Activity or Fitness App keeps crashing on iPhone ? Here’s what you can do

The Activity app or Fitness App is one of the most important apps for fitness enthusiasts in the Apple community as it helps them track how much they move, exercise, and stand.

Several of our readers discovered that the Activity or Fitness app on their iPhone (Apple rebranded the Activity app as the Fitness app in iOS 14) keeps freezing or crashing when they try to open it.

The app often quits unexpectedly when reviewing workouts. And for some users, the Activity or Fitness app does not open up at all.

Related reading

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• Create your own Apple Watch Shortcuts and pair with your exercise routine
• Apple Watch Faces Missing? Try these steps
• Customize Apple Watch units of measurements using the Watch and Health App (iOS 14+)

How you fix a crashing or non-responsive Fitness and Activity app on your iPhone

If you are facing this Fitness app-related annoyance on your iPhone, here are some of the troubleshooting actions that you can take and solve this issue.

Check for Software Updates on the Apple Watch and iPhone

The first thing you can do is check if your Apple device is due for a software update.

Since Apple usually addresses most of the common bugs in their updates, this can help you potentially resolve the issue.

• On your iPhone, tap on Settings > General > Software Update
• Tap on ‘Install Now’ or ‘Download & Install’ if you have a pending software update for your iPhone
• Next, on your Apple Watch, Tap on Settings > General > Software Update
• Once the ‘Checking for Update’ message concludes, if there is an available update, install it directly on your Watch
• You can also update your Apple Watch’s watchOS via the Watch app on your iPhone
• Launch the Watch app > tap on My Watch tab > General > Software Update

Inspect this Accessibility Setting on your iPhone

Some users have found that enabling full keyboard access on their iPhone can often lead to the Activity/Fitness App crashing and other issues.

Check and see if you have enabled the full keyboard access feature on your iPhone

• Open Settings app on your iPhone 
• Type in ‘Full Keyboard’ on the Search bar at the top
• Tap on Full Keyboard Access
• Toggle off the Full Keyboard access feature here
• Restart your iPhone by pressing and holding the Volume button and side button on your iPhone or via Settings > General > Shutdown

Activity App or Fitness app not opening on iPhone

Another common issue faced by some users with the Activity or Fitness app is that when they tap on the app on their iPhone, it doesn’t open the app.

It simply shows a static message indicating that the user should ‘start using the Activity/Fitness app’ on their Watch.

If you are experiencing this issue, chances are that one of the setup actions related to the Fitness or Activity app on your Apple Watch has changed.

Check the following:

1. From your Apple Watch home screen, tap on the Activity or Fitness app
   1. If it is not set up, it requests you to enter some personal information
      1. Continue with the steps to set up the Activity/Fitness app
2. On your iPhone, tap on Settings > Privacy > Motion & Fitness – check that you turned on both Fitness Tracking and Health
3. On your iPhone, open the Watch app
   1. Tap on My Watch > Passcode > scroll down and enable ‘Wrist Detection’
4. Check your ‘Do not Disturb while driving’ settings on your iPhone
   1. In the settings app, using the search bar, type in ‘Do Not Disturb While Driving’
   2. Tap on it
   3. Here make sure to choose ‘Manually’ for the Activate option
5. Restart both your iPhone and Apple Watch by turning them off
6. Restart your iPhone first followed by the Apple Watch in that sequence

Check if you are automatically offloading unused apps

Another quick element to check is if you are using the ‘Offload app’ process automatically.

This can be found in Settings > General > iPhone Storage.

If your device is short on storage and you haven’t used the Fitness or Activity app in a while, chances are that your Fitness or Activity App has been offloaded.

If that’s the case, reinstall the app on your iPhone in order to get going again.

Handy workarounds to get to workout information on your iPhone

If you are trying to check your workout-related information but are having challenges opening the Fitness or Activity app, try launching workouts directly by using the contextual menu of the app. 

Open Workouts from the Fitness app quick menu

1. From your home screen on the iPhone, locate the Fitness app or Activity app
2. Press and hold on it till the contextual quick menu opens up–it takes a second or two for the menu to show up
3. Tap on Workouts from the menu to get started

Try the Health app instead

The other option to access your workout-related information is by using the ‘Health’ app on your iPhone.

1. Launch the Health app on your iPhone
2. Tap on the ‘Browse’ tab at the bottom
3. Next, tap on Activity from the section ‘Health Categories’
4. Here you can track your activity data for the particular day OR scroll down to the section of ‘Past 7 days’ or ‘Past 30 days’ and review your workout information in detail by days

Summary

We hope that you were able to fix the Fitness or Activity app-related issues with some of the troubleshooting tips highlighted above.

If you are still having challenges, you may want to reach out to the friendly Apple support folks and have them assist you.