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Apps WorkOutDoors: New workout features
- Thread starter cfc
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Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but in the watchOS 10.1 beta none of the workout screens show the time (upper right corner) and battery percentage is always at 90%.
Hi @cfc, I've been using the app for over a year and I love it. Something I need to raise: I just upgraded my apple watch from Series 7 to Ultra 2. Everything works fine other than the heart rate. With the previous watch, I was able to start a workout with or without an external HR monitor and the app was still displaying my heart rate. With the new watch, out of the box the native heart rate sensor was never picked up by the app, so the only way I can record my heart rate now is with an external monitor. I really enjoyed the flexibility of waking up and going for a run without having to worry about wearing the external HR monitor. I know that the sensor is working because the health app is still showing me the HR stats of my corresponding run in workoutdoors, but the app does not record any HR activity. I hope this can be fixed. Thank you
The missing time is something I have seen and it is fixed in the latest beta of WOD. I don't know what I did but it seems ok with the beta, so I have inadvertently fixed it.
I haven't heard of the battery showing 90% but there is a bug in watchOS 10 where it only reports the nearest 5% to the app. I have no idea why this is but might it explain what you are seeing? Is 90% correct if the value you expect to see if rounded to the nearest 5%?
Please check that you have given the app permission to read and write all the health data. To check this go to the Settings app on the iPhone and select Privacy / Health / WorkOutDoors. Make sure that every health setting is enabled (you may need to scroll down to turn them all on). Note that if you have installed on a new iPhone then you may need to give permission again.
If they are all enabled then you may be experiencing a rare bug with iOS/watchOS where the watch seems to lose the permission. To fix this switch all of the permissions off, then reboot both the iPhone and the watch, and then switch them all on again. This procedure nudges iOS into sending them to the watch again.
Really appreciate the response. Circling back to my original post, I'm curious if you have noticed any recent difference specific to cellular? Up until the recent upgrades (specifically, watchOS to 10 and WOD to 5.2.7) I had not paid super close attention to battery on my AWU primarily because it was never a problem. With the upgrades, I'm struggling. Yesterday a 3 1/2 hour workout starting with 95% ended at 30%. Old watchOS, old WOD, exact same AWU... that workout would not have drained anywhere near that kind of battery life. And I'm already taking baby steps. I had AOD off yesterday. I did keep pretty much everything else on (family likes to track me and I apprecite the safety of being connected), and was running music to bluetooth headphones - note I was not streaming I was only utilizing the library I have downloaded native to the AWU. And that's not a new variable. Plenty of 3 1/2 hour efforts under the older versions would not have sucked down 65%. I know it's not a common watch for ultra people, but any additional advice especially from those who are trying to put the ultra in Apple Watch Ultra would be awesome! I guess I'm getting pretty close to rolling back to WatchOS 9 if I still can, which is why I keep focusing in on the battery questions. Thanks anyone!
I get workout log files from users every day, and I keep an eye on battery life across various workouts and watches. None of them from Ultras have had as excessive battery usage as that. It is not great for a non-Ultra watch let alone an Ultra.
I can't tell if the logs I get are from people listening to music and/or using cellular but I would expect that some of them are.
However it would be interesting to know if not listening to music and not using cellular makes a difference for you, because I suspect they are both big battery draws. Maybe one time you could disable them and bring your iPhone along and use that for music and connectivity instead?
Hi, maybe I missed this, but is there a way to automatically save a workout to Strava without pressing ’done’ after finishing a workout? And pressing ‘done’ again to go to start screen on the watch.
Setup: workout ends automatically when back at start and Strava set to save automatically.
(ios 17.1-3 watchos 10.1-2 WoD 5.3-1)
Setup: workout ends automatically when back at start and Strava set to save automatically.
(ios 17.1-3 watchos 10.1-2 WoD 5.3-1)
The app deliberately doesn't upload to Strava until after you press Done. This is for historical technical reasons because it uses more memory when uploading so I didn't want to do that whilst the full workout data was loaded. Memory on the watch is limited.
