Apple Watch Activity App Setup & Usage Tips

One of the most important applications available on your new wrist gadget is the Activity app. Apple’s in-house developers have tailored this health and fitness software for all of us that want to embrace a healthy lifestyle. With the help of Apple Watch’s built-in sensors, your daily movement is continuously tracked. All data is stored on your iPhone and smartwatch, thus allowing you to check your progress, whenever you seek for additional motivation or rewards.

The Activity app splits your motion in three different categories: Stand, Move and Exercise, providing ring-shaped graphics for all these groups. Obviously, your daily goals are to spend as less time sitting down as possible, increase your step count and perform a few fitness exercises to stay in shape. Whenever you engage in such a motion activity, your smartwatch tracks it correspondingly and displays your progress, by filling the Activity Rings.

Setting Up Activity on Apple Watch
The very first time you grab your wrist gadget and agree to track your movement, you have to set up the Activity application. The easiest way to do it is via glances. Swipe up from your watch face to open the application summary view. Now, swipe left or right until you reach the Activity glance. You’ll notice that tracking is disabled and you’re prompted to tap “Set Up the Activity App”. Do it and the following screens will unfold on your Watch’s display. Swipe left to browse them all.
Now, hit Get Started on the last screen of the presentation to provide your personal info that will calibrate measurements. Provide your Gender, Age, Weight, Height and pick your usual activity level. You can opt between light, moderate or heavy activity lifestyle. This helps your Watch determine your initial calorie burning goal.

How To Check Activity Status
Now, that you’ve set up movement tracking, go on and be active! Throughout the day you can manually check your progress or ask your smartwatch to update you, every now an then.
1. Watch Face Rings Indicator
The easiest way to manually check how much you managed to fill up your Activity Rings, is by adding the specific indicator to your watch face. It’s added the same way you activate the battery percentage indicator, via the watch face customization screen. Press firmly on the screen, while on the watch face view, tap Customize, swipe for the watch face module settings and tap on the area that you wish to have the Activity Rings displayed. Now, use the Digital Crown to scroll for the rings. Press the Digital Crown again to return to watch face.
2. Activity Glance
If you don’t have room to accustom your rings on the watch face, you can get rapid access via glances.
Swipe up to open the glances menu and now swipe left or right until you reach the Activity view. Here you’ll see all three rings displayed and partially or fully filled depending, on your day’s progress. If you tap the rings you’ll open the Activity app.
Now, you can swipe in every direction to browse between detailed tracking information and various graphs.
3. Stats on iPhone
Your motion progress is available on your iOS device too. The moment you set up the Activity app on your Watch an additional icon is created and added to your iPhone’s home screen. Tap it whenever you wish to access more detailed info about how you move.
Switch for the Calendar view and get the detailed history of your Activity, from day 1 until present! The Achievements view, displays your trophy showcase. Every time you fulfill goals rewards are awarded for your commitment.
4. Automatic Progress Updates
Allow your Apple Watch to prompt you with progress updates after a predefined time frame. Open, the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, go to My Watch and tap Activity. Open Progress Updates and choose between: None, Every 4, 6 or 8 hours.
From the Activity Setting on your iPhone you can also decide if you wish to receive Stand Reminders, Goal Completions, Achievements and Weekly Summary notifications. This way the smartwatch can alert you, if an hour has passed without standing up, if you already completed your motion goals for the day, what achievements or personal records you obtained and a sum up of your weekly progress.

Activity Rings Legend
To perfectly understand the movement tracking results here is the legend for each ring:
– Move (Red Ring): displays how many calories you’ve burned during the day. The ring overlaps sooner or later, depending on the calorie goal that you’ve set up for the day.
– Exercise (Green Ring): informs you about how many minutes of brisk activity you’ve managed. You need at least 30 minutes of fitness exercising per day at or above a brisk walk to grab an award.
– Stand (Light Blue Ring): records how many hours a day you stood up and moved at least 1 minute during those 60 minutes. Depending on your goals, you need to complete at least 12 hours to fill up the ring entirely.

How To Change Activity Goal
If you over other underestimated yourself while setting up the Activity app, there’s an easy way to fix it!
You can edit the Move goal, thus change your daily calorie burning target. This is done from the Apple Watch. Open Activity and press firmly on the screen, to call the Change Move Goal option, via Force Touch. Now, tap the “-“ or “+” to adjust how many calories you intend to burn.
Whenever you reach your calorie goal, your smartwatch will automatically set up new targets for you. Good luck and stay fit!