving live updates on your fitness activity. When you're ready to start sharing your Activity Rings, and you've updated to both iOS 10 and watchOS 3, follow these steps:

Activity Sharing on iPhone

Activity-How-To-3-800x710.jpg

  1. Open "Activity" on your iPhone.
  2. Navigate to the "Sharing" tab on the bottom right.
  3. Tap the "+" icon in the top right corner to add a friend.
  4. The app will offer suggestions from your contacts of users who may own an Apple Watch, so you can tap one of those or type in someone specific in the text box.
  5. You can include multiple invitations at one time, and once you have everyone included in the "To" box, tap "Send."
From there, simply wait for your friend to accept the invitation. Afterwards, you'll begin to see one another's Calorie, Workout, and Standing rings in the same Sharing tab you sent the invite from. Once you amass a group of friends and family members, you can also sort the data in helpful partitions depending on what you'd like to see. Simply tap "Sort" in the top left corner of the Sharing tab and choose from Name, Move, Exercise, Steps, and Workouts as the primary focus.


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Article Link: watchOS 3: How to Share Activity With Your Friends
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/watchos-3-activity-sharing/
Last edited:
I'm curious to hear if this works for anyone. I've been trying to connect my activity account with my wife's for like 4 days now. We can get to the "accept" prompt to accept the invite, but after that it's just infinite spinning "thinking" icon. Have rescinded the invite and resent several times, trying both directions.
 
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Raineer said:
I'm curious to hear if this works for anyone. I've been trying to connect my activity account with my wife's for like 4 days now. We can get to the "accept" prompt to accept the invite, but after that it's just infinite spinning "thinking" icon. Have rescinded the invite and resent several times, trying both directions.
Click to expand...

You're not going to like my answer.... but I had to RESTORE my iPhone to make that work, I've seen this 3 times now. That seems to be the ONLY solution. Apple Support had me try the following which didn't work...

- Unpair / Repair watch
- Restore Watch

Checked diagnostics on both and they were clear.

Restoring the phone and THEN repairing the watch worked.

Good Luck!
 
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tliede20 said:
You're not going to like my answer.... but I had to RESTORE my iPhone to make that work, I've seen this 3 times now. That seems to be the ONLY solution. Apple Support had me try the following which didn't work...

- Unpair / Repair watch
- Restore Watch

Checked diagnostics on both and they were clear.

Restoring the phone and THEN repairing the watch worked.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply, I'm glad that I'm not the only one - I'm sort of curious how I would know which phone to restore...whether mine/wife's/both?

How ugly just to get around a simple issue - hopefully they will just patch this so I can worry about it later.
 
Raineer said:
I'm curious to hear if this works for anyone. I've been trying to connect my activity account with my wife's for like 4 days now. We can get to the "accept" prompt to accept the invite, but after that it's just infinite spinning "thinking" icon. Have rescinded the invite and resent several times, trying both directions.
Click to expand...
its working for me. only problem i got was that my gf didnt update her watch, but after both have ios 10 and watch os 3 its working. sometimes it takes a little long to load.
but im loving it! specially the days i beat my her LOL
 
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jmh600cbr said:
How to use the most useless feature ever
Click to expand...

I think it's pretty fun, myself. I get to see how my friends and family are doing with their activity, and if they beat me on a day, it really motivates me to do better. But we do have a competitive side so that also helps.

Just because you think it's useless, doesn't make it so.
 
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I've found a (minor) security issue with the 'Send message to all' option within the Activity Sharing app on the Watch (or iPhone):

When you do so, it sends an iMessage - a GROUP iMessage - even though the recipients may not know each other, revealing their contact number/email address used to send the message.

Not a good idea, Apple. It should send several *individual* messages to all recipients (at least as an option).
 
My wife and I are both very active and close our circles every day. We had this enabled until one of us got the second update of the day. Realizing we'd each see three of these a day from each other, we said "**** this". I can't imagine having 10 people who are active sharing.

If you have an Apple Watch and are not active, that's too bad. You are missing out on a great tool.
 
Raineer said:
I'm curious to hear if this works for anyone. I've been trying to connect my activity account with my wife's for like 4 days now. We can get to the "accept" prompt to accept the invite, but after that it's just infinite spinning "thinking" icon. Have rescinded the invite and resent several times, trying both directions.
Click to expand...
This is kinda weird, but my friend put in a bug report for problems like the one you're having and others (mine just wouldn't update my friends' rings). Engineering at Apple got back to him saying the essential "fix" is jumping into Settings > Contacts > Short Name > and choosing First name and Last Initial. Why? I have no idea. But it affects Messages and Phone, too, which sucks. I'm giving mine a bit longer to see if it fixes itself.
 
I posted this elsewhere so sorry if I am spamming but this seems the correct place to put this....

Hi Mac Rumours People,

When the gen 0 Apple Watch launched I had a few Apple Watch people join me as a virtual buddy from Mac Rumours so we could test out the new features. With the launch of Watch OS 3 I am wondering if any of you want to be my Apple Watch activity buddy so I have someone to have a bit of playful competition with and maybe get some motivation from one or two of you to help me do better.

I am UK based and although I am not MASSIVELY fit I am active so anyone wanting to run virtual marathons is having a laugh but anyone who is casual or a daily fitness person without being extreme would be great.

No barrier to gender or language or location!

Feel free to PM me, maybe this is the start of a small Mac Rumours fitness pal session!

(Yes I spelled Rumours the correct British way you colonials ;))
 
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