WatchOS 7: Fitness extremely buggy (Sync/Maps)

[MJ22]

I went through the process. I really didn’t want to do it but I did. I didn’t have any issues making backups and what a previous poster said, I did think about - it’s no different than when you buy a new device. So far I have maps back in my old activities but they just show the starting point and not the actual route. However, my phone hasn’t fully downloaded everything off the cloud, so it’s possible they can still show up. I haven’t tested it on a run since the restoration process.

 

[mxrider88]

*shrug* Don't do the fix then. Maybe a future iOS update will fix it. Or maybe not.

I'm not going to waste time on assumptions, and fussing about 99 cents for a month of 50GB storage after spending several hundred dollars on a luxury item is just silly.

with 50gb iCloud you don’t backup the phone. You need the next step up, 200gb. Which is not 99c but 3.70 if I’m not wrong.
That would be almost $50 per year. It’s a trap to get people to pay and pay and pay. I don’t want to fall in that trap. Subscriptions are “dangerous” for that exact reason. Oh yeah it’s only 3 a month, on yeah let’s add Netflix it’s only 10 a month, on yeah Disney plus only 10 a month, oh Apple Music why not it’s only 10 a month. Let’s put it all on credit card too and pay it off with only 15 a month for the rest of my life. Do the math. And don’t judge what people do with money.

 

[deeddawg]

with 50gb iCloud you don’t backup the phone. You need the next step up, 200gb.

50GB works just fine here. Phone backup is 5.9GB.

Have you actually looked at your usage?

Also - if you're not currently backing up your phone somewhere, just what exactly do you plan to do if it breaks, is stolen, or you decide to upgrade to a new phone?

Edit - FWIW, I don't have Netflix, I do have Disney+ at $7/mo for now, I don't have Apple Music, and my credit cards are paid off in full every month. Subscriptions are only a trap for those unable to monitor & control their spending.

 

[wilberforce]

with 50gb iCloud you don’t backup the phone. You need the next step up, 200gb. Which is not 99c but 3.70 if I’m not wrong.
That would be almost $50 per year. It’s a trap to get people to pay and pay and pay. I don’t want to fall in that trap. Subscriptions are “dangerous” for that exact reason. Oh yeah it’s only 3 a month, on yeah let’s add Netflix it’s only 10 a month, on yeah Disney plus only 10 a month, oh Apple Music why not it’s only 10 a month. Let’s put it all on credit card too and pay it off with only 15 a month for the rest of my life. Do the math. And don’t judge what people do with money.

Embrace it.
Resistance is futile.

 

[mxrider88]

50GB works just fine here. Phone backup is 5.9GB.

Have you actually looked at your usage?

Also - if you're not currently backing up your phone somewhere, just what exactly do you plan to do if it breaks, is stolen, or you decide to upgrade to a new phone?

Edit - FWIW, I don't have Netflix, I do have Disney+ at $7/mo for now, I don't have Apple Music, and my credit cards are paid off in full every month. Subscriptions are only a trap for those unable to monitor & control their spending.



View attachment 962020View attachment 962021

i have a 64gb iPhone,it is almost full, I use it for work and private,50gb won’t be enough for me to do a cloud backup.

I backup on the mac regularly. When it works, admittedly haven’t backed up in a long time when I updated to Catalina because it didn’t work. It seems to work now with a few attempts after a reboot.
if that’s their strategy to get me into iCloud, no thanks.

I also have Apple music and cards Paid in full, that doesn’t mean I wanna keep addingsubscriptions

 

[deeddawg]

i have a 64gb iPhone,it is almost full, I use it for work and private,50gb won’t be enough for me to do a cloud backup.

I backup on the mac regularly. When it works, admittedly haven’t backed up in a long time when I updated to Catalina because it didn’t work. It seems to work now with a few attempts after a reboot.
if that’s their strategy to get me into iCloud, no thanks.

I also have Apple music and cards Paid in full, that doesn’t mean I wanna keep addingsubscriptions

I respectfully suggest checking your assumptions.

