First, I do not have an Apple Watch and have used Garmin hardware with Garmin Connect and Strava for tracking activities. After upgrading to iOS 16, the Apple fitness app allowed Garmin Connect to push data and track calories ans well as add to goals. I was also able to start sharing workouts through the Apple fitness app with my wife, an Apple Watch user.
After seeing how the ecosystem works, I wanted to at least try an Apple Watch to see if it would work for me. Not relevant to this post, but the experiment failed miserably. Suffice it to say I was unable to get the Apple Watch to sync properly and decided to remove it from my devices and go back to my Garmin watch. now the Apple Fitness app still thinks I have an Apple Watch and only shows the dashboard with move. Exercise, Stand etc whereas it should revert back to the “non-watch” user dashboard that only has calories, steps and distance.
Although I cannot duplicate my issue as I do not want to completely wipe my phone, here are the steps to recreate my issue:
Install iOS 16 without an Apple Watch connected to your account. Verify Garmin Connect (or possibly other workout apps) push data to the Fitness app. After data exists without an Apple Watch, add a watch to your account. The dashboard and tracking should change. Now, try to revert back to the dashboard that was shown prior to having an Apple Watch connected to your account.
I have submitted this to Apple technical support and they’ve escalated it multiple times but still have not committed to the fact that this is a bug or how to resolve the issue other than try wiping all data everywhere which seems a little ridiculous.
Realistically, this seems like a development issue since this is such a new feature. Creating a reversion function was probably something they just neglected to test for whatever reason.
See pictures showing that workout data is being recognized but the dashboard is wrong since it is expecting Apple Watch data for some reason still.
