Step counters break more often than they should. One day your app is working perfectly, counting every step from your morning walk to your evening grocery run. Next day? Nothing. Zero steps. Or maybe it’s counting but only catching about half of what you actually walked.
This happens to almost everyone who uses a fitness app. The sensors in your phone are fine. Your app isn’t broken. What’s actually happening is that your phone’s settings are blocking the app from doing its job. Sometimes it’s a permission that got turned off. Other times it’s your battery saver jumping in to “help” by shutting down background apps. The good news is you can fix almost all of these problems yourself in a few minutes. No tech degree needed. Just a couple of setting changes and maybe a restart.
What Stops Your Phone From Counting Steps
Inside your phone are tiny sensors that feel movement. Accelerometers detect when your phone moves up and down or side to side. Gyroscopes measure rotation and tilt. When you walk, these sensors pick up a specific rhythm and pattern. Your fitness app reads that pattern and says, “Hey, that’s a step.”
Pretty straightforward, right? Except your phone doesn’t just let any app read sensor data whenever it wants. Apps have to ask for permission first. If your fitness app never got that permission, or if it somehow lost it, the sensors are still working but your app can’t see what they’re detecting.
Then there’s the battery situation. Modern phones are obsessed with battery life. They’ll do anything to squeeze out an extra hour of power, including shutting down apps that run in the background. Your fitness app needs to run constantly to count steps. But your phone sees an app using resources all day and thinks, “This is draining battery, better stop it.” So it does. And your step tracking dies.
Location adds another layer to this. Lots of fitness apps use GPS to figure out if you’re actually walking or just sitting in a moving vehicle. They use it to track outdoor routes and measure distance. Without location access, some apps can’t track anything. Others will track but with terrible accuracy.
App problems exist too. Updates introduce bugs. Files get corrupted when your phone crashes. The app might look like it’s working fine on the surface but underneath, something’s broken and data isn’t being saved. These issues need different fixes than permission problems.
Fitness App Not Tracking Steps: Common Causes
Let’s break down what actually stops your app from tracking. Once you know the cause, the fix becomes obvious.
1. Motion Sensor Access Got Blocked
Your fitness app can’t read your phone’s sensors without permission. Period. If you accidentally hit “Don’t Allow” when you first installed the app, tracking was doomed from the start. Even if you allowed it initially, system updates sometimes reset these permissions without telling you.
Phones treat motion data as private information. They won’t share it unless you explicitly say it’s okay. No permission means no sensor access, which means no step counting. Simple as that.
2. Background App Refresh Is Off
Here’s a problem most people don’t even know exists. Your fitness app has to keep running when you’re not looking at it. Otherwise it can only count steps when you have the app open on your screen, which defeats the entire point of automatic tracking.
Background app refresh is what keeps apps alive when they’re not in use. Turn it off, and your app goes to sleep the moment you close it. It wakes up when you open it again, but everything in between is lost. You could walk 15,000 steps, and your app might only record the 300 you took while checking your progress.
Your phone disables this feature to save battery. Makes sense for most apps. Terrible for fitness tracking. And here’s the worst part: your app won’t tell you this is happening. It just quietly stops counting and you have no idea until later.
3. Battery Optimization Kills Background Activity
Battery saver mode is aggressive. When it kicks in, usually around 20% or 30% battery life, your phone starts shutting down anything that uses power continuously. Fitness apps are near the top of that list because they’re constantly checking sensors.
This means your tracking might work perfectly all morning when your battery is full. Then around lunchtime, when your battery hits that threshold, tracking just stops. No notification. No warning. Just silence. You keep walking. Your app keeps not counting.
Some phones have separate battery optimization features that run all the time, not just when battery is low. These features decide which apps are “important” and which ones can be throttled. Guess which category fitness apps usually fall into?
4. Location Permissions Are Too Restrictive
GPS does more than just track where you’re walking. It helps your app understand context. Are you moving at walking speed or driving speed? Are you on a treadmill or outside? Is that bouncing motion from actual steps or just a bumpy car ride?
When location is set to “only while using the app,” your app can’t access GPS data when it’s running in the background. Some apps handle this by tracking steps without GPS, but with reduced accuracy. Others just refuse to track anything at all until you give them full location access.
Precise location matters too. Some phones offer a “fuzzy” location option that gives apps a general area instead of exact coordinates. Fitness apps need exact coordinates to work properly. Fuzzy location breaks distance tracking and can mess up step counting.
5. The App’s Cache Is Corrupted
Apps store temporary data to load faster and work more efficiently. This cache includes things like user preferences, recent activity, and tracking history. Over time, especially after app updates or unexpected crashes, this stored data can get corrupted.
When cache corruption happens, weird stuff starts occurring. Your app might open normally but refuse to save new data. It might crash randomly. It might display old information that won’t update. Sometimes it looks like tracking isn’t working when really it’s working fine but the corrupted cache is preventing the data from displaying.
Fitness App Not Tracking Steps: DIY Fixes
Time to actually fix this thing. Start at the top and work your way down. Most people find their solution in the first three fixes.
