Health App walking distance wildly underreported

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Level 1

11 points

Health App walking distance wildly underreported

I've seen people complaining that the walking and running distance recorded by the Health app may be 10-15% off. I wish my iPhone was that accurate!

I started with an iPhone 6. If I walked a hiking trail of 4km, the Health app would typically record about 1.5km. It bears no resemblance to reality. The step counter appears reasonable, but the distance is always far short of what I know I have walked. I gave up using the health app for distances.

Now I've just got an iPhone 13. It's step count seems somewhere near the ballpark, maybe a bit short. It says I have a stride of 42cm. I walked a route of about 3.6km, and it reported less than 1km!!

Two different iPhones with different hardware, iOS versions and software versions, but the same problem. How do I fix it?

Posted on Oct 6, 2021 10:22 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eric--F

Community Specialist

Oct 7, 2021 4:31 PM in response to Greymere

Hey there, Greymere.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. It’s understandable that you’d want your steps to record accurately.

For help with this issue, please Contact Apple Support.

Best wishes.

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Answer 2

Greymere Author

Level 1

11 points

Oct 8, 2021 4:46 PM in response to Eric--F

Contacted Apple Support as suggested. They ran through the settings with me, and I eventually discovered I had missed a digit when entering my height way back when setting up my iPhone 6. Apparently it though I was just over 2' tall!

Corrected, and tested it on a walk today, and it was almost spot on!

If you're having problems with accuracy, check your body measurements.

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Health App walking distance wildly underreported

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