Apple Watch Achievement Woes and Resolutions

May 31, 2016

Picture this…

You’re attempting to get a Perfect Month achievement on your Apple Watch. One day you lose track of time and don’t do your evening workout. You realize that you are almost out of time, and so you make a mad dash to get your activity in for the day. You look like you’re going to make it, and then you do! You notice something is wrong, however. You never saw the achievement pop up, and now the time is midnight. You check the Activity app thinking that it must just be your watch making the mistake, but then you see it. No achievement. No Longest Move Streak. Just to be sure, you wait until the end of the week, but there’s nothing. Your whole month of April is ruined (Yes, I know this post was put up at the end of May, but the story is from April 1st).

I’m certain that I am not the only one to have this problem (and Apple’s support forums would agree with me). But until now, I haven’t seen anybody propose a fix/workaround. The reason why I say “fix” is because this is most certainly a bug on Apple’s part. The conditions of the achievement were met before the midnight deadline, but the achievement did not think that its conditions were met. I’m not certain as to why this is the case, but it’s one that Apple definitely needs to fix in the future. But what if this has already happened to you? How can you fix it? If only there was a way to turn back time! Well, there is, and you probably have it in your pocket. Getting the achievement is as simple as turning your watch back to the day of the incident.

Steps to Save Your Activity Streak

First, a brief disclaimer, I have only tried this from a week and a half after the incident, and I do not know if there is a limit on this fix, so if it’s happened recently, don’t wait; fix it as soon as possible.

On your phone, go to the Settings app > General > Date & Time and set the date and time to before the workout that should have completed your activity circle and continued your move streak.
On your watch, go to the Activity app, hard press to display the context menu. Tap on Change Move Goal, and set the goal to a value less than the number of calories that you had burned by this current point in time. For example, if at 11:45 you had 310/350 Cals, set your move goal to 300 or fewer.
On your phone, advance the time to a minute before midnight and let it advance like that until the present day (I’m not strictly certain this is necessary, but since the watch seems to tabulate stuff at the end of the day, it seemed like the best thing to do).
On your watch set your move goal back to what is was (assuming you still want to use that goal).
You will need to do something that will fire off an achievement event in order for the rest of them to recalculate. This may require that you wait until the end of the next week. Don’t force it if you aren’t there already. Just act as though you haven’t missed your move streak.

With any luck, you will get a lot of achievements at once. If you got some of them but not your move streak, keep going. It should fire off when you reach your next activity goal if you did everything correctly.

If this worked for you, let me know in the comments!