Where is motion and fitness in settings

Newer iPhones have the ability to track fitness activity and motion and displaying that data in Health app and other applications. Fitness tracking is done by using a low-power motion coprocessor that determines steps, altitude gain and lost, and distance traveled, and many users like this feature as it represents an easy way to keep an eye on their activity levels, and perhaps work towards that goal of an active 10,000+ steps per day.

Table of Contents Show

How to Toggle Fitness & Activity Tracking On or Off with iPhone
Disable Motion and Fitness Tracking on iPhone for More Privacy
Which iPhone models use “Motion & Fitness Tracking”
Enable “Motion & Fitness Tracking” on iPhone
How do I get to Motion and Fitness in settings?
Why does my iPhone not have Motion and Fitness?
How do I enable Motion and Fitness permissions?

Fitness tracking is turned on by default in iOS, which can enable the iPhone to serve as a pedometer of sorts, but if for some reason you want to turn the motion detection feature off on your iPhone, you can do that too.

How to Toggle Fitness & Activity Tracking On or Off with iPhone

If you like the fitness and motion activity tracking feature on the iPhone, you should have this setting left on. Turning this off will empty the Health app dashboard of tracked fitness data as well.

Open the “Settings” app on iPhone and head to “Privacy”
Scroll down and choose “Motion & Fitness”
Toggle the switch next to “Fitness Tracking” to the OFF or ON position as desired
Exit out of Settings, the change will take effect immediately

If you had this off and turned it on, you’ll still need to enable the appropriate options within Health Dashboard to actually see and monitor your activity data on a meaningful graph.

Keep in mind this disables the tracking feature entirely for all apps on iPhone, not just within Health app. If you turn this off, the pedometer feature and all related fitness activity monitoring functions on iPhone will cease, whether you read that data in Health or a third party app.

Disabling fitness tracking leads to an empty Health app dashboard, but not for erroneous reasons that can be quickly resolved, since the tracking is actually turned off. To reverse that, you’d obviously need to turn the feature back on again, but all fitness data and activity prior to turning tracking back on will not be available.

Personally, I recommend keeping this feature turned on and referring to it. This can serves as an easy reminder to move around more, which is particularly important in our modern era of predominately sedentary desk environments for work.

Since undoubtedly many are curious about their activity levels, a sports medicine study published on NIH provides the following step counts and the activity level they represent, based on pedometer data:

Under 5000 steps per day – “sedentary lifestyle”
5000-7499 steps per day – “low active”
7500-9999 steps per day – “somewhat active”
10,000-12499 steps per day – “active”
Over 12500 steps per day – “highly active”

Discovering your own fitness activity levels based on data from your iPhone can be somewhat shocking – either pleasantly or not – and it’s fairly common for many people who don’t think of themselves as sedentary to discover they barely move around throughout the day. If that’s something you want to change, and you probably should, PBS provides some advice on how to slowly increase your activity levels to get there. That an iPhone (or Apple Watch, or both) can help you in that endeavor is a nice bonus.

Do you use your iPhone as a fitness tracker? Let us know your experiences in the comments.

Disable Motion and Fitness Tracking on iPhone for More Privacy

Fitness tracking is a great thing, as it brings additional attention to often neglected parts of our life, such as our sedentary and inactive lifestyles. By tracking your every movement via the motion and fitness tracker on iPhone, the Health application can present you with details about the amount of activity in your daily routine. If you are concerened about your privacy – here’s how to disable motion and fitness tracking on iPhone, as well as how to enable motion and fitness tracking.

Contents

1 How to disable “Motion & Fitness Tracking” on iPhone
2 Which iPhone models use “Motion & Fitness Tracking”
3 Enable “Motion & Fitness Tracking” on iPhone

Settings → Privacy → Motion & Fitness → disable toggle “Fitness Tracking”

Go to your “Settings” app and head over to the “Privacy” section by scrolling down a bit. Now scroll down again and tap “Motion & Fitness”.

Then disable the “Fitness Tracking” toggle to turn off the tracking feature altogether.

Note that you won’t have any kind of step counting or other sensory data in the Health app. You may also restrict the tracking to certain apps by only disabling some of the entries, such as the “Health” or “Activity” application, or another app you suspect might be eating up your battery.

If you use an external fitness tracker or don’t want to use these types of features at all, you may disable the motion and fitness tracking for purposes of battery life improvement and conservation.

Which iPhone models use “Motion & Fitness Tracking”

If left at the default settings, your iPhone will continuously check for motion and use a little (probably negligible) bit of energy in the process of doing so. Only the iPhone 5s and above track your motion continuously and use the sensors for fitness purposes. Earlier models only use the sensors when activated specifically, e.g. by apps that track you while jogging or running. You can customize and disable the tracking of your fitness and motion data, if desired.

Enable “Motion & Fitness Tracking” on iPhone

Settings → Privacy → Motion & Fitness→ activate toggle “Fitness Tracking”

For privacy or other reasons you may have chosen to disable Motion & Fitness Tracking on your iPhone, but now want to re-activate Fitness Tracking. It’s quite simple just open your “Settings” and go to “Privacy”.

Did you knwo that you can use the Health App to track your Fitness journey even if you use additional trackers? Find out how to use the Health App to track your Fitness progress.

Now tap “Motion & Fitness” and activate the toggle next to “Fitness Tracking”.