The Health app on iPhone serves as a central hub for managing various aspects of your health. In addition to keeping track of your mental health, medications, and sleep patterns, it also offers a convenient way to count the number of steps you take in a day using your iPhone’s built-in sensors.
While this feature seems useful, it’s quite finicky, and there’s a chance that you may run into issues like the Health app not tracking steps. Frustrated with the same? Don’t be. The solutions below should help you fix it!
1. Ensure Fitness Tracking is enabled
Before you can track your steps using the Health app on iPhone, you must allow the app to access your Fitness tracking data. If you have accidentally disabled this permission, the Health app won’t be able to count your steps even with an Apple Watch. Here’s how to verify if this permission is enabled.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Go to Privacy & Security → Motion & Fitness.
- Toggle on Fitness Tracking and Health.
2. Ensure Motion Calibration is enabled
The Health app uses your iPhone’s motion sensors, namely, accelerometer and gyroscope, to precisely measure the number of steps you take and the distance you travel.
However, if you’ve turned off Motion Calibration on your iPhone, the Health app won’t be able to track your steps. So, check if it is toggled on.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap Privacy & Security → Location Services → System Services.
- Toggle on Motion Calibration & Distance.
3. Disable Low Power Mode
Using Low Power Mode can come in handy if you need to preserve your iPhone’s battery. However, this mode stops several critical services that are necessary for your iPhone’s built-in step counter to function correctly. Hence, consider disabling it.
- Go to Settings → Battery.
- Toggle off Low Power Mode.
4. Remove conflicting fitness apps
Sometimes, having multiple fitness apps installed on your iPhone can result in conflicts that can prevent the Health app from tracking your steps. If you think this is what’s happening on your iPhone, you will need to find the app that’s causing the issues and uninstall it as detailed in these steps.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Go to Privacy & Security → Motion & Fitness.
- Check if there are other apps that can access the Fitness tracking data.
- Navigate to the Home Screen → Tap and hold the app’s icon.
- Then, tap Remove App → Delete App → Delete.
5. Check for iOS updates
Many times, pesky glitches or bugs within iOS can also prevent some pretty useful features from working correctly. If you think that’s the case with your iPhone, follow the steps given below to check if Apple has issued a software update with new bug fixes.
- Go to Settings → General → Software Update.
- Tap Download and Install if an update is available.
6. Force restart your iPhone
If the previous solutions didn’t work, hard rebooting your iPhone should help you fix software glitches and bugs that might prevent your iPhone’s built-in pedometer from working as expected.
But, if you’re unsure about how you can do that, check out this guide on how to hard reboot any iPhone or iPad.
7. Reinstall the Health app
Sometimes bugs or glitches within the Health app can also prevent the step counter from working on your iPhone. If you suspect this is what’s causing the issue, your best solution will be to reinstall the Health app.
- Tap and hold the Health app’s icon.
- Then, tap Remove App → Delete App → Delete.
- Open the App Store → Go to the Search tab → Search for Health app.
- Tap the blue cloud icon beside the icon to get the Health app.
8. Reset All Settings
If most solutions fail, you should try resetting all settings on your iPhone to see if that helps you fix the issue. This action will restore all settings to their default values while leaving your data untouched. Here’s how to do this:
- Go to Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone.
- Tap Reset → Reset All Settings.
- Enter your iPhone’s Passcode.
- Tap Reset All Settings again to complete the process.
9. Perform a factory reset
If none of the solutions helped resolve the issue, your best bet would be to perform a factory reset on your iPhone. This will delete all the user data and restore the iPhone to its default settings so you can start from scratch.
- Go to Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone.
- Choose Erase All Content and Settings.
- Tap Continue → Type your iPhone’s Passcode.
- Follow the on-screen instructions once the iCloud backup completes.
Contact Apple Support
If you still aren’t able to get the step counter going, your iPhone’s motion sensors might be damaged. In such cases, it’s recommended to contact Apple Support and see if they can schedule a Genius Bar appointment at the nearest Apple Store, where you can get your iPhone diagnosed or fixed.
Yes, you can track your steps using the Health app on your iPhone, even without an Apple Watch. The Health app relies on your iPhone’s built-in accelerometer and gyroscope to count your steps accurately.
The Health app’s step-tracking feature can provide reasonably accurate results. However, as it relies on motion sensors in your iPhone, even factors like its carrying position and your walking style can affect the accuracy.
Yes, just like any other metric in the Health app, you can also enter the step count manually to keep your records up to date and derive insights from it.
Yes, there are several alternative apps available on the App Store that can track your steps. Some popular options include Fitbit, Google Fit, and Stepz.
Wrapping up…
It can be very frustrating to see the Health app fail you, especially if you depend on it to track your daily step count and stay fit. However, thanks to the solutions listed in this guide, you should be able to fix the issue and use the Health app on the iPhone to track your steps again without any hitches. If you found this guide helpful, let us know which solution fixed the issue.
Also read:
- How to use Fitness app on iPhone
- How to Transfer Health Data to New iPhone or Apple Watch
- Fitness app not working on iPhone? 10 Ways to fix it!
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