Apple Watch - FAQ & Instructions

How to get Swim.com app on your Apple Watch?

Swim.com is compatible with Apple Watch Series 2 and later. To get Swim.com on your Apple Watch, download the Swim.com app to your iPhone or iPad from the iOS App Store here.

Apple Watch Series 1 and Apple Watch (1st generation) aren't suitable for swimming. Learn about the water resistance of your Apple Watch.

In most cases, if your Apple Watch is connected via Bluetooth to your iPhone, the Swim.com app on the Apple Watch should automatically install within five minutes of the phone app is installed. If it does not, please open the Apple Watch app on your iOS device. Ensure the "My Watch" tab is selected at the bottom and then scroll down until you see Swim.com listed under "Available Apps". Select the orange "Install" button to install the app on your watch.

After you have done that, the app should load on the watch in just a few moments. When it is loaded on the watch, open the app and leave it open on the start screen. You should then go to the Swim.com app and touch the "Device Manager" icon in the upper right corner of the screen to check and make sure Swim.com is recognizing your Apple Watch.

When you are on the "Devices" menu, make sure Apple Watch is selected under Device Type. From there, try changing your pool size to something other than the default. If the watch and phone app are connected and working properly, you should see the course length change on the start screen of the watch almost immediately after changing it.

 How do I set a custom course length?

To set a custom course length, open the Swim.com app on your watch and leave it running in the foreground on the main menu screen. Then, open the Swim.com iOS app and open the device manager by touching the icon in the upper right corner when the Progress tab is selected. For Device Type, make sure Apple Watch is selected. Then select Custom Option under "Pool Size" > Custom. Set the course length to your desired custom course length and then select OK.

Once you select OK, the Swim.com app menu screen on your watch should immediately reflect this new course length. 

On the watch app itself, you can toggle between a standard and custom course length by tapping on the grey course length box on the main menu screen. Doing so will expose a menu in which you can choose between courses by rotating the crown button or using the touch screen. The watch will always store the last course you used, so your custom course will be there until you go back to using a standard course length. If you go back to a standard course length, the next time that you need to use a custom length you will need to re-program it.

If you are having trouble with the course length feature not behaving correctly, try force quitting the Swim.com app on your iPhone and re-opening it.  If that does not solve the issue, try powering down your watch and phone and restarting them before attempting to change the course length again.  As a last resort, try re-installing Swim.com on your iPhone.

Do I have to water-lock the screen before starting Swim.com?

Once the Swim.com watch app starts detecting swim motion, the Swim.com app will automatically water lock the screen and you do not need to manually do this from the watch OS menu. A water lock (or screen lock) is necessary when using the Apple Watch while swimming because the touch screen is capacitive and water conducts electricity, meaning that the water can potentially create false touches on the screen while the watch is submerged. The screen lock prevents this from happening.

When you start swimming, the watch screen will go dark after a few moments. When you stop at the wall to rest, the screen will come back on if you lift your wrist to look at the watch (as long as you have this option enabled in Settings > General > Wake Screen). If you do not have wrist raise wake enabled, just push the crown button to wake the screen.

At this point, you will need to manually disable the water lock by spinning the digital crown button until the screen shows the water lock has been disabled. Once it has been disabled, you can navigate the app with the touch screen.

Again, you do not need to manually enable the screen lock from the Watch OS settings for Swim.com. The watch should not encounter any water damage from regular swimming use, regardless of locking the screen or not, as the hardware is always rated to 5 ATM.  Locking the screen only prevents the water from producing false touches. 

For more information on the water resistance rating of the Apple Watch 2, please visit here.

How do I end my workout?

When you are done swimming, You will have two ways to bring up the "End Workout" option:

1. Swipe left 
2. Force touch the screen

With the second way: you'll want to touch the screen and press with a small amount of force, just a bit more than you use with your usual touch, and hold it there until the end workout screen comes up. It can take a few moments, but if you continue to keep your finger on the screen and press you'll see the screen start to contract towards the middle, and then the end workout screen will appear. 

