If you're looking to get the most of your Apple Watch fitness tracking features, there's a way to calibrate it for step length and other factors. Here's how to do it.
The Apple Watch is a fantastic tool for tracking and improving your health. However, in order to do its job correctly, your Apple Watch needs to have the proper permissions and be appropriately calibrated.
The first step is ensuring that the Apple Watch has permission to track your location for motion calibration and distance purposes.
How to enable Motion Calibration & Distance for Apple Watch
- On your iPhone, open Settings
- Tap Privacy
- Tap Location Services
- Make sure Location Services is toggled on
- Scroll down, tap System Services
- Toggle on Motion Calibration & Distance
Once you have done the above steps, you can work on calibrating your Apple Watch. The Apple Watch automatically calibrates any time you do 20 minutes of a specific activity, such as walking or running outdoors. So one of the easiest and most consistent ways to calibrate your Apple Watch is with a quick 20-minute Outdoor Walk workout.
How to calibrate your Apple Watch for workout accuracy
- Wear your Apple Watch outside in a flat, open area
- Open the Workout app
- Tap Outdoor Walk
- Walk at a normal pace for 20 minutes
If you do not have time to complete a 20-minute workout, you may complete it over multiple sessions. However, you should try to keep your pace as consistent as possible — do not jog through one portion of the 20-minute workout and walk through another.
It is important that you keep your health data up to date, as your Apple Watch will use the data to calculate your fitness levels, caloric burn, stride distance, and more. You can check to see that your data is accurate by doing the following:
How to view your Health Details on your Apple Watch
- On your iPhone: Open the Watch app
- Scroll down and tap Health
- Tap Health Details
- Review your details to make sure they are correct
In the event that they are not, you can edit them by following the steps below.
How to update your health data on your iPhone
- On your iPhone: Open the Watch app
- Scroll down and tap Health
- Tap View My Health Data
- Tap Measurements
- Edit your data as needed