My phone is 64GB as well. As you can clearly see, I have no problem at all using the 99¢ 50GB plan for my backups. The real value for me is spanning multiple devices with my photo library. Well worth under $12 per year. Technically costs less as I annually stock up on Black Friday timeframe discounted iTunes cards.

Using your computer to backup and restore should work just fine as well. iCloud is just much simpler. Individual choice.

 

[WMU328]

Yeah, if you're not super obsessed with keeping tabs on your Health data I'd honestly skip it and just pray that a functioning update isn't too far off. Wiping your phone is such a huge pain, especially with increased usage of 2FA.

FWIW, you can go into the Health app and manually add resting and/or active calories so your trends stay accurate, just go into each section and hit Add Data in the top right. It's not perfect but if that's something you care about, it's one way to get around it. I did it a few times - just calculated the difference between Fitness/Watch active calories vs. Health and added that # into the active energy section, and the difference between my typical resting calories (1600) into resting energy. But just two things to be aware of: adding resting calories in Health won't change your total calories in the Fitness app (Fitness will still only reflect your active calories + what Health thinks your resting calories are), AND you should input the data at a "time" when you were relatively inactive since it won't add the full amount if you were already active at that particular time. (Not at which time you literally add it - Health prompts you to select a time when editing data. I usually picked 4am or something.)

Thats great info!! Thank you!!

 

[Buadhai]

Absurd that this is their only answer. Completely, completely absurd.

I bought my first Mac in 1984. In the 36 years since then I have owned dozens of Macs and other Apple devices. Not once have I ever had to completely wipe a device and restore from backup in order to solve a problem. It irks me that this is the best Apple can do.

I'll have to put off doing anything until I get back home week after next. I hope Apple has come up with a better solution by then.

 

[tcphoto1]

I am starting to hate my Apple Watch, I've lost count of how many times I've tried to install the iOS7.0.1 update. I've read the Apple Community instructions, reset the watch and the Nike Run Club app will not reinstall. The only reason I bought it was to track runs and it's turning into a waste of time.

 

[Buadhai]

I'll have to put off doing anything until I get back home week after next. I hope Apple has come up with a better solution by then.

The following will be long and boring:

Well, it's been an eventful few weeks. Just before I left on my extended travels I ordered an Apple Watch 6.

While I was on a dive boat in the Gulf of Siam (before the Watch 6 was delivered), my Watch 2 gave up. It wouldn't boot. It was totally unresponsive. On the charger it got incredibly hot.

I was home for a day or two. I unpaired the broken Watch 2, wiped my iPhone Xr and restored it from an iMazing backup.

The day the Watch 6 was delivered to my home in Korat I was in Bangkok on the way to Cha Am and without a working Apple Watch. Poor me.

I finally got home yesterday and set up the new Apple Watch 6. It went fine.

This morning I did a cycling workout with the new Apple Watch 6.

Sadly, no GPS data was saved. There is no route map.

So, even wiping and restoring the iPhone and buying a brand new watch did not solve the GPS problem.

I got on iMessage with Apple. After a long discussion the Apple rep said that since this was a known problem he would refer me to a "senior advisor". After an hour of waiting I was told: "So we are actually unable to transfer you to a senior advisor via chat. We can check callback availability for you."

So, I got a callback appointment. The guy called right on time. But, he really knew nothing new. He had me check a bunch of settings; all of which were correct. He wanted me to wipe and restore the watch, but it was a fresh factory install from yesterday, so what would be the point? Finally, he told me that to proceed I would have to calibrate the watch GPS by taking a 20 minute walk. He said he would stay on the line while I finished the 20 minute calibration walk. I declined and he sent me a link to the not-very-recent Apple support document on this issue:

If you're missing Workout GPS routes....

I reminded him that I have already wiped and restored the iPhone and that the watch is brand new, so what would be the point of doing all that again? He agreed.

As we left it, I'm to complete the 20 minute calibration walk and get back to Apple if that doesn't fix the GPS routes problem. I'm not optimistic.

As an aside, I used the fabulous Apple Watch GPS Tracks app to track a bike ride later in the morning. It worked fine, saved the track to the phone and updated the Apple Health Fitness data. I guess this proves that GPS is working fine on the watch.

