I am having this issue as well. My September challenge also stopped updating on my wathc (need 28,700 active calories this month and it has been stuck on 20,555 since the upgrade). Ugh.
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Where Did Activity Challenges Go in wOS 6?
- Thread starter newellj
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I am having this issue as well. My September challenge also stopped updating on my wathc (need 28,700 active calories this month and it has been stuck on 20,555 since the upgrade). Ugh.
Here’s an article from a year ago: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/577353/ios-12-removes-activity-badges/amp/ and it says how Apple is aware of this issue and that they’re working on a fix but they clearly didn’t fix it for the affected users in iOS 12 such as myself that lost countless limited edition award badges and never got them back but they also didn’t fix this bug in iOS 13 which made me lose even MORE badges now during the upgrade process from my XS to my new iPhone 11 Pro, it’s almost as if why even bother complete these achievements?
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It’s weird because all my old achievements appear on my Apple Watch but not on my phone 
I know, it’s absurdIt’s weird because all my old achievements appear on my Apple Watch but not on my phone
The same thing has happened to me. I only upgraded my iPhone on day 1. Not the watch and my monthly awards are still not back.
Moved from XS Max to Pro Max yesterday Seem to have lost some monthly challenges and some special badges but they are all showing on my watch. Similar thing happened last year with XS and the year before with X.
Frustrating and have considered restoring again but decided to wait as I have an esim from T-Mobile and I’m in Canada and don’t want to mess that up.
I’m thinking if there on the watch they will eventually show up on the phone.
Frustrating and have considered restoring again but decided to wait as I have an esim from T-Mobile and I’m in Canada and don’t want to mess that up.
I’m thinking if there on the watch they will eventually show up on the phone.
These of you that continue “hoping” your achievements will magically come back are being hopeful for no reason, you will NOT get your achievements show up back on the iPhone if this is the same bug that plagued us 2 years ago as Apple is simply unaware of this issue (Contrary to the link I posted above) and this issue isn’t new. I lost 2 years worth of Special Limited Edition achievements when I upgraded to the iPhone X 2 years ago and I never got them back. Now when I upgraded to the 11 Pro I lost even more additional special edition challenges that i completed in 2019 (The very few that I managed to complete within this time such as the 2019 national park one and the Yoga day one and one or two others) and quite frankly I highly doubt that I’ll get any of them back either. I have restored from an encrypted iTunes backup that should contain all this health and award data including all of my achievements but as described in detail in my previous posts, the Awards badges especially for the limited edition challenges do not transfer over. The previously acquired achievements that some of you see on the watch itself right now will eventually vanish altogether (even though they currently show on the watch and not in the activity app on the iPhone) and I had a big thread about this issue when it first arose (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/where-are-my-limited-edition-achievements-at-apple.2151001/)
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Well all my limited edition achievements came back this afternoon (now have all 18 and this morning I only had 6) and 3 more monthly challenges have appeared, October 2017 to September 2018 is now complete - so something is happening in the background on my phone. So here is hoping the rest of the monthly challenges appear soon. October 2018 to September 2019.
Weird, I just got my September 2019 challenge notification on my watch. My watch shows my many monthly challenge achievements over the last 2 years.
Phone iOS 13.1 still shows 3 from 2018 total. :/
Phone iOS 13.1 still shows 3 from 2018 total. :/
Checking in on my September challenge progress yesterday I discovered this issue.
On Friday I switched from my XS to a new 11 Pro, transition being the least smooth iPhone upgrade ever; the 11Pro was delivered with iOS 13 and refused to update to 13.1 which was required to restore from the XS iCloud backup. It also refused to automatically pair with the watch, etc.
Anyway, eventually everything seemed to be working and I re-paired my AW S5 with the 11 Pro. All of my perfect month and special challenge badges (new year's, women's day etc) are there.. BUT I only have my monthly challenge badges until August 2018. There are 11 badges missing. I don't even have a September challenge on my new phone/watch.
