How to Show Steps on an Apple Watch Face
The Apple Watch doubles as a smartwatch and a fitness tracker with the utmost conviction. Not only can you set reminders, alarms, or reply to messages, but you can also track your activities and workouts. But while the Apple Watch shows all of your activities in detail, it doesn’t show you your step count.
It’s a bit of a letdown, especially if you like to see all of your activities at a glance by raising your wrist. Sure, you can hit the Rings complication, but that would be an extra step, right?
Fortunately, there is an easy way out, and in this article, we’ll show you how to show steps on an Apple Watch face.
How to display steps on an Apple Watch face
Since there is no native method, we will have to help ourselves with a third-party application. There are many pedometer apps that support complications. Unfortunately, the majority of them are paid. But the good news is that there are a few free apps that allow you to easily display the steps on the face of the Apple Watch.
There are two main steps for this. The first is finding the right watch face to accommodate all of your data. And the second adds complication to the watch face.
Now that that’s settled, let’s see how to achieve it.
Find the right watch face
Step 1: Go to the Watch app on your phone and tap Face Gallery. Scroll down until you see options for Activity, GMT, or Infographic.
Most watch faces give you a clear idea of all the major complications like date, rings, heartbeat, etc. However, if you go for the fancy watch faces from categories like Artist, Explorer, or Liquid Metal, you might not see a lot of detail.
So, here the idea is to choose a watch face with the most complications, like those under Modular, Modular Compact or Infographics. The idea is to capture so much information in a short period of time.
2nd step: After choosing one of the watch faces, tap Add to add it to your collection.
Step 3: Go to the My Watch tab, select the watch face and tap Set as current watch face.
Now it’s half the river crossed. Let’s go through the other half.
Find a complication pedometer app
Step 1: On your iPhone, download and install the app called Duffy.
This app allows you to have a quick overview of your daily steps, among other features. It extracts the necessary information from the Apple Watch and displays it accordingly.
Then open the Duffy app to see if it shows the correct sep count.
2nd step: On your watch, long press the watch face to enter Edit mode.
Swipe left to go to the complications page. Once inside, tap on one of the locations and choose Duffy from the list of supported apps.
You can also select the complication on the Watch Face page of the Watch app as shown below.
From now on, your watch will show you the current step count at a glance. Again, this helps if you have an activity-based watch face as it displays the number of steps.
In our case, we used a custom watch face from Facer, and this one shows the steps loud and clear.
Duffy has his limits. On the one hand, the steps are not updated in real time and need some time to cool off when you walk. It can be boring, but on the upside you get a rough estimate of your step count at a glance.
That said, Duffy doesn’t just show off your footsteps on your watch. For example, it shows you your weekly overview as well as your past data.
In addition, you can also change the goals. Moreover, when you complete your goals, this pedometer app also rewards you with adorable little trophies.
On that front, Duffy is straightforward and easy to use. You need to grant permission once and the app will take care of the rest.
Intensify
If you’re not comfortable installing a third-party app, there’s a native way to easily see the steps. But it has a major caveat: it won’t display the number of steps on the watch face. Tap the activity rings on your watch and scroll down to see the number of steps.
However, the number of steps on the watch face makes it so convenient to check out.
Last updated on Sep 11, 2021
The above article may contain affiliate links that help support Guiding Tech. However, this does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains impartial and authentic.
(function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.5&appId=1652915528311925″;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}(document,’script’,’facebook-jssdk’));