Her Apple Watch announcing my fitness data? Make it stop.

[Slydude]

I finally convinced the wife to get an Apple Watch SE like mine to replace her dying FitBit. We purchased it using my Apple ID/account because I had credits from an iPhone trade-in. Although the Watch was purchased with my Apple account/ID it has never been paired with my phone. It has always been paired only with her phone and account/ID.

Set up was easy and we were even able to get her step count to appear on her watch face. We have encountered one snag that I haven't figured out yet. Each morning she gets a motivational message that appears to be from the Fitness app but has my info from the previous day. So this morning, for example, she got a message with my push count from yesterday. not her step count from yesterday.

In addition to her Windows box she is using my 2015 iMac which was previously used in conjunction with my watch but that shouldn't be an issue. Before passing the iMac to her I did a clean install of Monterey and haven't created a new account for myself on that machine yet.

Any ideas? This situation, coupled with some of Siri's snarky comments, has almost got her convinced that the Apple gear hates her. Lol.

 

[MacInWin]

Strange. Normally, the first culprit would be iCloud, but if it has never been connected to YOUR account, That should not be happening. Have you tried logging into appleid.apple.com and looking at the devices on that account? My  Watch appears under my devices. Also check to see if the 2015 iMac is under your account. Just reformatting it and doing a clean install doesn't remove it from your AppleID, AFAIK.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

This is strange indeed, all of our Apple gear has been purchased under my Apple ID. The 3 AW's we have in the house are paired with the owner's iPhones and none of them are pulling data from anywhere else.

As the AW is really a companion to the phone it's bound to, I'd start with first unbinding the AW from her phone and re-doing the process to see if it repeats this behavior or sticks just to it.

 

[Slydude]

@MacInWin I thought of checking that as I was typing the post. I'll check that in a bit. I know the iMac is assigned to my account and I haven't removed it. I don't think that is the issue though because there is none of my data/settings on that Mac anymore. Although my Mac had previously been set to mirror text messages from my phone and watch none of that is going through to her.

@Raz0rEdge SWMB repeated the pairing process just before I posted. We shall see if she continues to get the updates.

 

[MacInWin]

Sly, it's amazing what gets linked through the AppleID account. I have a home automation system, tied to my Apple ID. When it senses a garage door opening, it sends an alert tone to let me know. That tone appears on my MBP, iPad, iPhone,  Watch and a Mini that is associated with the Apple ID that is in our kitchen for SWMBO to watch videos as she cooks. So, when a door opens or closes, there is a cacophony of beeps! Hard to sneak in, or out, with it sounding like noon in a clock shop!

 

[badshoehabit]

Big Brother is watching you!

 

[Slydude]

Think SWMBO may have cracked the problem about 2:00 a.m this morning. I had researched the problem but not found much before posting here. She found the apparent solution rather quickly. The problem seems to have developed due to the "My Card" concept.

She did not have a specific card for herself in "Contacts" but she did have a card for me in her Contacts which used my nickname instead of my given name. As you know, one card in a user's contacts is designated as "My Card".

Somehow in the distant past her contact for me had become designated "My Card" on her phone because that's how it was referred to in her iCloud account. Once paired with her phone the watch picked up that nickname and used it for notifications even though the watch clearly had her name. We edited the incorrect card and put her information into it so the Watch now seems to refer to9 her correctly.

The iMac she is using was still listed on my account but that seems to be irrelevant. Once we corrected the contact card the Watch started behaving correctly even though the iMac was still associated with my account. In looking at things a bit more carefully it's most likely the watch was giveing her info but using my nickname because that what was on the contact card.

She found the tip that ultimately fixed things on the Apple Discussion forum. I'll pst that shortly.

@badshoehabit Let 'em watch. They will quickly become bored and leave me alone. Lol

 

[Slydude]

Here is the link that ultimately lead us to the fix Apple Watch calls me wrong name - Apple Community


Sent from my iPhone using Mac-Forums

 

[MacInWin]

Good find!