How to Follow Steps on iPhone

This guide will show you how to track steps on iPhones so you know how far you walk, run and how many flights of stairs you climb each day. As long as you normally carry your iPhone with you, you can follow steps on iPhones without needing an Apple Watch, Fitbit, or fitness tracker.

You don’t need a Pedometer iPhone app to track steps on iPhone, but you do need to open options to see your steps. If you prefer to track your health and fitness in one place instead of various applications, you can share this data with other applications.

Unlike the Apple Watch, a Fitbit, or other fitness and weight loss accessories – you don’t need to plug in the iPhone, but you’ll need to keep it in your pocket for this to work. If you don’t always carry your iPhone with you when you’re at work or exercising, it won’t give you a full view of your steps, miles you’ve walked, and stairs you’ve climbed.

What You Need to Follow the Steps on iPhone

You need a fairly new iPhone for this to work and you need a version of iOS 8 or iOS 9 installed on your iPhone.

Specifically, you need one of these iPhone models to track your steps without any additional apps or accessories;

Newer devices like the iPhone 6 and later have a sensor that can track the flights of stairs you’ve climbed to give you a better picture of your activity.

How to Follow Steps on iPhone

Once you know you have the right iPhone and operating system, you are ready to learn how to follow steps on iPhone using the Health app in iOS 8 and iOS 9.

This is already installed on your iPhone and is free to use. Best of all, when you turn it on, you should already see some data from what the iPhone motion sensor has been tracking since you started using it.

1. Go to the Health App on your iPhone.
2. Tap the Health Data tab at the bottom of the screen.
3. Tap on Fitness on this next screen to see what you can track.
4. We need to turn on Walk + Run Distance, Steps and Flights Climbed. To do this, tap on each and then tap on Show in Dashboard.

Once you’re done, you can look at the main dashboard in the Health app to see current data and forward-looking results.

We like to use this in conjunction with some of the best weight loss apps for tracking steps towards daily movement goals and calories burned on iPhone. Many apps, like My Fitness Pal, can connect to your Health app to see data and include it alongside your nutrition, or share data in the health app so you can see all your information in one app.