How to Share Your Apple Watch Activity Rings with Friends and Family

Tracking your daily Move, Exercise, and Stand rings on Apple Watch is an effective way to stay mindful of personal health goals. However, maintaining fitness habits over the long term is significantly easier with social motivation and peer accountability. Sharing your daily progress allows you and your workout partners to celebrate goal milestones, send motivational banter, and initiate week-long head-to-head fitness competitions.

The Apple Health and Fitness ecosystem includes seamless Activity Sharing between Apple Watch and iPhone users. With activity sharing enabled, you can view your friends’ completed rings, workout types, total step counts, and earned awards in real time while maintaining granular privacy controls over your personal biological data.

Sending an Activity Sharing Invitation from Your iPhone

The easiest method to connect with new workout partners is via the Fitness app on your paired iPhone.

1. Open the Fitness app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the Sharing tab in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
3. Tap the Account / Invite icon (represented by two silhouetted figures or a plus sign +) in the top-right corner.
4. Tap Invite a Friend.
5. In the recipient field, type the contact name, phone number, or Apple Account email address of the person you wish to invite. (You can invite up to 40 workout partners).
6. Tap Send. Your friend will receive a push notification in their Fitness app requesting to share activity.

Sending and Accepting Sharing Invites Directly on Apple Watch

You can also initiate invitations directly from your wrist using the Activity app on watchOS.

1. Press the Digital Crown on your Apple Watch to open the App Grid, then tap the Activity app (the three coloured concentric rings).
2. Swipe left to navigate past your own rings and history until you reach the Sharing screen.
3. Scroll down to the bottom and tap Invite a Friend.
4. Select a suggested friend from your recent contacts or tap the contact card icon to search your directory.
5. Tap Invite. Once accepted, their live Activity rings will appear alongside yours in your watchOS Sharing feed.

Viewing Friend Activity and Starting a 7-Day Competition

Once connected, you can inspect detailed workout data and launch fitness challenges:

1. In the iPhone Fitness app, tap the Sharing tab.
2. Tap on a friend’s name to view their daily rings, active calorie burn, total exercise minutes, and completed workouts.
3. To challenge your friend to a match, scroll down and tap Compete with [Name].
4. A confirmation sheet explains the rules: both participants earn 1 point for every 1% added to their rings each day (up to a maximum of 600 points per day) over a 7-day period.
5. Tap Invite [Name]. Once accepted, watchOS tracks points automatically and sends daily score updates.

Managing Privacy and Muting Activity Alerts

If you need to adjust what information is shared or take a break from notifications:

• Muting alerts: Open your friend’s profile in the Sharing tab and tap Mute Notifications to stop receiving alerts every time they finish a workout.
• Hiding your activity: Tap Hide My Activity. Your friend will see your rings as blank dashes while you retain the ability to view their activity.
• Removing a friend: Tap Remove Friend at the bottom of their profile to terminate sharing immediately.