I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any ideas?

 

[NME42]

Heard that iOS 14.2 beta 4 solves the issue. Let's hope it is out soon.

 

[ponytrekker]

The following will be long and boring:

Well, it's been an eventful few weeks. Just before I left on my extended travels I ordered an Apple Watch 6.

While I was on a dive boat in the Gulf of Siam (before the Watch 6 was delivered), my Watch 2 gave up. It wouldn't boot. It was totally unresponsive. On the charger it got incredibly hot.

I was home for a day or two. I unpaired the broken Watch 2, wiped my iPhone Xr and restored it from an iMazing backup.

The day the Watch 6 was delivered to my home in Korat I was in Bangkok on the way to Cha Am and without a working Apple Watch. Poor me.

I finally got home yesterday and set up the new Apple Watch 6. It went fine.

This morning I did a cycling workout with the new Apple Watch 6.

Sadly, no GPS data was saved. There is no route map.

So, even wiping and restoring the iPhone and buying a brand new watch did not solve the GPS problem.

I got on iMessage with Apple. After a long discussion the Apple rep said that since this was a known problem he would refer me to a "senior advisor". After an hour of waiting I was told: "So we are actually unable to transfer you to a senior advisor via chat. We can check callback availability for you."

So, I got a callback appointment. The guy called right on time. But, he really knew nothing new. He had me check a bunch of settings; all of which were correct. He wanted me to wipe and restore the watch, but it was a fresh factory install from yesterday, so what would be the point? Finally, he told me that to proceed I would have to calibrate the watch GPS by taking a 20 minute walk. He said he would stay on the line while I finished the 20 minute calibration walk. I declined and he sent me a link to the not-very-recent Apple support document on this issue:

If you're missing Workout GPS routes....

I reminded him that I have already wiped and restored the iPhone and that the watch is brand new, so what would be the point of doing all that again? He agreed.

As we left it, I'm to complete the 20 minute calibration walk and get back to Apple if that doesn't fix the GPS routes problem. I'm not optimistic.

As an aside, I used the fabulous Apple Watch GPS Tracks app to track a bike ride later in the morning. It worked fine, saved the track to the phone and updated the Apple Health Fitness data. I guess this proves that GPS is working fine on the watch.

I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any ideas?

Strava on the Apple Watch (though the HR will be VERY unreliable) or get a Garmin.

 

[matthewadams]

As an aside, I used the fabulous Apple Watch GPS Tracks app to track a bike ride later in the morning. It worked fine, saved the track to the phone and updated the Apple Health Fitness data. I guess this proves that GPS is working fine on the watch.

I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any ideas?

So, when you use the GPS Tracks App then you can also see the route in Fitness?
In that particular case I have some good news: This is not the bug everyone else is having and your HealthKit data is most likely fine.

Did you go to Settings - Privacy - Location Services on your phone and check whether this is enabled for the Workout App?
I vaguely recall that there can be incidences where even the App and this particular setting are out of sync after an update, resulting in no GPS info when you use the Apple Workout app. A related issue could be this one.

 

[Buadhai]

So, when you use the GPS Tracks App then you can also see the route in Fitness?

No, I cannot. But, I don't much care about seeing the route in Fitness. I want to be able to view the route as a GPX file. When my watch was actually recording GPS data, I used the HealthFit app to automatically upload a GPX file for each workout to iCloud. GPS Tracks can also upload to iCloud, but you have to do it manually.

--

Update: I decided to try again with Apple's support document: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865

This time I restored my iPhone from an iCloud backup rather than an iMazing local backup. It seems to have worked. As expected it was a real PITA. As I type, the process is ongoing as the iPhone is still downloading Activity data from iCloud. So far, it's five hours since I started, and counting. This includes setting up the Wallet, again. Calibrating the watch GPS with a 20 minute walk. ("Essential" said the Apple Senior Support Specialist.) Changing Activity to metric. Re-enabling Face ID in apps that use it. Waiting for apps to download so I could recreate my watch faces, etc.

Here's today's 20 minute calibration workout as exported by HealthFit:

HealthFit will also export fit files.