The force touch, which can take some practice to master, is not a specific action to Swim.com - lots of other Apple Watch apps use it. Sometimes, however, wet fingers can interfere with correctly performing this function due to the touch screen's capacitive nature, so if you find that you have trouble it may help to keep a small hand towel close by the end of your lane so that you can dry your fingers if necessary.

After you end the workout, you should be able to see a workout summary. When this appears, scroll to the bottom of this and touch the blue "finished" button.

How do I get my data to sync with Apple Health and Apple Fitness?

When you have first installed the Swim.com app on your iOS device, you will be prompted to link Apple Health with Swim.com. To optimize full use of the sharing capabilities between the two apps, as well as following your activities and health records we encourage you should turn all categories on.

The "write" permissions are what allow workouts on your Swim.com feed to be shared with the Apple Health & Fitness apps. The "read" permissions are what allow Swim.com to retrieve any lap swim data on your Apple Fitness workout feed and populate it on your Swim.com feed (e.g. swims recorded with the native application, Workout, on your Apple Watch, or lap swim data that was imported into your Apple Fitness workout feed from other swimming apps or devices).

Please note that any older swims that exist on your Apple Fitness activity feed before connecting the two apps WILL NOT be imported into your Swim.com feed. 

If you ever need to adjust these permissions, they are located in the Apple Health app on your iOS device. Open Apple Health and navigate to Profile > Privacy > Apps > Swim.com:

How do I start a drill mode?

After you hit the start button at the beginning of your swim, if you don't immediately start swimming with one of the four standard strokes (free, fly, breast, back), the screen will display the app to be in rest mode. The app will also transition into rest mode anytime you stop to rest at the wall between any lengths completed with those standard strokes. Rest mode is identified by the red text on the screen that says "resting" as opposed to the green "swimming".  

While in rest mode, We have two options for you to expose the drill/pace/end workout menu:

1. Force touch the screen.
2. Swipe left.

The reason for the second option is that sometimes Apple Watch won't allow long-press on the Activity App to change calorie goals or see weekly activity. So we implemented a dedicated button to allow users to manually end the activity instead of the Long press to see the menu.

A note for you anytime when you can't long press or force touch the screen please swipe left or right. You can easily find what you need.

If this is your first time using drill mode, a short prompt will explain how to use the feature. To set your drill mode distance, touch the blue "Start Drill Mode" button and then use the digital crown button or touch screen to set the desired distance. 

When you are ready to start the drill, you can either simultaneously press the digital crown and side buttons to start the drill or force touch again or swipe left and touch "start".

Then, it will take you back to your workout screen and show you the drill distance and a running timer. If you are not ready to use drill mode, force touch or swipe left and select "exit". When you are done swimming the drill, force touch again or swipe left and your options will include electing a new drill distance or exiting drill mode.

How do I set the pace/send-off timer?

At the beginning of your workout (left after you hit the blue start button), you will see the watch is in resting mode. This is noted in red text on the screen.

While in rest mode, force touch the screen or swipe left to expose the drill/pace/end workout menu.

If this is your first time using the pace/send-off timer, a short prompt will explain how to use the feature. To set your desired pace duration, touch the blue "Start Pace Mode" button and then use the digital crown button to set the desired duration.

When you are ready to start the timer, three options you can choose to start pacing timer:

1. Simultaneously press the digital crown and side buttons.
2. Force touch the screen.
3. Swipe left.

After that, it will take you back to your workout screen. If you are not ready to use the timer, force touch or swipe left to exit the mode.

How do I use the pre-loaded workout functionality?

The Swim.com mobile app allows you to search our library of workouts and send these workout plans to your watch so you can follow it along during your workout! No more memorizing what you were supposed to do or carrying a card to the lane with you!