To be honest nowadays it probably could upload whilst the summary screen is displayed because there are less stringent memory constraints, but I don't have any plans to allow that.
I just realized that WOD doesn't save weather info to health but other 3rd party workout apps do.
I may add weather information in the future but only if I can find somewhere that provides the data for free (which I can't at the moment).
Apple started providing it for free up to a point in watchOS 9 but I am not sure how much it would cost me after that point. The app’s business model of a one-off payment doesn’t allow for on-going costs.
I'm running the New York City Marathon next month and I've heard that GPS can be unreliable because of the tall buildings and running on the lower decks of bridges, including the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at the start. My question is, does that matter if all my paces are coming from the AW pedometer rather than GPS?
What I really care about is my current pace and rolling pace for last 0.25 mile and mile, which I've set to show on my main screen. If all these are coming from the pedometer, will the GPS wonkiness have any effect? Will GPS errors affect the Time vs Target field? Anyone have experience with WOD during NYCM and especially on the lower deck at the start of the race?
What I really care about is my current pace and rolling pace for last 0.25 mile and mile, which I've set to show on my main screen. If all these are coming from the pedometer, will the GPS wonkiness have any effect? Will GPS errors affect the Time vs Target field? Anyone have experience with WOD during NYCM and especially on the lower deck at the start of the race?
In theory the GPS should not affect those metrics when you have configured everything to use the pedometer. Distance and current pace come from the pedometer by default anyway, and if you have set the rolling paces to Apple instead of GPS then they will use the pedometer too.
I had hoped that they would, like they do with maps, but unfortunately there is a charge above a certain usage level.
It could be that the charges are low enough (or the usage level is high enough) that I could add it, but I haven't investigated yet. Once I saw that there was a charge after a certain point then that put me off reading much further. I already have on-going costs for the maps and don't want to add more such costs.
The usage level looks pretty high before Apple start charging, so I suspect that it wouldn't be too expensive. However I would need to look into it properly. I need to determine how the app would use the service and do some maths as to what sort of usage that would mean, and how much it would cost. I will do that at some time but there are more requested features to implement first. Sorry about that.
Thanks for the response. I ended up buying the app and figured out how to import a gpx file. Despite the vast amount of options, I found the set up to be easy and straightforward.
One question I did have is this: is it possible to have the “miles remaining in workout” metric to show when running a gpx route?
Thanks for buying the app. Glad you found it easy to import GPX files.
Currently GPX routes are simply displayed and you are warned when you deviate from them. There is no concept of following them, so the app cannot show the remaining distance or time. Sorry about that. Those metrics are for use when using a fixed length workout or an interval schedule where it is possible to calculate the remaining distance.
I plan to enhance the route and navigation functionality in a future version to allow this. At the moment it is top of my to-do list after I have released a version for watchOS 10.
In the meantime you could start the workout and enter the route length as the fixed distance. If you only follow the route then this will give a rough estimate but not as good as when I have implemented it properly. To enter a fixed distance tap the circle with 3 dots to the right of the activity name. Then tap “Fixed Length” and then “Set Distance”.
Ian,
In the last days I did some hikes using the map. The map was in north-pointing mode and I did not succeed in changing that to follow-along (where the map turns as you turn, which I prefer). I know I have to use the compass in the map to do so, but the compass is not there (apart from every now and then a few seconds in the bottom left corner, but then the 'center' icon takes over again. I tried to double tap on different areas of the screen but to no avail. Could this also be a bug like the missing time? I am using the latest beta's, over the weekend 5.3.2 and I just checked: 5.3.3 still does not show that compass needle.
The red compass in the bottom right (not the bottom left) can be hidden or shown by double tapping it. Single tap it to switch between a north upwards map and a rotating map.
If you are seeing the tracking icon in the bottom left instead of the green compass then you have probably panned the map away from tracking your location (maybe accidentally). Tap that tracking icon to make the map move with your position again.