I wish to display the number of steps I take easily on my iPhone (Widget) and Watch (complication)
Apple Health doesn’t seem to have a way to do this natively, unless I’m missing something.
I looked at Pedometer++ but the step counts vary wildly from the Health App, whether I merge the Watch data or not.
Duffy allows me to look at the Health Step count on my iPhone and is almost perfect, but no widgets. Bizarrely though there is a complication for the watch.
There are other options which require subscriptions. I don’t wish to pickup per month subscriptions for this, or those which are very annual and expensive. I appreciate the value of subscriptions, but I’m looking for an app which will simply display the actual step count from Health in a widget and I’m amazed there’s not something reasonably priced available.
Personally I find the Health App’s display of step count (on my iPhone, Watch, and iPad) to be adequate for my needs. On the Summary page I get this Tufte-esque Sparkline display for my post-lunch walk today
Comparison over the last few weeks; I have been nursing a knackered knee since at least 18 December 2023 and only now able to engaging in “walk hardening”.
I have a criticism in that the data points are not aggregated corresponding to the “Outdoor Exercise” setting on my Apple Watch. For that I am expecting to pull the entire export.zip data into R and produce my own aggregate results.
Thanks, that’s what I’m looking for though. I know I can get to it through the fitness app, but it’s a long way round instead of just having something glanceable.
If you remember when Apple announced the Watch, they played down the importance of 10,000 steps and made a big deal about the Green ring and the fact that it adapts over time dependent on your fitness level. I wonder if it’s something to do with that?
“The 10,000 steps a day target seems to have come about from a trade name pedometer sold in 1965 by Yamasa Clock in Japan,” Bottoms said. “The device was called “Manpo-kei,” which translates to ‘10,000 steps meter.’ This was a marketing tool for the device and has seemed to have stuck across the world as the daily step target.”
For those talking about exercise sensibly, it was always sold as a way to get people moving who weren’t.
I have this problem when I go out walking with my Wife and Daughters, they saunter along, and it does absolutely nothing for me, I need to stretch my stride and get a sweat on.
There has been discussion recently in the press about the “optimal” number of steps to take each day. One such piece is this from The Guardian in the UK
It too mentions the arbitrary 10,000 objective but with this comment:
Experts found the lowest risk of early death was among people who took 9,000 to 10,500 steps a day.
so while the 10,000 was originally a marketing phrase it does have subsequent scientific backing. Other sources suggested that there is no physical gain from walking more than 10,000 steps/day other than the potential for green therapy is the walk is by rivers, through woods, or other non-built-up areas.
For me it isn’t instant readout of number of steps I want but timed information. How long have I been on my outdoor walk and what is my pace?
The first action on my daily walk is to touch the exercise complication on my watch and start the outdoor walk option. (Followed by Control Centre and putting the watch into swimming mode to prevent false touches from clothing causing the exercise to pause.) As I walk I raise the watch to look at the duration and the pace.
For the moment the pace is only for information but as my knee rehabilitation increases the aim is to get it down from over 20’/mile to 19’/mi or lower as this will improve the Cardio Fitness metric, which currently has me in the “below average” range. I want that up to, at least, the average. Really would like it significantly above that level.
Step count is something for end of day examination. That my movement around the house and tofrm my office also acrues the step counts is incidental but still useful.
Otherwise all the collected data is for longitudanal analysis to check improvements. Annoyingly that analysis has to be performed outside of the Watch/iOS/iPadOS environment by exporting all collected data and using other tools (R for example) to collate and present everything. How such data can be displayed is discussed in the Quantified Self forums at
albeit that those forums are less active than here but have the benefit of also being Discourse based so no new user interface to master.
During CoVid-19 lockdown I was averaging 15K and thata over varied terrain including a 45º hill at roughly the halfway point on my walk. My goal is to get back to that by late Autumn; currently recovering from a twisted knee.