Currently, these workouts will appear as virtual cards on the watch and are only available to view during rest periods as a reference. This feature will not automatically prompt you with the information for your next interval during the swim. You must manually go to view the information. Eventually, this feature will be built out so that it does become in-swim guidance with automatic prompting.

To start using these features, you first want to navigate to the workouts tab on your mobile app.

The workouts tab allows you to select workouts from Swim.com's library or create your own. In order to get those workouts to your watch, you must start by adding the workouts to your favorites list.

To add a workout to your favorites, find one that suits your needs (make sure it's the correct course length!) then select it. Then, touch the ellipsis in the upper right corner.

You can favorite as many workouts on the mobile app as you would like, but you can only have up to five stored on the watch at one time. 

• There is also a favorite workout of the week from the Swim.com Team. It always shows on the top of the workouts list. Here is workout of the week:

• The rest are your favorite workouts. Here is your favorite workout list:

To remove the workout from your watch you would need to un-favorite it from the mobile app, following the same steps as above.

Now that you have your favorite workouts loaded into your mobile app, you're ready to swim with the watch app!

On the watch app start screen, first, make sure you have the correct course length setting, adjust it if needed, then touch "Select Workout". Find the workout you want on the screen by swiping right and then hitting the blue "Select" button. If you do not want to swim the workout, select the red "No Workout" button. After choosing the workout, it will display on the start screen and you can now start your swim. After you tap the button start, there are two option: Guided or Unguided.

To access the workout plan, you will need to swipe from right to left to expose it.

To view the prescribed intervals, use the digital crown button on the side of the watch to scroll down. The first screen you see will show the entire warmup set in smaller text. As you scroll down you will see that set broken into different sections, if applicable, and those will be shown in larger text.

This continues on through the main sets and cool down. Many beginner workouts will not contain multiple sections within a warm-up, main set, or cool down and may appear on the watch workout sequence to be "duplicates". This is not actually the case, again, it's just that several of the beginner workouts do not have multiple sections within a set.

During a rest period, you can always swipe over to this screen if you need a reminder of what you are supposed to be doing for your next interval. Here is how this particular example workout progresses.

When you are done swimming, end the workout like normal by force touching or swipe left the screen. Below you can see the results of this swimmer that swam this example workout.

What can I do if swims are not transferring from my Apple watch to Swim.com iOS app?

If you are unable to sync swims from the watch to your swim feed on the mobile app, please try the following three ways:

1. Resetting the Bluetooth connection between the watch and phone app can sometimes help.
2. Tap on the upload button on the history list of watch app.

Go to the history list on your apple watch. Then click to the swim, and a button Upload will appear, click the button to manually upload. Here are a few things to make it easier for you to visualize:

If two ways above doesn't help solve the problem, a combination of force closing the apps and device restarts may help. 

To do this, first force close the Swim.com app on your Apple Watch (https://www.imore.com/how-force-quit-apps-apple-watch) and then force close the Swim.com app on your iOS device (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201276). Force closing both apps will end all running processes originating from the Swim.com app so that the next time you open the apps, everything starts up fresh.  After force closing the apps, shut down and restart both devices. This allows the devices to clear temporary data caches that could potentially be interfering. Once both devices are running again, open the Swim.com iOS app, then open the Swim.com watch app. Let the apps run in the foreground and allow for up to 5 minutes to sync data. Refresh your activity feed on the Swim.com iOS app by toggling between the Progress and Swim tabs or by swiping down on the feed itself. This refresh command will instruct that app to populate any new swim data that has transferred from the watch app to our online server. For more information about this problem, please click here.

The app isn't counting my distance correctly, why?

If you are experiencing the app undercounting your overall distance swam, this issue might be alleviated by trying a different turn technique at the wall.  Our app's algorithms work best when you utilize a flip or open turn at the wall.  If you can't perform those types of turns, at the minimum you will need to push off the wall with your feet and streamline glide for a few yards before resuming your stroke.  The algorithms can only identify that you performed a turn when there is enough of a recorded pause in your stroke cadence, and pushing off the walls changes your acceleration, which also aids the algorithms in identifying a turn.  If your turn consists of swimming to the wall, touching it, turning around, and immediately resuming your stroke, you will likely experience the app undercounting your distance because there is not enough of a pause in your stroke cadence for the watch to interpret a turn that happened. In this case, the accelerometer data produced by your motion and processed by the algorithms appear as one giant, continuous length, which causes the undercounting of the overall distance.

