Moves App

Please note the following about wearable devices (Fitbit watches, Apple watches and Withings watches):

• Users with wearable watches may notice that there is a greater discrepancy between their Moves step levels and the steps shown on their app

• All trackers will show a slightly different number of steps although most of the time this is negligible. For watches, it can be higher in certain situations

This is largely due to the way that the watches record data on the app and then what they send to us:

• When a wearable device logs an activity it shows the user the Perceived activity (e.g. you completed 10,000 steps today). When the tracker is sent to Moves, the data that is sent is the Actual activity (e.g. 8000 steps).

There are a number of reasons for the difference between Perceived and Actual data, for example:

• A user’s watch picks up steps whilst they are in the gym on a bike or rowing machine. Perceived steps shown on the fitness app includes these ‘steps’ the Actual data sent to us doesn’t include these as the fitness app recognises that these were not actual steps but just general movement

• A user takes their watch off and puts it in their bag whilst travelling. The watch will pick up ‘steps’ whilst travelling but when the data is sent these are removed as the fitness app recognises they are not genuine steps (no heartbeat etc)

We have looked into ways of showing perceived rather than actual but it isn’t possible with the way that we currently run the database.