Voice command not ending workout on Apple Watch

Hi MPUers. Hope everyone is going as well as can be expected.

I have a curious but by no means critical issue. Every evening when my wife and I walk the dogs (our rare outside exercise), I happily raise my wrist and tell my Series 5 Nike Apple Watch “Start an outdoor walk activity”. Everything works fine and the workout begins as expected.

About 30 minutes later when we arrive home, I again raise my wrist and say “End workout”. Siri politely replies “Good job. Don’t forget to hydrate”. Sounds like the workout had ended, yes? No. I press the Digital Crown to go back to the watch face and the workout continues. I have left it for as long as five minutes, until the other ‘Pause/End?’ prompt feature kicks in.

Just wondering if anyone has seen similar behaviour?

Thanks and stay well.

Long story short: I do not use Siri with my Apple Watch very often. Why?

  1. I never got the Raise to Speak feature working reliably. It happened too often that the Watch did not notice that I was using Raise to Speak (might be my mistake, but I do not care if it was my mistake…).

  2. It takes too much time until Siri has processed what I want “her” to do.

  3. I do not like to talk to Siri in noisy surroundings and sometimes it feels awkward.

  4. If I am working out “in the woods”, there is a good chance that Siri is not able to connect to Apple’s servers. And then I get those dreaded “I have a problem” messages. I am flabbergasted that Apple is still not able to process even the easiest commands without making a connection to the internet. Easy stuff like “start X” or “stop Z” really should be processed locally.

I love using Siri at home in combination with my HomePods. But with the Watch, I prefer using its screen.

When I want to start a workout, I swipe to my Workout watchface (one swipe to the right), if I am not already using that watchface. Then I use the Workout complication to start the workout. It works 100% and it works reliably and fast. And it also works when my dog is going crazy barking its lungs out because it is happy that we start “our” workout. The same is true for ending the workout.

Starting or ending workouts with Siri feels more like a gimmick than a useful feature. I did feel differently when I first saw those nice Raise to Speak videos when the feature was introduced, but after using it again and again, I do not see the benefit any longer. It is not reliable enough for me and it feels slow in comparison to using the on-screen GUI.

I didn’t even know you could do that. I could really use that feature because my fingers are often too sweaty for effective Watch tapping when I’m finished working out.

I’ll try to remember to try it during my workout tonight and let you know how it works for me.

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Thanks for that. Interested to hear how you go. It’s great when I have the dog on a lead in my right hand to just raise my left wrist and start the workout. Just weird that it doesn’t end properly, despite hearing and understanding the command.

Sorry to hear your bad experiences. It’s been rock solid for me to be honest. Timers, reminders, text messages, HomeKit commands to adjust lights etc. I’d go so far as to say 9 times out of 10 it gets me first time. I do make an effort to speak at a good volume though. As for what people think in public, I guess by the time you get to my age you really don’t care about that anymore haha. Anyone who doesn’t like it can get off my lawn :wink:

It worked for me on both ends of the workout. But I have my Watch set to keep the Workout app showing instead of the normal watch face all during a workout. (At least I think this is a setting. I can’t find it now.) So when I told Siri to end the workout, I got that same hydration message, and then I saw the workout app stop. Even if the workout had continued working after that hydration I message, I would have seen that workout clock continue to run and I would have known instantly that the command was ignored.

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That’s good to hear, thanks. I will try things a little differently tonight with the workout app and see if I have any better luck.

Cheers!