Keeping track of how active you are on a daily basis can be truly important.
First of all, this can help you discover exactly how much you’re walking and see if you’re meeting the physical activity guidelines recommended by health specialists. Second of all, this is a great way to monitor your progress in time and find the motivation to remain active and reach your fitness goals.
The good news is that tracking your movement throughout the day is so easy to do now with the aid of modern smartwatches. These devices can help you keep a record of diverse metrics and develop healthy habits. If you’re looking to make a change and embrace an active lifestyle, take a look at these useful step counters for your Android watch.
ActivityTracker
ActivityTracker is a step counter app for Android Wear, designed to be easy-to-use and provide lots of details about your daily movement. The app uses the built-in motion sensors in your device instead of GPS, which translates into a minimum impact on your battery. The Wear Watch app is user-friendly and comes with multiple Complications to choose from. You can see your step count, the distance or calories burned, a summary of your hourly activity including the active minutes, as well as an overview of the current day and the last seven days.
To boost your motivation, ActivityTracker gives you the opportunity to set a personal weekly target and see a daily goal based on that target. You can set your target not only for the number of steps taken, but also for the distance covered and the calories burned. The app provides progress notifications for target reached and half-reached and allows you to share your fitness achievements with friends and followers. You can check out your daily progress from one of the customizable widgets or by enabling the app badge. There’s also an option to import your data from Google Fit.
- Price: Free (Subscription: $9.99/year)
- Download on Play Store
Map My Walk
Unlike ActivityTracker, Map My Walk takes advantage of GPS to record your physical activity. The app gives you the possibility to track and map your walking sessions and turn on audio feedback, so you can hear at specific intervals info about your speed, distance, elevation or duration of your workout. Speaking of workouts, you can log numerous activities, ranging from walking and running to cycling and yoga.
When it comes to the Wear OS app, it is simple to use. All you have to do is select an activity and then tap on the Start button to begin your exercise. During your session you can visualize stats regarding the elapsed time, calories burned, the distance or heart rate zones. When you feel like it, you can pause or completely end your exercise. Map My Walk provides detailed report graphs regarding your activity and allows you to share your workouts on social media. You can also connect with other users and join various fitness challenges.
- Price: Free (Subscription: $5.99/month)
- Download on Play Store
C25K
C25K is designed to turn couch potatoes into 5K distance runners in an effective manner in two months. The professionally-developed plan involves a mix of walking, jogging and running activities created to help you gradually improve your fitness level. The program consists of a 30-minute workout session a day, 3 days a week, 8 weeks in total. There’s no need to worry if you’re a beginner, because the program is aimed at beginners. You can choose a virtual coach and receive audio guiding during your training.
C25K uses GPS to not only track your exercise, but also to offer a map of your route. For each workout session, you can monitor diverse fitness metrics directly on your wrist, such as your step count, the distance, the amount of calories burned or the active time. The app syncs with popular audio streaming services, so you can listen to your favorite songs while training. There’s also an option to integrate C25K with MyFitnessPal and receive useful information about your nutrition and calorie consumption.
- Price: Free (Subscription: $9.99/month)
- Download on Play Store
Google Fit
Google Fit is an app created to help you become more physically active and hence enjoy a better health. The app revolves around two activity goals: Steps and Heart Points, the latter being developed in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association. How do Heart Points work? Well, it’s pretty simple. The app rewards you with one point for every minute of moderate-intensity activity, such as walking at a brisk pace, and with two points for high-intensity exercises, such as running.
In order to record your activity, Google Fit resorts to your device’s sensors, but can also use GPS to create a map of your route (if enabled) and calculate fitness metrics such as your distance. Additionally you can see directly on your Android watch your daily step count, calorie burn, move minutes or heart rate. Google Fit can be synchronized with other useful apps and devices, such as Strava, Lifesum, Sleep as Android or Xiaomi Mi bands, to provide more insight into your overall activity and health.
- Price: Free
- Download on Play Store
Outwalk
Outwalk is our final proposal to track steps on Wear OS smartwatches. This is a rather simple app that can monitor only two main parameters: your steps and your distance. The app syncs with Google Fit, so it can collect data about your step count and distance from diverse sources, such as third-party apps and fitness trackers. If you’re a fan of detailed stats, you can analyze your activity for each day, week, month and year.
The cool feature of Outwalk is the social element it embeds. To turn walking into a more exciting activity, the app offers the opportunity to get in touch with your friends via Facebook, engage in challenges and see who’s the most active. With Outwalk you can see directly on your watch your current stats, as well as your position in the leaderboard. You can also share your best results on popular social networks and move your data to a different device via Facebook Backup.
- Price: Free (In-app purchases: $1.99)
- Download on Play Store
