Walking is one of the best exercises you can do to stay in shape. It’s low-impact, accessible to almost anyone and, if done on a regular basis, can have a truly positive influence on both the body and the mind. The health benefits of walking are numerous, ranging from a reduced risk of heart disease to mental wellbeing.
Tracking your walking activity is also important. This allows you to see how active you are, watch your progress in time and find the motivation to stay on track and reach new goals. You can easily keep track of your physical activity straight from your wrist, with the aid of a Wear OS watch. Without further ado, here’s a list of apps you can install on your Android watch to track your everyday walks.
ActivityTracker
ActivityTracker is a walking app for Android and Wear OS created to monitor your daily activity. The app is easy to use and records your movement automatically by taking advantage of the built-in motion sensors in your device. There’s no GPS usage whatsoever, which means the impact on the battery is kept to a minimum. You can keep track of various fitness metrics, such as your step count, distance, calories burned or active time, and visualize your activity on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis.
If you want to see your progress directly on your wrist, ActivityTracker offers an elegantly-designed Wear OS Watch app. You can choose from diverse Complications for your Watch face, see an hourly and daily summary, as well as analyze your progress for the last seven days through colorful report graphs. To boost your walking motivation, the app enables you to set a weekly target and displays a daily goal based on that target. You can set it for the metric that’s most relevant to your needs, whether it’s steps, distance or calories.
ActivityTracker provides customizable widgets, an app badge to see your step count directly on the app icon and diverse notifications regarding the progress towards your goal. If you want to keep your personal trainer updated or let people know about your achievements, you can share your daily fitness stats through various channels.
- Price: Free (Subscription: $9.99/year)
- Download on Play Store
Map My Walk
Map My Walk is a complex walking tracker app for Android watches. This app is designed to track and map your walking workouts. In order to record your physical activity and to provide a map of your route, the app resorts to GPS. The main downside is that the continued GPS usage can seriously affect your battery.
How does Map My Walk work? Well, the app doesn’t automatically track your walks. You need to select the desired activity (more than 600 available) and manually start a workout. Next the app will begin recording your movement and provide a wide range of fitness stats directly on your watch, including the distance covered, the calories burned, the duration of your session, your pace or info regarding your heart rate. Map My Walk provides training plans, real-time audio coaching and a route manager to help you discover new places, save or share your favorite ones.
The app pride itself on having developed an impressive community of fitness lovers. In that sense you’ll have the chance to connect with friends and other walking enthusiasts, share your workouts online, enter various challenges and even win prizes.
- Price: Free (Subscription: $5.99/month)
- Download on Play Store
Adidas Running
Don’t let the name fool you. Adidas Running is not exclusively designed for running activities. This is a sports tracker that can actually monitor, through GPS and pedometer, over 90 types of workouts, including of course walking. All you have to do is select the preferred activity and tap on the Start button. At any moment you can pause, resume or completely stop your current training session directly on your wrist.
Adidas Running places at your disposal numerous fitness stats. In addition to the map of your route, you can see on your Wear OS watch the duration, distance, the calories burned, your dehydration level or your average pace, speed and heart rate. The app allows you to choose a personal goal, whether you’re looking to lose weight or run a 10k marathon, and see detailed stats regarding your progress. To chase away monotony, Adidas Running offers the opportunity to take part in virtual races and compare your performance with others.
- Price: Free (Subscription: $9.99/month)
- Download on Play Store
Strava
Strava is another great alternative to track your physical activity. You can choose from foot sports like walking and hiking, cycling, diverse water and winter sports or other activities like rock climbing, weight training or yoga. Once you tap on the start button, the app will record your movement and provide a map of your route. You’ll be able to see in real time various stats, such as the elapsed time, the distance walked, the elevation gained, your calorie burn and more.
Strava enables you to find new places to walk and share them with friends and followers, along with photos from your latest session. At the same time you have options to enter monthly challenges and join clubs and groups which are embracing the same active lifestyle. The app enables you to set personal fitness goals, get customized training plans and benefit from live feedback during your workouts. If you’re a fan of stats, Strava offers numerous graphs and charts so you can analyze your progress in time.
- Price: Free (Subscription: $7.99/month)
- Download on Play Store
Google Fit
If you’re using Wear OS 2.0 or above, you should expect to find Google Fit pre-installed on your watch. This app is designed to help you move more and hence improve your overall health by focusing on two main activity goals: Steps and Heart Points. You get one heart point for a moderate-intensity exercise like brisk walking and double points if you engage in a more vigorous activity like running.
Google Fit takes advantage of the built-in motion sensors in your phone, as well as of the built-in heart rate sensors in your Wear OS watch to track multiple fitness metrics. Among others these include the number of steps, the distance, calories burned, move minutes or average pace. The app also lets you activate GPS and track and map the selected workout. Google Fit enables you to set a daily goal for both the number of steps and heart points and get an overview of your health and fitness by synchronizing the app with other apps and wearables.
- Price: Free
- Download on Play Store
