This is Technology Bytes, episode 141 for November 16th, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week we’re talking about workouts on the Apple Watch.
And I don’t know if I’ve talked about it a lot or not, but I work out every day and I use the Apple Watch to track all of the fitness things for all of the times that I work out.
In fact, I use the Apple Fitness app on the TV to do much of what I work out, but I also, I mean, I always start my workout with a walk and the Apple Watch keeps track of my heart rate, all kinds of information that is there, but I like that it announces how far I’ve gone.
And I’ve got mine set up to announce on the miles.
So it’ll tell me that I’ve got a mile, it’ll tell me when I’ve gone halfway, it’ll give me the time so I know if I need to pick up my walk just a little bit because I’m exercising and so I’m walking quite quickly.
It has slowed down over the years as I’ve gotten older, but I use it and I like the announcements because it keeps me on track.
So here just recently, my watch has stopped telling me how far I’ve gone.
I still feel the haptic on my wrist when I’ve hit the mile mark and when I’ve hit the halfway mark and the other mile marks and so on and so forth, but it doesn’t ever say anything to me.
And I don’t know why it stopped.
And then it’ll come back and it’ll say it, you know, for a while it would miss the first mile and then it would give you give me every notification after that.
And then for a minute, I don’t know, maybe a couple days or so, it gave me everything that I wanted announcing all the time.
And then here recently, it just stopped.
So now my watch doesn’t talk to me at all when I’m walking and it really drives me crazy because, well, I don’t know if it drives me crazy, but it tells me when I’m at a mile, but I don’t know how fast I’ve walked.
And at this point, I just try to walk almost as fast as I can.
So that’s okay, I guess, but I really like the input that I get from that.
And so I’ve done all the things that I can read online, you know, turn the announcements off, turn them back on, make sure it’s on my watch, make sure it’s on the phone, make sure it’s on the phone, watch app, and done everything I can to turn it on.
Well, today I was traveling through all those settings again.
And it said, and I don’t know if it was like this before, because I’ve never had to mess with this setting.
But it says it will announce things if there’s no audio playing from that device.
And I do that always.
I’m always either listening to podcasts, or I’m listening to music.
And it never would not, let’s say I should say that differently.
It would always tell me when I was hitting my miles and those kind of things, and I was playing audio from that device.
I hadn’t seen that setting before.
I don’t know if that’s something new in iOS 26, but I think it needs to go away, because I want it to announce.
So the one thing that it does, if you use the workout buddy, is it doesn’t matter what your notifications are.
If you have workout buddy turned on, it will speak through whatever you are listening and whatever you are doing.
The problem with that is you have to have your iPhone.
I don’t know why Apple hasn’t set that up to go on the watch itself, but they haven’t.
And I don’t carry my phone with me.
I’m not interested in carrying my phone with me.
I don’t want to worry about dropping it or falling out of a pocket or anything like that.
I’ve got a cellular Apple Watch for that exact reason, so that I am in contact if I need to be with whoever is the closest to me, usually my wife.
And so I’m not sure what to do.
I’m at a loss.
Technology has finally got me stumped, and I am not sure where to go from here.
The other thing I don’t know is if anyone ever listens to this podcast.
I just don’t know that.
There may be a way to look it up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if no one listens to this podcast.
It’s really just a way for me to get things off my chest and talk about technology because I like to, and I guess I’m not that interested if someone listens.
I would love it, but I don’t know that anyone does.
But if you do, and you have input on why my watch has stopped talking to me when I’m working out, I would love to hear back from you.
And in that, you can reach me at technologybytes, so the word technology, B-Y-T-E-S, at merrigfamily.com.
And merrig is spelled M-E-A-R-I-G.
That is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrigfamily.com.
Again, that’s technologybytes at merrigfamily.com.
I spelled it out for you just a little bit ago.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