Other factors that could produce inaccurate lap counts are: 

1. Switching stroke type mid-length 
2. Pausing for several seconds to let another swimmer pass you in the lane 
3. Low stroke rates on your length 
4. Not using drill mode for kickboard drills

I don't want to see distance, I'd rather see lap count, how do I change that?

To change this setting, open the Swim.com iOS app. Navigate to Settings > Devices > Apple Watch. Touch "Distance Units" to open a menu in which you can choose from yards/meters, laps, or lengths.

The number of laps is shown here:

Where can I view my heart rate data from a swim?

Heart Rate data is collected from the optical wrist heart rate sensor on your Apple Watch. Swim.com will display this data on our mobile app. To view the data, choose the swim you'd like to view from your list, then select "View Swim Details". swipe right on the header to reveal HR. The main HR screen will show your average heart rate for each interval. Touch the interval to break down your average heart rate by length. Swipe right on the screen to reveal your average, minimum, and maximum heart rate per length and interval.

Please note that the Apple Watch HR data collected while swimming could potentially be inaccurate. This is because water that becomes trapped between the sensor and your wrist can refract the light and corrupt readings (Wrist-based HR sensors operate by shining a green light that illuminates your capillaries in order to sense pulsations). This light refraction corruption typically manifests as a higher beats-per-minute than what it actually is.

Can I use Swim.com with a first generation Apple Watch?

The Swim.com app software will work with your first generation Apple Watch. However, the device does not have sufficient water resistance to be safely used while swimming. Swimming with this device could damage it and void any applicable warranties. For more information on the first generation Apple Watch and water resistance, please refer to this help article from Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205000.

How do I set goal & Weekly goal?

We allow setting goals for both swim and weekly goals.

• Each swim both pool swim and Open Water, you can set the goal before you start. Navigate to the Main menu > Choose the activity type > Touch the button "Set Goal". Before the screen set goal display, you can swipe down or up to select the goal > Touch Set goal.

Following is set goal flow of activities with Pool swim:

• Weekly goal: The weekly goal set your goal in a week, we are trying to separate the goal of the Pool swim and Open water, current combines both. 

You set that on the main menu: Navigate to the Main menu > Swipe down and touch the button Weekly goal > Swipe down or up to select the goal > Touch Set goal. Once you touch Set goal, you can see the WG Process in the Apple watch screen.

Following is set Weekly goal flow:

Can I change the pool size and unit of distance measurement?

1. With the Apple watch, you just have three option to select the pool size( 25-30-50) with two units of distance ( meter and yard)

In the Main menu, you can tap to the button Meter/Yard to change the unit of distance.

In the Pool swim screen, tap on the first button to select one of three the pool size( 25-30-50) with the unit that you choose before.

      2. You can customize pool size and unit distance by using Swim.com iOS app:

Open the Swim.com app on your watch and leave it running in the foreground on the main menu screen. Then, open the Swim.com iOS app and open the device manager by touching the icon in the upper right corner when the Progress tab is selected. For Device Type, make sure Apple Watch is selected.

• To change pool size:

Select Custom Option under "Pool Size". You can select one of the suggested pool sizes. Besides, you also customize the pool size by touching the button Custom. Set your desired custom size and unit, then select OK.

Once you select OK, the Swim.com app menu screen on your watch should immediately reflect this new pool size.

• To change unit of distance measurement:

Select Distance under "Display". Swipe up and down to choose your desire distance units, then select Done. 

Once you select Done, the Swim.com app menu screen on your watch should immediately reflect this new Distance unit.

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