5 tips to make the most of your Apple Watch⌚️
It’s been almost a year since the Apple Watch first came out. Many people have been wearing theirs every day since then, but some others may have it lying in a drawer somewhere, unable to get much use out of it.
We’ve spent the last year working on the Gyroscope iPhone app which connects to it to let you start exploring and understanding your health data. During that time, we’ve been teaching new users how to use the hidden heart rate tracking and workout features of the watch. Used properly, they make it much more useful and worth wearing. We’ve also been hearing about people’s favorite apps and sleep trackers, and would now like to share all of those recommendations with you.
Here are 5 quick tips that we’ve found make the watch much more useful, especially for tracking and improving your health…
1
Automatic heart rate tracking
The watch automatically measures your heart rate and steps while wearing it. Nothing special is required, though I like to manually check via the heart-rate glance occasionally to makes sure it is working. Occasionally it will need to be wiggled and repositioned on your wrist to get a proper reading.
The watch typically tries to check heart rate once every few minutes, but that timing can vary a lot. A few things can prevent it from getting data are if it isn’t positioned properly or if you are moving around.
The watch actually stops trying to check heart rate while you are in motion, which unfortunately means you could go for a walk or to the gym and not actually get any heart rate measurements during that time.
2
Use workouts when exercising!
One of the most interesting uses for knowing your heart rate is when working out. Cardio like running is the most intense on your heart, but even just going to the gym and lifting weights should have a measurable effect.
The key to capturing these is to start a “workout” on the watch — otherwise almost no data will get measured! Starting a workout will speed up the heart rate checking from every 5–10 minutes to about every 5 seconds. Most people either don’t know or don’t remember to do this, and then are disappointed when almost no data gets captured after all that hard work.
You can start it from the workouts app — the green circle with the running person. There will be a list of different workout types, like running, cycling or just “other.” Once a workout has started, it replaces the main screen with live stats like heart rate and distance.
To end the workout, just force press the screen. Instead of navigating through an annoying menu and pressing tiny buttons, this will instantly give you options to stop/pause. Super hard to discover, but extremely useful once you know it is there! Many other things can be similarly force pressed…
For Running & Cycling
You should note that even if you use the watch for tracking heart rate while running, you should use an app like Strava or Runkeeper for capturing GPS data and getting the map route. The watch doesn’t have its own GPS, so you’ll still need to bring along your phone.
Knowing your heart rate during running can be very useful, and different types of training will have different ideal heart rate ranges. We use the heart rate data in our running app to visually show how intense a workout was.
Gym, Yoga & Other
Though “running” is one of the few official options in the workouts list, the “other” option can be used pretty much to track your heart rate for any activity. I usually wear it when going to the gym or doing yoga to see the effects in realtime, and a nice graph afterwards.
It is important to make sure the fit is correct. If it is slightly off then it may not be able to get a reading. Sweat or water won’t break the watch though, so you should be fine even in the hottest yoga class.
3
Wear it while sleeping!
A common habit is to plug in your phone and watch to charge overnight. While phones need this to stay 💯, this is a not such a good idea for the watch since it causes you to lose the most important heart rate data. Though a phone can be plugged in on your nightstand and still useful, a watch can’t be worn while charging, so you’ll need to be more particular about when it gets charging time.
The best charging times
The watch charges much faster than a phone—at about 1% a minute. So unless it is totally dead, you should be fine with less than an hour of charging. We recommend topping it off while you are taking a shower and getting ready in the morning, and/or in the evening before going to bed. During the day while working is also a good option. Figuring out your ideal time to charge it will be the key to getting the most use out of it and having nearly 24/7 heart rate coverage.
Your heart rate during the day is mostly just a fun trivia stat that looks nice on a Gyroscope profile, but your resting heart rate is actually a medically relevant data point that can tell a lot about your well being. You may notice it change over time, as you work out more frequently it may go down and if you are stressed out it may go up. Time of day also matters, and it will generally be lower at night following a circadian rhythm.
Wearing the watch at night is good for getting the heart rate, but also makes for a nice wake-up alarm. Unlike a phone, which you can snooze and then throw across the room or hide under a pillow, the watch is pretty permanently attached and much harder to ignore when it goes off.
Alarms can be set through your phone, or directly through the watch using voice—“Wake me up at 7am.”
Sleep Tracking Apps
Simply wearing the watch will record the heart rate throughout the night. You can generally see it get much lower when you are asleep, but there is no official sleep tracking by default.
The easiest way to track sleep is to just wear your watch at night, and turn on Gyroscope Sleep AI for your account to automatically detect sleep.
Other apps can also track when you were asleep, that show a bit more detail but need to be manually started when you go to sleep. Sleep Cycle and Sleep++ seem to be the most popular among our users. Any sleep tracker—software or hardware—that saves to Healthkit can be used to see data in Gyroscope.
One interesting observation you may notice in your data is that resting heart rate gets lower after doing cardio exercise. Having a high heart rate while just sitting down can be a sign that you are not being healthy, so that may be something to try and optimize—both physically and mentally.
Of course, all of this varies by person, so it is best to talk to your doctor to get more personalized guidance on interpreting and using of your heart rate data.
4
Mac screensaver
You can match your computer to your watch with this Apple Watch screensaver, which gives you the same watch faces on your Mac’s lock screen. I switched to it a while ago and have been really enjoying it.
Seeing the time when your computer is locked is surprisingly convenient. There are a few different styles but my favorite is Simple with orange accent.
5
One more thing…
HealthKit on your iPhone gets a bunch of information coming from the watch. Every day, your steps and heart rate data gets logged. However, none of it is formatted in a way that can be easily experienced or shared. Without a constant awareness of the data, it is not of much use in your life.
We’ve spent the past year working on taking that complex information and letting you easily explore and share it.
The new Gyroscope iPhone App syncs your HealthKit data to Gyroscope, where it can be seen in various insights, reports and (optionally) shared with others.
Finding meaning in your personal data doesn’t even require complicated algorithms or fancy graphs. Just a simple daily push notification that tells you what you did yesterday can help reshape your behavior. For example, if I see that yesterday my heart rate didn’t go up or my steps were really low, I could try to go for a run that day.
Of course I’m quite biased about this, but I think having software like Gyroscope changes the watch from a fun gadget into something that can actually change your life. In addition to improving your health, having this data creates a valuable history of your life that you can always go back to. Without it, there is almost no record of what happened. For example, what did you do on December 2?
Sharable Cards
We believe each day is unique and should be captured. It is still in the very early stages, but we’ve been playing with new ways to combine data like heart rate and steps, with photography to build unique sharable cards for sharing moments in your life.
Weekly & Annual Reports
Over months and years, lot of passively tracked data will accumulate from these devices. There may be patterns and insights there, but are currently hard to find. We’ve been working on various reports and analysis at the monthly and yearly levels to easily go back and see the history of your life as tracked by these devices.
Get Started
So if your Apple Watch is currently lying in a drawer somewhere, dust it off and take it for a run! Remember to charge it occasionally, but still wear it at night while you sleep.
Your basic info will show in Apple’s Health app, but if you’d like to see more detailed analytics of your life, you can also sign up for Gyroscope and get the Gyroscope Health Tracking App.
