Turning Off Heart Rate Sensor

rishio

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Sep 7, 2016
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I'm buying an Apple Watch Series II but I value getting as much battery life as possible so I'm planning on turning off the heart rate sensor.

I'm just wondering what I lose by doing that. In terms of health, I plan to use the watch for a bit of swimming and yoga. I also take a walk everyday - maybe for about 45 min. While it would be nice to know how many laps I swam, how far I walked or how much time I spent doing yoga, I'm not really that interested in things such as Calories (I'm not even sure what Calories mean to be honest). Besides Calories, is there anything else I lose by turning off the heart sensor? Does it effect the watches ability to measure how many laps I take of how far I walk?

What do people get out of the heart rate sensor besides how many calories (or batteries!) they burned?
 

kch50428

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Oct 22, 2010
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I don't believe the heart rate sensor is a battery drain at all... try using the watch as is and see what battery life you get...
 

Mac Guy

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What do people get out of the heart rate sensor besides how many calories (or batteries!) they burned?

It's used in Activities (for calories burned) and for the Heart Rate App. Third-party apps can be authorized to access the Health app API, but I don't know if they can access the Heart Rate sensor directly. So unless those apps are open, the sensor probably uses very little juice.

It may be part of the authorization process (needing to be on your wrist. If so then turning it off would probably have little effect since all you're affecting is Heart Rate and any related apps, but the sensor is still awake doing it's security work.
 

djrakowski

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Oct 11, 2011
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What do people get out of the heart rate sensor besides how many calories (or batteries!) they burned?

I use heart rate as an indication of how hard I'm working when I run. I try to stay within certain ranges to avoid running out of energy before the end of a race, to gauge whether I'm getting more fit as I train, etc. But I only use it during training or races. I don't see much value in an always-on heart rate monitor.
 

tcuprof

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While I don't think you can turn off the heart rate sensor, you can go into the settings for Workout and enable Power Saving Mode. This will disable the constant checking of heart rate during a workout. If you regularly do several long workouts every day, this could be a fairly significant savings in battery life.
 

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