The Activity app on your Apple Watch is like a fitness tracker. When you wear the device on your wrist, it will start tracking how much you “move, exercise, and stand from day to day.” The best part, all of this is done automatically as long as you wear the Apple Watch throughout the day.
Another good thing about your Activity application is that you can share your data with other people. These include friends, family, or anyone in the world as long as they meet the following requirements:
- Have their number under your Contacts list
- Have an Apple Watch themselves
This is not just a one-way sharing when your Activity data is being shared; you can also tap on that particular individual to see their stats as well. This is an excellent way to stay motivated and keep everyone in your athletic loop.
While this application works really well for me, several people have reported that they were having trouble with adding and removing friends in the Activity Sharing portion of their Apple Watch. Furthermore, other problems related to this feature also occurs.
In this post, we will list each issue out along with some fixes for you. If at any time your Activity Sharing stop working you can always try the solutions below.
Unable to Add or Remove Friends Activity Sharing
One of our readers couldn’t send a request to his friend. If you have the same problem, you probably saw a popup that says, “There was an error sending your Activity Sharing invitation. Try sending it again.”
For the most part, when you select “OK” and re-send the invitation, it should go through. However, if your iPhone still prompts that message, then try this.
- Upgrade to the latest watchOS 3 version
- Unpair the Apple Watch and iPhone
Your friends should be able to see your invitation in their Activity app afterward. They might have to update their Apple Watch to the current watchOS to accept. And vice versa for the inviter.
“User must own and be using an Apple Watch” Error
Believe it or not, Apple Watch makes mistakes too. One of my co-workers wanted to share his activity with me. When he enter my name in the Activity app and tap Send, it displays an error message that says, “User must own and be using an Apple Watch.”
Are you kidding me?
I do have an Apple Watch, and it’s always on my hand. This problem was kinda confusing, but someone from the Apple forum was able to find a fix for it.
He suggests:
- Open the Health app and let it load for once
- Remove any older or previously owned iPhone from your iCloud
Weird solutions, but seems to helped multiple users.
Only one-way sharing in the Activity app
What’s the point of seeing your friend’s Activity data when that person can’t even see yours? That happened to us recently. My friend’s Activity Stats were able to appear on my Apple Watch, but then none of my data would display on his side.
The part I don’t get is that everything works fine with other people that he shared his information with. Luckily, the solution to this problem is only one. That is unpairing and repairing the Apple Watch. Both of you should do it, but you can always give it a go first if the issue disappears then no need for your friend to perform such action.
Ultimately, the issues with your Activity Sharing feature can only extend to a certain point. Additional fixes like restarting the watch, iPhone, or hard reset should help to resolve most of those problems.
Lynn says
My sister and i have both unpaired and we still cant get each other on the activity app. It wont delete the request that i sent her 2 months ago. She doesnt have the request and we both are stuck… help
Tyrone says
Sorry to hear that. What else have you guys done so far?
Lynn says
Hardware shutdown and reset network
Nick Weitekamp says
I also had an issue sharing. I tried unpairing, do a reset, everything suggested and nothing worked.
What did finally fix my issue was going to my phone and login out of iCloud and then logging back in. Once i did that i was able to share and accept people in the Activity app.
Jay says
Thank you for your advice about Apple Watch fitness app. It suddenly quit working and following your advice it worked again
Nick Weitekamp says
I also had an issue sharing. I tried unpairing, do a reset, everything suggested and nothing worked.
What did finally fix my issue was going to my phone and login out of iCloud and then logging back in. Once i did that i was able to share and accept people in the Activity app.
chris palmenberg says
This worked for me as well. Having problems adding people and also accepting invites. I signed out and then signed back in to iCloud and it fixed this issue.
Jon West says
I have tried it all, reloading my phone my watch and signing in and out of icloud. I only have one email address and one iPhone listed. But everytime I send a request “There was an error sending your Activity Sharing invitation. Try sending it again. But it never works. Any more ideas before I head to the apple store? Also to note it was working fine for months and I started not seeing friends progress, people could see mine but I could not see theirs.
Tyrone says
I would suggest visiting the Apple Store. Let us know what you got out of it.
Peachy says
I can see all of my friends activities and they can see all of my activities. I was friends with one of my friends but it would not let me see her activity I unfriended her and when I try to re-friend her he gave me “There was an error sending your Activity Sharing invitation. Try sending it again.” I did all the stuff web pages told me to do with restarting repairing and nothing helped. We can both still friend other people but not each other. Even deleted contacts and put contacts back in. Still can’t friend each other.
Karma says
How come I can add everyone except my daughter in the activity sharing. I’m signed into iCloud. Heck my phone even suggested me to add her and my brother everyone else’s goes through but when I go to add her it says, There was an error sending your Activity Sharing invitation. Try sending it again.
Jackie says
My watch is not tracking my walking exercise!
Debmac says
Out of nowhere I had a problem with workout notifications not being sent from my watch to person i was sharing with, even though we’d had no issues previously and I was receiving theirs. In the end I went into settings in activity and “muted” then “unmuted” notifications and it fixed the problem.
Ty says
I updated to Watch OS 5 qand IOS 12 yesterday prior everything was fine, now I can see friends on my apple watch that I share with but when I go to the activity app on my phone nothing shows not even myself. I had friends remove me and I tried to send and I get the same error “There was an error sending your activity sharing invitation, Try sending it again” They have also tried sending and nothing shows up.
I called apple and they are dumbfounded