Thing is, I still have my XS (didn't reset it) plus my AW s4 paired with the XS. Everything is still there on the XS.
I have restarted all devices several times which doesn't seem to be doing any difference at all.
The way the activity app syncs is somewhat of a mystery and I think it might be the key to these kind of issues. It takes the data from the Health app, crunches the numbers and displays on the watch, which then syncs to the Activity app on the phone. Without the watch, the activity app on the phone does not update. Also, the health data does not seem to have a bidirectional iCloud sync as my two phones show different data. I do wonder where the challenges "live", though.
So what might have happened to me is that I synced my new AW to my new phone before all Health data was restored. This might mean I might be able to use my AW4 to regain my badges. Just not sure how. Maybe re-pairing the AW4 with the 11Pro, restoring from a backup from before the badges disappeared.
Edit: Just realized my september challenge is not on the XS either as it thinks I have failed it (fill all the rings for at least 28 days) since I haven't used any watch paired with the XS since I got the 11Pro.
Update: I found the lack of bidirectional health data sync disturbing (sorry, couldn't resist) so I deactivated the health data iCloud sync on the XS, then reactivated it again. That made it update data for two days (27th + 28th) but not the 29th yet. This means my September challenge reappeared on the XS and just as I'm writing this I got the award for September on my AW S4.. twice. Uh. I also just realized the iMessage sync had still not been completed after three days. iCloud sync seem pretty sketchy to say the least.
No new badges on my AW S5 yet though.
Toggling the health data iCloud sync switch on the 11Pro and then the XS made it sync the 29th as well.
Now, it's just the issue of getting all my badges on the 11Pro. The data is there.
On Friday I switched from my XS to a new 11 Pro, transition being the least smooth iPhone upgrade ever; the 11Pro was delivered with iOS 13 and refused to update to 13.1 which was required to restore from the XS iCloud backup. It also refused to automatically pair with the watch, etc.
Anyway, eventually everything seemed to be working and I re-paired my AW S5 with the 11 Pro. All of my perfect month and special challenge badges (new year's, women's day etc) are there.. BUT I only have my monthly challenge badges until August 2018. There are 11 badges missing. I don't even have a September challenge on my new phone/watch.
Thing is, I still have my XS (didn't reset it) plus my AW s4 paired with the XS. Everything is still there on the XS.
I have restarted all devices several times which doesn't seem to be doing any difference at all.
The way the activity app syncs is somewhat of a mystery and I think it might be the key to these kind of issues. It takes the data from the Health app, crunches the numbers and displays on the watch, which then syncs to the Activity app on the phone. Without the watch, the activity app on the phone does not update. Also, the health data does not seem to have a bidirectional iCloud sync as my two phones show different data. I do wonder where the challenges "live", though.
So what might have happened to me is that I synced my new AW to my new phone before all Health data was restored. This might mean I might be able to use my AW4 to regain my badges. Just not sure how. Maybe re-pairing the AW4 with the 11Pro, restoring from a backup from before the badges disappeared.
Edit: Just realized my september challenge is not on the XS either as it thinks I have failed it (fill all the rings for at least 28 days) since I haven't used any watch paired with the XS since I got the 11Pro.
Update: I found the lack of bidirectional health data sync disturbing (sorry, couldn't resist) so I deactivated the health data iCloud sync on the XS, then reactivated it again. That made it update data for two days (27th + 28th) but not the 29th yet. This means my September challenge reappeared on the XS and just as I'm writing this I got the award for September on my AW S4.. twice. Uh. I also just realized the iMessage sync had still not been completed after three days. iCloud sync seem pretty sketchy to say the least.
No new badges on my AW S5 yet though.
Toggling the health data iCloud sync switch on the 11Pro and then the XS made it sync the 29th as well.
Now, it's just the issue of getting all my badges on the 11Pro. The data is there.
