Apple Watch users plagued by heart rate monitor failures after updating

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If you look closely you can actually pinpoint the exact moment the Apple Watch heart rate monitor stops working.
If you look closely you can actually pinpoint the exact moment the Apple Watch heart rate monitor stops working.
Photo: The Simpsons, 20th Century Fox

Apple issued its first Apple Watch software update this week, adding new emojis, fixes for Siri and more. Unfortunately, hidden among the positives is one fairly big negative: Multiple users are complaining that the 1.0.1 update stops the device’s much-touted heart rate monitor from running as it should.

“I just got my watch yesterday and installed the update right away, but noticed this same thing,” posts one user on Apple’s Support forum. “I came here because I noticed it was not working. At least not consistently. I see one reading from two hours ago that seemed to have automatically appeared in the health app, but certainly not every 10 minutes like they say. Thought it was a problem with the sensor and was coming here to see if others had this problem, but maybe is an issue with the last update.”

Another complains that readings are only being taken at one- or two-hour intervals, and the heart-rate feature “only really works properly if I manually go into glances to perform the check.”

Some users report logging it via AppleCare, only to have the priority of the message lowered “as the engineers didn’t see it as a high priority issue.”

Apple hasn’t yet commented on the problem, but it’s definitely annoying for people who bought their Apple Watch with an eye on using it as a fitness tracker.

We’ve reached out to Apple and will update this post when we hear back.

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