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Duplicated Calories entries on Apple Health

Stefano
over 2 years ago

Hello!

I've been a happy Garmin user for a week, but I noticed an issue with the calories syncing to Apple Health. The last thread that I've found related to this issue is forums.garmin.com/.../apple-health-displays-double-the-calories-and-steps-after-physical-activity. I've followed the FAQs to try to fix the issue (to no avail), so I've collected the data to help you debug this problem. Some screenshots are in Spanish, but I will provide translations and legends for the relevant part.

Preconditions and notes:

  • I live in Spain and my "Upload Time Zone" (on Garmin Connect) is set to (GMT+01:00) Central European Time
  • Since it's summer, my device is currently on CEST (Central European Summer Time) aka GMT+02:00
  • Garmin Connect v4.56
  • Vivosmart 4 (Software Version: 5.10)
  • iPhone 12 mini with iOS 15.5
  • Apple Health screenshots are taken from:
    • Resting (Energy): Browse tab > Activity > Resting energy > Show all data > [Selected the relevant day]
    • Active (Energy): Browse tab > Activity > Active energy > Show all data > [Selected the relevant day]

During the day:

Whenever the Garmin Connect app is opened, the Resting and Active calories are (correctly) synced on Apple Health:

All good at 11:02


[Legend - Left to Right: Garmin Connect, Apple Resting, Apple Active]

All good at 15:58

[Legend - Left to Right: Garmin Connect, Apple Resting, Apple Active]

Some data drift at 19:54 in the Apple Active; this seems to be due to the exercises (193kcal) being counted twice (this is "fixed" at midnight)

[Legend - Left to Right: Garmin Connect, Apple Resting, Apple Active, Garmin Connect]

All good(ish) at 23:52; A little bit of a drift in the Resting (-84) and in the Active (+4 counting the exercises)

[Legend - Left to Right: Garmin Connect, Apple Resting, Apple Active]


The error and duplication (just after midnight, at 00:01); a second entry appears on Apple Health, timestamped at 22:59 (should be 23:59), but the Active energy is now showing the correct data (i.e. the exercises are not counted twice).

[Legend - Left to Right: Garmin Connect, Apple Resting, Resting details 23:55, Resting details 22:59, Apple Active, Active details 23:55, Active details 22:59]


Same thing happened last night as well:

[Legend - Left to Right: Garmin Connect, Apple Resting, Apple Active]


My only current fix is to daily delete one of the duplicated entries Sweat smile. Hopefully I have given you enough details to track and fix the issue. Please let me know if you'll need any additional explanations, translations, or details.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    This is a great writeup, but the bad news is twofold:  1. Garmin is already aware that their implementation of Apple HealthKit is deeply flawed at best, and 2. Garmin-Kevin has indicated on these forums that they have no plans to fix it at this time.  The data you show above is just one example of the problems Garmin has working with HealthKit.   If you do quick search on this site you will see a number of folks having a wide range of issues.  Steps and Heart Rate work fine as near as I can tell, sleep works well enough that it's usable, pretty much all the other metrics at least duplicate data, and are worst are completely broken or missing.  Activities technically get recorded, but the way Garmin does it doesn't follow the API documentation so they throw things off and aren't able to be used by anything else (including Apple Health) correctly.     I get that this isn't a big deal for Garmin, but it is very annoying for a lot of us and I suspect it will cost them sales long term.  Just maybe not enough to matter.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to WizardlyHat

    Thank you for your feedback Slight smile. I wanted to leave a nice bug report so they could more easily add it to their backlog.

    In the meantime I've found a "User Patch" for whom is interested: do not open the Garmin app between 22:59.59 and midnight. After midnight the data is synced correctly. I assume this bug only happens 6 months a year, and only for DST countries, so might not be high priority Joy.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Same issue here.

    Since Garmin developers do not know that Active Calories should be entered with a time interval, but they replace latest entry just with an increased values and a higher calories count, the total gets higher and higher because it gets summed to the rest of the daily data produced by Apple itself.

    What's funny is that by opening Garmin Connect several times a day (which I should be allowed with no issues), I get more and more Fitness.app medals (with iOS 16 Fitness.app works without an Apple Watch) because it think I'm burning hundreds of calories over and over again.

    They just need skilled developers. It's not rocket science (I'm a developer myself).

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Labronico

    Same here!!! The good thing is that I am also getting lots of move medals with iOS 16 and no Apple Watch!!!

    But that makes all data in Apple Health useless.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to JoMiSan-Tokage

    Same here, I’ve just noticed that Apple fitness app shows 14km for yesterday while I’ve only walked for 6-7KM and it is due to the fact that things are Double counted :-/

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to xylian

    As I wrote above, unless they read the documentation and use the API correctly, Apple Health will always (and correctly) duplicate the distance.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Labronico

    Yes, you’re definitely right.. it shouldn’t be so difficult to implement that correctly :-/

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to xylian

    It isn’t. So much so to me it’s a deliberate choice to prevent a real integration while at the same time declaring it to attract iPhone users.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Labronico

    Which is ludicrous. There are two rational choices here. Either don’t do Apple Health integration, or do it properly.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    That's a nice piece of work! Thanks! Same issue here