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Update:
The more I look at this, the more confused I get. The August 2018 badge (latest one earned on the new phone) has different goals:
On the XS: 42 exercises/trainings
On the 11 Pro: 47 exercises/trainings
Unsure of the English wording as my phone is in Swedish.
The more I look at this, the more confused I get. The August 2018 badge (latest one earned on the new phone) has different goals:
On the XS: 42 exercises/trainings
On the 11 Pro: 47 exercises/trainings
Unsure of the English wording as my phone is in Swedish.
Seconds.
I tried using my second Apple Watch to get the badges back by selecting "finish pairing" on the 11 Pro, which did not work.
So I figured I'd finish September, and today on October 1st I'd do another full backup of my XS and restore to the 11 Pro if the badges hadn't come back.
This morning I had a notification on my watch saying "Your total distance in the Activity app last month was 0.0 km. Amazing!". Well, ok.. It also said my October challenge is to walk or run a distance of 278.6 km, which I will beat without blinking since I have dogs and run at least a few times a week. It's only 8.9 km (5.5 miles) a day.
Then I checked on my XS. Interestingly enough I had a challenge there too: Burn 19,500 calories, which is 629 kcal a day. A significantly harder challenge for me, especially this month since I won't be able to exercise as much. This is probably because my XS already has my history and is basing a "hard but achievable" challenge on this. My 11 Pro also of course has the history but for some reason didn't use it to create the challenge. Hence "Your total distance was 0.0 km".
This meant my backup/reset strategy would push me into the much harder calorie challenge.
Then I checked the badges on the Pro. All of them are back!
This might give a few more hints on how the challenges work. It seems they are generated locally on the phone, otherwise I would have gotten the same challenge on both devices. They also seem to aggregate data over time instead of doing a one-time history check when calculating the goal. This actually surprises me.
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All of my missing Monthly Challenges magically reappeared just after midnight tonight. I guess the generation of the new month's challenge somehow triggered a refresh of the list.
My friend, who had the same problem, also got his back. How about you guys?
My friend, who had the same problem, also got his back. How about you guys?
Wife and I had all of ours return
. I got latest iOS and watch os. My wife didn’t. So had to be new month that did it.
None of my achievements came back whatsoever, I think that some of you that claim your achievements came back are facing some iCloud sync issue while the issue of upgrading to a brand new phone and restoring from a backup such as the iPhone 11 pro and losing all recently acquired achievements from the past year is a separate issue altogether
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All of my monthly challenges and achievements showed up on my new 11 after midnight. Both on mine as well as my wife’s phone. Unsure if it was the iOS and watchOS updates.
My old phone had all my data, just no badges. After midnight the old phone generated a “beat your move goal by 200% 3 times” as the October goal. The new phone generated a “run/walk 179 miles” challenge.
Over the last several days what I found was that if I did an iCloud backup on the 11, then hit iCloud backup on the 6s, the 6s would first quickly restore my activity data before it did a backup.
I don’t know what is going to happen if I keep my 6s around because I’m going to end up hitting both monthly challenge goals. Which one am I going to get?!
My old phone had all my data, just no badges. After midnight the old phone generated a “beat your move goal by 200% 3 times” as the October goal. The new phone generated a “run/walk 179 miles” challenge.
Over the last several days what I found was that if I did an iCloud backup on the 11, then hit iCloud backup on the 6s, the 6s would first quickly restore my activity data before it did a backup.
I don’t know what is going to happen if I keep my 6s around because I’m going to end up hitting both monthly challenge goals. Which one am I going to get?!
That's your "perfect month" award. You will achieve it by filling the activity (red) ring every day of the month and then the badge will turn gold. It's under the "complete your rings" section.
The monthly challenge badge looks exactly the same when not completed but will turn silver upon completion. It is also a more specific challenge, like walking/running a distance, completing a number of workouts, getting 200% move goal for a number of days etc. This one is under the "Monthly challenge" section, above the "complete your rings" but below the "special challenges" section.