Do you want to grab every activity badge? Here's a full list of all the badges and what you need to do to get them.
At the beginning of each month, our Apple Watch always reminds you of your current challenge. This one is individual, sometimes it's just a matter of completing a certain number of workouts, or closing the rings more often, happily for seven or more consecutive days.
Upcoming Earth Day and International Dance Day awards
As usual, Apple celebrates the upcoming Earth Day with a special award. To do this, you'll need to be at the 22. April complete a workout of at least 30 minutes outdoors and record it using the workout app or third-party apps that have access to workout data.
The following Saturday celebrates World Dance Day. On 29. April you need to dance and record this activity with the Apple Watch for at least 20 minutes. In Germany, there's the traditional Tanz in den Mai on the day after, but Apple hasn't yet come up with the idea of awarding those dances, too. For more limited-time awards, see the linked section below.
Generally, achievement badges are a fun thing to do – and motivate some(s) to be more diligent about training. They only provide a little visual flair, they don't even do anything, and yet for some reason you just have to collect them. Achievements are great motivators, and activity tracking achievement badges on the Apple Watch have inspired many users to exercise more.
If you want to maximize your badge count, you will pursue as many activities as possible. Most badges are available year-round, but there are also some time-limited special events, such as the ones mentioned at the beginning of this article. Here's a list of all the activities for the Apple Watch and how to unlock them.
Standard achievements
Most achievements can be done year-round. If you open the Activities app (now also called "Fitness") on your iPhone and then tap on the "Awards" area, some of them will be listed even if you haven't fulfilled their conditions yet – in this case, they will be represented by a gray outline.
There are, however, some achievements that don't show up until you've earned them. Past and future monthly challenges, for example, won't show up, nor will various individual workouts.
First workout
The first time you perform a new exercise for at least five minutes, you receive an achievement badge. The types of workouts eligible for them are:
- Cycling
- Cross-training
- Row
- Running
- Stair-Stepper
- Swimming
- Walking
- Cool Down
Activities with both indoor and outdoor variations, such as biking and walking, are bundled together; you can do both activities to get the badge, and can only get it once.
First workout with fitness+
Apple has also had its own fitness service in Germany since late 2021 called Fitness+. In all kinds of sports, coaches and training groups demonstrate exercises or spur you on to peak performance on the bike ergometer and treadmill. This is accompanied by music from all kinds of genres. For each first workout, the Apple Watch will donate a new badge. You also get badges if you go for a walk with "time for walking" or a jog with "time for running". This involves celebrities telling you (in English) all sorts of things about their lives or their workouts and competitions – after which you run music selected by the celebrities. Many of these celebrities are world famous in USA, Canada and UK, but nowhere else.
Workout record
Every time you beat your previous best record for calories burned in any of the exercises listed above, you get this badge.
There is one caveat: you must first complete five workouts of this type. If you want to trick the system a bit, make sure your first four workouts of each type are relatively short and easy, so it doesn't take much effort to beat them.
7-workout week
Easily complete any workout of at least 15 minutes any day of the week. Note that the week is Monday-Sunday and you must do a workout on each of those days (you can't just do seven days in a row). If you start a running workout whenever you go outside, you can easily achieve this.
New Exercise Record
Every day that your exercise ring goes further than ever before (which means you burned more calories in a day), you get this badge. There is a catch: you must use your Apple Watch for ten days before you can earn this award.
New workout record
It's just like the exercise record, only for the green ring. The workout counts the minutes of exercise, not the calories burned, so the badge is really easy to get. Just like the exercise record, you first need to use your Apple Watch for ten days.
Exercise goal 200%, 300%, 400%.
You earn these awards when you exceed your calorie goal (the red movement ring) by two, three, or four times. In other words, you need to run the red activity ring completely around two, three or four times a day. This is easy to get if you set your exercise goal very low. (Would be unsportsmanlike, though, note. d. Red )
New exercise goal
Each time you change your daily exercise goal and then exceed that new goal, you earn this achievement. You can change your exercise goal by opening the Activity app on your Apple Watch and pressing the screen.
Longest series
If you achieve your physical activity goal several days in a row (close the red ring), this is a series. But you will get this award only when this series finally ends and when it is longer than the previous best series. (In the editorial office, 89 days is currently the record, note. d. Red)
Perfect week
This is awarded for four categories: Moving, Exercising, Standing and All Activities. For the first three, simply complete the rings (red, green or blue) each day of the week. To earn the Perfect Week badge (all activities), close all three rings every day for an entire week, Monday through Sunday.
