How Does Apple Health App Measure Distance

Whether you've just gotten an Apple Watch or have had one for a while and just haven't tracked your steps closely before, it's easy to do. Follow along for how to see steps on Apple Watch including distance, flights climbed, along with daily, monthly, and yearly trends. We'll also look at how to make custom watch complications to track steps right on Apple Watch faces.

Once you've got your Apple Watch paired with your iPhone and it's up and running, it will automatically track steps whenever you're wearing it.

While you can't set goals for step count specifically, you can adjust your Move goal. But even without goals for step progress, it's easy to quickly view.

How to change your Apple Watch move, exercise, and stand goals with watchOS 7

In the default Activity app on Apple Watch, you can see steps, distance, and flights climbed. And the Fitness app on iPhone shows your daily, monthly, and yearly distance trends in addition to all the data you can see on Apple Watch.

How to track steps on Apple Watch

Open the Activity app on Apple Watch
Swipe down or scroll down with the Digital Crown
Your daily steps, distance, and flights climbed will appear at the bottom
You can also swipe down further and tap Weekly Summary for more data
To see steps and related Activity data for another day, you'll need to use the Fitness app on iPhone (walkthrough below)

How to see steps Apple Watch, distance, flights, more

And if you prefer to see your step count right on your Apple Watch face, check out our walkthrough on that process:

Hands-on: Making custom Apple Watch health complications with 'Complication Lab'

How to track Apple Watch steps on iPhone

Open the Fitness app (called Activity app in iOS 14.1 and earlier)
Choose the Summary tab (Trends tab in iOS 14.1 and earlier)
Swipe down to see your Trends with Distance walked/run and more
Tap Show More next to Trends to see more data

Here's how it looks in iOS 14.2 and later:

How to see steps Apple Watch, trends, more

Here's how the process looks in iOS 14.1 and earlier:

How to see steps Apple Watch, distance, flights, walkthrough

As shown above, Trends show you if your Move, Exercise, and Distance activity is on the upswing or downswing. Tap one of them to see daily, monthly, and yearly data.

Keep in mind your data between Apple Watch and iPhone won't always been exactly in sync. But after a few minutes of fresh activity, your iPhone should match up with your watch.

The one caveat will be if you take your Apple Watch off and have your iPhone on you and do a decent amount of walking or running. In that case, the Health app on iPhone will show more steps than in the Activity app that's pulling from Apple Watch data.