1. Enable Motion Sensor Access
Grab your phone and open Settings. Scroll through your apps until you find your fitness app. Tap it. On iPhones, you’ll see “Motion & Fitness” somewhere in that menu. Turn it on. If you see “Health” listed too, turn that on as well.
Android phones organize this differently. Find your fitness app in Settings, tap it, then tap Permissions. Look for “Physical activity,” “Body sensors,” or “Motion detection.” Whatever you find, make sure it says “Allow” or “Allowed.”
After changing this, don’t just switch back to your app. Actually close it completely. Swipe it away from your recent apps. Then open it fresh and take a short walk to test whether steps are being counted now.
2. Turn On Background App Refresh
This is critical. On an iPhone, go to Settings, then General, then Background App Refresh. The main switch at the very top needs to be green. Then scroll down to your specific fitness app and make sure that individual switch is also green.
Android users need to go through battery settings instead. Open Settings, go to Apps, find your fitness app, and tap on Battery. Turn off any battery optimization for this app. Look for options like “Remove restrictions” or “Don’t optimize” and enable them. Some Android phones have a separate “Background restriction” toggle that needs to be turned off.
This change alone fixes tracking problems for most people. Once background refresh is active, your app can monitor your movement continuously without you having to think about it or keep the app open.
3. Disable Battery Saver Features
Battery saver mode and fitness tracking don’t get along. At all. If you’re on an iPhone, open Settings, tap Battery, and turn off Low Power Mode whenever you want accurate step tracking. Some iPhones let you customize Low Power Mode to exclude certain apps, which is perfect if you can find that option.
Android has battery saver in the quick settings panel. Swipe down from the top of your screen and look for a battery icon. Tap it to turn battery saver off. You can also go to Settings, then Battery, and disable any power saving modes from there.
I know what you’re thinking. “But I need battery saver to make it through the day.” Fair point. But battery saver actively prevents fitness tracking from working. You’re better off charging your phone during lunch or keeping a portable charger handy. Modern fast charging means 15 minutes plugged in can get you through the rest of the day anyway.
4. Set Location to Always Allow
Open Settings, find your fitness app, and tap on Location. Change the setting from “While Using the App” or “Ask Next Time” to “Always” or “All the Time.” This gives your app permanent access to GPS data, which it needs for accurate tracking.
Location access helps your app make smart decisions about what counts as a step and what doesn’t. It can tell when you’re walking versus riding in a car. It can track outdoor paths and calculate actual distance traveled. Some apps even use location to automatically detect when you start exercising, so you don’t have to manually log every workout.
On iPhones, there’s an additional setting called “Precise Location.” Make sure that’s turned on too. Precise Location uses GPS satellites for accuracy, while turning it off makes your app rely on cell towers and WiFi networks, which are way less accurate for tracking movement.
5. Clear Corrupted App Data
Sometimes the app just needs a clean slate. iPhone users have to delete the app entirely and reinstall it from the App Store. Before doing this, triple-check that your fitness data is backed up to your account or the cloud. Most apps sync automatically, but it’s worth confirming so you don’t lose months of history.
Android makes this less dramatic. Go to Settings, tap Apps, select your fitness app, and tap Storage. Hit “Clear Cache” first. This removes temporary files without touching your actual data. Open the app and test it. Still broken? Go back and tap “Clear Data” instead, but be aware this resets everything and you’ll have to log in again.
Walk around for a few minutes after clearing data or reinstalling. If the problem was corrupted files, you should see steps being counted immediately.
6. Restart Your Phone Completely
Yeah, I know. “Turn it off and back on again” sounds like lazy advice. But phone restarts genuinely fix sensor issues more often than you’d expect. When your phone runs for days or weeks straight, processes get stuck. Sensors stop responding correctly. Things that should work just don’t.
Press and hold your power button until you see the shutdown or restart option. Let your phone turn off completely. Wait about ten seconds. Power it back on. Once everything finishes loading up, open your fitness app and walk around to test it.
Restarting clears temporary glitches and refreshes all the connections between your apps and your hardware. If tracking stopped working suddenly for no apparent reason, this quick fix often brings it back instantly.
7. Contact Support or Get Professional Help
If you’ve tried everything on this list and tracking still won’t work, something more serious is wrong. Open the app store and read recent reviews for your fitness app. If you see dozens of people complaining about step tracking after a recent update, the problem is the app itself, not your phone.
Reach out to the app’s support team. Most apps have a help section with contact information, or you can find it on their website. They might already know about the bug and have a specific fix or workaround ready. If the problem is hardware-related, like a broken accelerometer sensor, you’ll need to contact your phone manufacturer or take your phone to a repair shop for diagnosis.
Wrapping Up
Most step tracking failures come down to permissions and battery settings. Your phone is trying to protect battery life by limiting what apps can do in the background, but that directly conflicts with how fitness apps need to work. Check motion permissions first, then background refresh, then battery optimization. One of those three usually fixes the problem.
Getting these settings right means your fitness app can actually do what it’s designed to do. Track your movement continuously without you having to babysit it or keep checking if it’s working. If the basic fixes don’t solve your issue, you’re probably dealing with either a software bug that needs an app update or a hardware problem that requires professional diagnosis.