How many steps are in a flight of stairs on Apple Watch

If your goal is to walk 10K steps every day, you can use your Apple Watch to keep track of your progress. You can also add a few flights of stairs if you’re up for a nice challenge. Unfortunately, your Apple Watch may sometimes fail to count steps and stairs accurately. Let’s jump right in and explore how you can quickly troubleshoot this problem.

Contents

• Fix Apple Watch Counting Too Many Steps or Stairs
  • Ensure Your Watch Tracks Your Activities Properly
  • Leave Your Watch Uncharged for a Few Hours
  • Enable Location Services and Recalibrate Your Watch
  • Unpair Your Devices and Check for Updates
  • Conclusion

Fix Apple Watch Counting Too Many Steps or Stairs

Ensure Your Watch Tracks Your Activities Properly

Move the arm on which you’re wearing your watch naturally. When GPS data is not available or not relevant, Apple Watch uses arm motion to detect and track your workouts and activities, steps included. Ensure your Apple Watch fits your wrist right to allow the sensors to do their job properly.

Additionally, tweak your settings and set your Apple Watch as your primary source of data for steps and flights climbed. Open the Health app, go to Health Data, select Activity, and tap Steps/Flights Climbed. Select Data Sources & Access, hit the Edit button, and add your watch as the main data source for that activity.

Leave Your Watch Uncharged for a Few Hours

Keep using your Apple Watch until the battery dies. After that, wait one or two hours, charge it again, and check if your device counts steps and stairs accurately. Ideally, leave your watch uncharged overnight.

Enable Location Services and Recalibrate Your Watch

Make sure your Apple Watch sensors are calibrated properly. Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, go to My Watch and select Privacy. Tap Reset Fitness Calibration Data and restart your device.

Then, go to Settings, select Privacy and enable Location Services. Scroll down to System Services and turn on Motion Calibration & Distance.

Launch the Workout app on your Apple Watch, and walk at a normal pace or run for about 20 minutes to recalibrate the sensors.

For more information, see Calibrating your Apple Watch for improved Workout and Activity accuracy.

Unpair Your Devices and Check for Updates

If the issue persists, unpair your watch from your iPhone and check if this solution solves the problem.

1. Launch the Watch app
2. Go to My Watch
3. Select All Watches
4. Tap the Info button next to your watch
5. Tap Unpair Apple Watch

Restart your devices, and update them to the latest iOS and watchOS versions. Pair them again, and check if your watch counts steps and stairs accurately now.

Conclusion

If your Apple Watch counts too many steps or stairs, let the battery die and leave your watch uncharged overnight. Make sure your Apple Watch fits your wrist right. Additionally, enable Location Services and recalibrate your device. If the issue persists, unpair your watch from your iPhone and restart your devices.

Did you find other ways to troubleshoot this problem? Feel free to share your ideas in the comments section.

Is your Apple watch counting way too many steps or flight climbed? If so, you are not alone. Several of our readers tell us that their Apple Watches report inaccurate data, especially on the number of flights and stairs climbed–sometimes reporting 10 times what a person actually did!

The good news is that we have some tips that stop this problem for most people.

Contents

• 1 In a hurry?
• 2 Turn Water Lock on and off
• 3  
• 4 Turn on Motion Calibration & Distance for your Apple Watch
• 5 Charge your Apple Watch’s battery
• 6 Clean your Apple Watch
• 7 Reset your Fitness Calibration data
• 8 Unpair and re-pair your Apple Watch
• 9 Wrap up

In a hurry?

If time is short and you don’t need a thorough step-by-step, follow these quick instructions to get your Apple Watch counting your flights climbed correctly!

1. Turn on your Apple Watch’s water lock feature and then turn it off, just in case there is so trapped water causing the issue.
2. Toggle on (or off and on) motion calibration and distance settings in your paired iPhone’s location services settings.
3. Fully charge your Apple Watch.
4. Thoroughly clean your watch and its sensors so there isn’t any grease or trapped dirt blocking it.
5. Reset your watch’s fitness calibration data in the Watch app.
6. Unpair and re-pair your watch to the Watch app.

Related reading

• How to add the Fitness widget to track your Apple Watch activity on your iPhone
• Peloton Metrics missing on the Apple Watch Peloton app? Try these tips
• Apple Watch not capturing or tracking workout routes in Maps? Let’s fix it
• Apple Watch not reading heart rate? Here’s the fix.
• How to pair your Apple watch to a new iPhone without losing health data

Turn Water Lock on and off

There may be water or other liquid trapped in your watch and causing problems! So let’s use the water lock feature to expel anything that’s there.

1. Open your watch’s control center and tap the water drop icon to turn on its water lock.
   
   
2. When water engages, you see that water drop symbol at the top of your watch’s screen.
   
   
3. Rotate the watch’s Digital Crown to turn off its water lock. You’ll hear a series of beeps play–these force any remaining water out through your watch’s speakers.
4. Once complete, your watch should say it’s Unlocked!
   
