Anyone else notice this? I used to complete my rings without trouble just from walking to and from work, but ever since installing watchOS 6, I can barely get them halfway closed.
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watchOS 6 — much harder to get move and exercise credit?
- Thread starter fastthumbs
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I did a 9-mile brisk walk yesterday (I was sweating and it was not that hot) and I only got 7 minutes worth of exercise credit. I had to run the "other" app to close my rings.
I don’t get the appeal of closing the rings for the sake of it. If you think you’ve done enough of exercise then it doesn’t matter right?! I mean the days I go gym I’m like over 400% of what my supposed targets are and all my settings are at the highest. I never got the point of these things. It’s just a bit of nice animation for me.
Exactly. I've seen Apple change the sensitivity of the exercise ring calculations so many times in the last 4+ years, I've long since given up on trying to close the damn thing just for the sake of closing it. It would be different if it was consistent, but it's not. I can scroll back to April 24th, 2015 in my activity app and see EXACTLY when I updated watchOS, over the years. There are a number of significant and radical changes to ring closure, without any significant changes in actual activity. lol
Beta 1 was horrible for me with this. One day I had to walk 100% more than normal to close the move ring. Every day was between 50 to 100 percent more. Beta 2 seems to fix this. But I have found a workaround that i'd imagine many people do just because it's how they use the watch. Start a walk in the workout app while you are walking. It counts the cals correctly then.
"At the highest" can only be true for the exercise and stand rings, and I do consider those a bit of a joke.
But you can set the move ring at whatever you want. I have it set at 1,000 calories per day, which requires about a 5-mile/8K run on top of a normal day at work.
To answer the original question, I haven't seen any obvious difference in the Move/calories ring under WatchOS 6, but I do believe that they raised the bar on the Exercise ring a bit. And that seems appropriate to me. In the past I could get exercise credit just for walking down the block. This morning, I still got 2 minutes of exercise credit when I walked up 3 flights of steps from my basement parking garage, even though my peak HR was recorded at 76. (The Health app shows my range for the day as 47-76.) I shouldn't have any exercise credit yet. Exercise credit should require some degree of HR elevation, not just movement.
Looking at my data from this week and last before and after I updated to WatchOS 6, I can't see an obvious difference. I have 65 minutes of exercise credit so far today. 59 from a run after work. 2 this morning. 2 minutes just before my run, probably when I was walking from my car to the park restroom and stretching. And 2 x 1 minute at home from going up and down stairs. (I updated on Wednesday this week, so I only have two full days of data on WatchOS 6.)
Yesterday, on WatchOS 6, I had 99 minutes of exercise credit, with 88 of it from a run. Looking at a few typical work days last week on Watch OS 5, I had days with minutes at 56/67, 100/117, and 42/50 (training/total exercise).
Yesterday, on WatchOS 6, I had 99 minutes of exercise credit, with 88 of it from a run. Looking at a few typical work days last week on Watch OS 5, I had days with minutes at 56/67, 100/117, and 42/50 (training/total exercise).