 

[iDron]

Instead of trying the crappy GPS Tracks App or Strava on Apple Watch, try WorkOutDoors.

There is an extensive thread here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/workoutdoors-new-workout-features.2134687/ about new features and support. The developer is also active there and quite helpful!

It brings the Apple Watch very very close to Garmin Watches from my experience. It costs a few bucks, but has many features (including syncing to Apples Fitness App, direct Strava export, import routes as trail, show a map, intervals etc).

I have no connection with the developer, it's just a great software...

 

[matthewadams]

Update: I decided to try again with Apple's support document: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865

This time I restored my iPhone from an iCloud backup rather than an iMazing local backup.

Ah, right, sadly this is a must. I also tried locally before and that did not work for me either.

 

[Buadhai]

Ah, right, sadly this is a must. I also tried locally before and that did not work for me either.

I wonder why that's the case?

If you have insufficient icloud storage, use your computer for the backup/restore process.

Based on deeddawg's post I decided to use the computer backup, not because I have insufficient iCloud storage but because I thought both the backup and restore would be faster with local storage. They were, but they didn't work.

The iCloud restore worked, but it really took a long time.

 

[matthewadams]

I wonder why that's the case?

My assumption: The HealthKit Database is corrupted, and restoring it locally just restores the same database you've backed up, whereas in the cloud, Apple can run some script/magic on it and fix the corruption remotely.

 

[Buadhai]

My assumption: The HealthKit Database is corrupted, and restoring it locally just restores the same database you've backed up, whereas in the cloud, Apple can run some script/magic on it and fix the corruption remotely.

Good thinking. I wonder if they stripped the GPS data to remove whatever corruption was three.

 

[deeddawg]

Based on deeddawg's post I decided to use the computer backup, not because I have insufficient iCloud storage but because I thought both the backup and restore would be faster with local storage. They were, but they didn't work.

Odd. Although it's been a while since I've done a computer-based backup/restore, it's always worked fine for me in the past. Sorry it didn't work for you - it's supposed to work.

Edit - I may have misunderstood - are you saying the backup/restore didn't work, or didn't fix the issue?

As I haven't experienced this issue I don't have direct experience in fixing it.

 

[deeddawg]

My assumption: The HealthKit Database is corrupted, and restoring it locally just restores the same database you've backed up, whereas in the cloud, Apple can run some script/magic on it and fix the corruption remotely.

Definitely some sort of corruption - since it seems to impact some folks and not impact others, and even the impacts are apparently sometimes different.

If the healthkit data is stored in a different format on iCloud (for lack of a better term), then the retranslation back to the phone during restore might well be what's correcting it.

We shall see if a future iOS version fixes the in-place issue for those who choose not to do a backup/restore.

 

[Buadhai]

The backup and restore worked as it should. It just didn’t fix the issue.

Based on a quick look at iMazing, it seems the health data is stored as an SQLite database. Not that this sheds any light on the issue.

 

[Buadhai]

I still have one lingering problem. In the Health app I've set units to metric:

In the Health app, workout units are displayed in metric:

But in the Fitness app, distances are shown in miles:

How do I get the Fitness app to display in metric?

I have the iPhone region set to the US, as I have always done. Before the wipe and reset the Fitness app displayed workout units in metric. But, now it's miles. Grrrrr.

 

[deeddawg]

I still have one lingering problem. In the Health app I've set units to metric:

View attachment 975372

In the Health app, workout units are displayed in metric:

View attachment 975373

But in the Fitness app, distances are shown in miles:

View attachment 975375

How do I get the Fitness app to display in metric?

I have the iPhone region set to the US, as I have always done. Before the wipe and reset the Fitness app displayed workout units in metric. But, now it's miles. Grrrrr.

What's showing in the phone Watch app under Workout->UnitsOfMeasure?

 

[Buadhai]

What's showing in the phone Watch app under Workout->UnitsOfMeasure?

Meters and Kilometers.

The watch displays in metric. It's just the phone Fitness app that's in miles.

Edit: I just checked and the Apple Maps app displays in Kilometers.