   

Turn on Motion Calibration & Distance for your Apple Watch

1. On your paired iPhone, go to Settings
2. Choose Privacy > Location Services
3. Scroll down to System Services
   
   
4. Toggle on Motion Calibration & Distance
   
   
   1. If it’s already on, toggle it off, wait 20 seconds, and toggle it back on

Charge your Apple Watch’s battery

If your battery is low on charge, getting accurate fitness metrics is often impacted. So, before you start your day, make sure your watch battery is at 100%.

Alternatively, try discharging your Apple Watch and then charge it overnight (or for 12+ hours continuously)

Some readers discovered that if they let their Apple watch battery completely discharge and only then charged it fully (usually overnight) the next day, their Apple Watch recorded steps and flights of stairs accurately.

Clean your Apple Watch

Most Apple Watches (Series 3 and above) include a barometric sensor that helps calculate elevation and determine approximate altitude.

That barometric sensor records any change in your elevation.

Sometimes, it counts things as stairs and flights climbed, even if you actually did not climb any but changed your elevation while moving during activity.

For example, it won’t count elevation changes in an elevator (because you aren’t engaged in active motion.) But it will count elevation changes when going up and down a hill. And if a weather event like a hurricane passes through your town, you’ll likely see some interesting results in your flights of stairs climbed due to the sudden atmospheric and barometric pressure changes!

What’s important here is that your Apple Watch’s barometric sensor uses the watch’s air and speaker vents as a barometric vent to equalize the watch’s internal pressure.

Sometimes, lint, dirt, and other debris get trapped in these vents, preventing the barometric sensor from operating correctly.

So a good, old-fashioned cleaning often saves the day!

How to clean your Apple Watch, so it counts stairs and steps accurately

• Remove any bands that could be damaged by water (like fabric and leather bands)
• Swipe up Control Center and tap the Water Lock button
  • You want the water lock active for the entire cleaning process
    
    
• Use a dry microfiber or lint-free cloth and wipe your Apple Watch–make sure you cover all sides, the buttons, digital crown, and focus on those vents to ensure nothing is trapped in there
• Lightly dampen the cloth with fresh water, use a 70% isopropyl alcohol wipe, an electronics wipe, or Clorox disinfecting wipe, and clean your watch again
  • Alternatively, hold your Apple Watch under lightly running, warm freshwater for 10 to 15 seconds
  • Never use bleach, soaps, detergents, or other cleaning products to clean your watch
• After cleaning, take another dry cloth and wipe the watch to pick up any remaining moisture
• Turn off Water Lock and eject water by turning the Digital Crown on the side of your Apple Watch until the display says Unlocked
  
  
  • You hear a set of tones as your watch expels any remaining water
• Let your watch air dry in a shaded location or near a fan. Make sure the watch (and band, if applicable) is 100% dry before placing it back on

Reset your Fitness Calibration data

If nothing’s worked thus far, try resetting your watch’s fitness calibration data. We keep this option as our last because this action deletes all of your calibration data and history. It’s like starting fresh. 

But if your watch isn’t accurately capturing your activity data, then it is our recommendation to reset your watch’s calibration.

1. On your paired iPhone, open the Watch app
2. Select Privacy
3. Scroll down and tap Reset Fitness Calibration Data and confirm.
   
   
4. If possible, immediately go for a walk, hike, or run to recalibrate your watch.

Unpair and re-pair your Apple Watch

If all else fails, try unpairing and re-pairing your Apple Watch from your iPhone. When you unpair, Apple automatically creates a backup for you to restore to when you re-pair.

1. Place your Apple Watch on its charger and put it next to your iPhone.
2. Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
3. Go to the My Watch tab and tap All Watches.
4. Tap the “i” info button next to the watch that you want to unpair.
   
   
5. Tap Unpair Apple Watch.
   
   
6. Follow the instructions on-screen to unpair. 
7. Once unpaired, pair your watch again, follow the screen’s instructions, and when asked, choose to Restore from Backup.
   
   

If you continue to have issues, run through these steps again, but choose to Set Up as New Apple Watch. 

For more detailed instructions on unpairing your Apple Watch, see this article: Unpair Apple Watch with or without your iPhone or Watch

When you set it up as new, it sets it up as if it just came from the factory. So none of the apps, personalizations, etc. carry over. You will need to set up and install those again.

Wrap up

If your Apple watch counts too many steps or flight climbed, we hope one of these tips worked for you.

And if not, let us know. Got a better tip for this problem? Let us know that too and pay it forward.

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A. Beth Whittenberger

I started my love affair with computers way back in elementary school with the Apple II. Since then, I've worked with technology in my career as a media educator and videomaker. I have an MFA in media making from Temple University, where I also taught undergrads as an adjunct faculty member. So I know a thing or two about teaching others and creating how-to guides! After a cancer diagnosis, I turned to mobile technology like my Apple Watch to help me monitor my health throughout my chemotherapy treatment and later, to regain my wellness once in remission. I love sharing how to understand and use mobile tech, like smartwatches and phones, as a tool for empowerment to live our best and healthiest lives!

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