Quick Tip: Apple Watch Step Counter / Pedometer
Jon Sully
2 Minutes
How to setup your Apple Watch to tell you how many steps you've taken today.
As I’ve been reading Built to Move the last couple of weeks, I’m finally letting the message seep into my heart: walking every day is a big deal when it comes to longevity and long-term health. Since I’m already on a journey to find and stabilize some long-term health, it feels right that I should begin walking daily.
Of course, walking every day is one of those things that doesn’t really require a metric or log, but definitely benefits from one. And I already wear an Apple Watch instead of carrying a phone (though I probably need to write an update to that saga). Surely this incredible marvel of modern engineering on my wrist can act as a simple pedometer for me, right!?
Not so much. You’d think that you could simply put a step counter on your Apple Watch face. But nope! Apple really wants everyone to use and perceive all of their fitness metrics through their Rings™️©️✨. “Close your rings every day!!” 🙄. I don’t want your rings Apple. I definitely don’t want them on my watch face. And it’s annoying that rings don’t even map to steps, they’re significantly more vague and simply represent “activity”. 😮💨
What to do, then? I just want to keep track of how many steps I’ve taken today with zero extra bells or whistles. I’m still trying to keep my watch setup extremely simplified.
The answer lies in a combination of Shortcuts and Apple Watch Ultra’s big orange action button.
Unfortunately the only way to get any real access to your daily steps count on an Apple Watch is with a shortcut. In this case, a fairly simple shortcut, but still a shortcut nonetheless. Again, I wish something like this was built in instead, but at least we have something:
And the end-result of this shortcut is intuitive: I want to know how many steps I’ve walked today, so it tells me out loud that number. When I run the shortcut it simply reads out, “Eight thousand three hundred and sixty two” (for example).
This works great! Totally accomplishes the job.
The last piece is specific to an Apple Watch Ultra: using the action button. On a non-ultra watch you can assign this shortcut to a complication on your watch-face, but it requires two taps to actually run. One tap on the complication (which you’ll need to look at since it’s a small blip on a small screen), and another tap on “Run” since the complication just queues the shortcut for you. That’s a little too much friction for me.
On an Apple Watch Ultra the action button can be assigned to a shortcut and, when you press the button, it actually runs the shortcut. And, since it’s a physical button, you don’t need to look at it to press it! Far less friction.
Here’s to more walking! 🚶♂️