Perfect month
Unlike the perfect week, there are not several different perfect month badges for the different color rings. The only requirement of the Perfect Month is to close the red activity ring every day of the month – one of the most demanding challenges, because on any given day of the week the weather will screw up your workout plans or your inner pig will prevail – not to mention infections that require breaks from training.
Each month has its own unique fitness challenge. If you have notifications set for the Activity app on your Apple Watch, you will see the goal at the beginning of the month, but you will also see the current month's challenge in the achievements tab of the app on your iPhone. It will be a gray outline at first, but you can tap on it to see what the challenge means.
The monthly challenge may present you with burning a certain number of calories, exercising for a certain amount of time, or traveling a certain distance. You don't know beforehand what each new month will bring, you always have to check it out.
Exercise goals for 100, 365, 500, 3.000 times
If you reach your daily exercise goal (close the red ring) 100 times, you will receive an achievement badge. You will get another one if you do it 365 times, 500 times, 1.000 times and in further steps of 250 up to 3.000 times close. These ring finishes don't have to be in immediate succession, only the total number of times you've ever hit the target counts. Once a year you should already earn such a badge, or?
Time limited awards
Apple occasionally releases one-off challenges that are only available for a limited time, often just for a day, weekend or week. Some are limited to the U.S. because they have to do with U.S. holidays – but other holidays, like Chinese New Year, are celebrated worldwide with a badge.
The next challenges are coming up soon: on 22. April, Apple celebrates Earth Day with a special award, week after that you have to dance your way to the next challenge, then in the summer it's yoga and World Environment Day: On 05.06 you have to close the stehring to earn the award, on 21.06. you have to practice yoga for at least 20 minutes.
You'll get a notification on your Apple Watch when one of these comes up (make sure you've enabled notifications for the fitness app by using the Apple Watch app on your iPhone). We will see some more recurring challenges later this year:
International Women's Day (8. March)
Am 8. March, Apple held its keynote in 2022, where the manufacturer unveiled the new Mac Studio. The day also has another meaning, on World Women's Day 2022 the motto was "Break the Bias". In 2023, it's all about the hashtag #EmbraceEquity, we will surely get a challenge from our Apple Watch in time, 20 or 30 minutes of training at a time should be it.
Earth Day 2023 (22. April)
This badge has the same requirements every year: Go outside and complete an exercise activity for at least 30 minutes.
International Dance Day (29. April)
Dancing is not a workout after all? My ass! Apple now sees it that way too, but dancing wasn't one of the workouts the Apple Watch could measure from the start. In the meantime, however, Fitness+ also offers dancing as a workout. On the International Day of Dance, you have to do it for 20 minutes – dance. (We musicians are a little envious of the dancers, because we earn nothing for 20 minutes of playing blues scales up and down the next day on World Jazz Day. Note. d. Red .)
National Fitness Day (8. August, only in China)
There are still many timed activities, and some of them are region-specific, but this is the first one dedicated to China. The 8. August was declared National Fitness Day in China, and Apple is providing a special activity badge for those in China who complete a 30-minute or longer workout on that day. (on 8.8.08 at 8.08 o'clock local time the Olympic Games in Beijing were opened, the 8 is considered there as a lucky number, note. d. Red. )
National Parks Day (end of August or beginning of September.)
For the first time, Apple called the limited performance goal on 1. September 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Redwood National Park on. To earn the badge, you had to run, walk or exercise in a wheelchair for at least 50 minutes. In subsequent years, Apple changed the goal: It was enough to move one mile (1.6 kilometers) on the day of the challenge, but in a national park. It didn't have to be the Redwood, the editors of Macwelt managed to do it in the Wadden Sea National Park, also the Berchtesgaden area is a good place for it.
Veterans Day (11. November, U.S. only)
Another U.S.-Specific challenge, you only had to train for 11 minutes to earn it. On 11. November commemorates the end of World War I in England and the U.S., on 11. November 1918 the German Empire had signed the armistice in Compiegne.
Thanksgiving Day (fourth Thursday in November, U.S. only)
Time to get up from eating turkey! In order to earn this badge, you had to complete a 5K training on Thanksgiving. This means a running, walking or wheelchair training session that is at least 3.1 miles or 5 kilometers long, respectively. This challenge is limited to those in the United States, as Thanksgiving is a U.S. holiday.