Calories burned on Apple Watch: view active, passive, and total

An Apple Watch is a fantastic device for tracking your health and fitness goals, and an important aspect of that is how much energy you burn. Read on to learn how to view your calories burned on your Apple Watch for active and passive metrics, as well as your daily total.

Your Apple Watch tracks the active calories you burn, and your Move ring shows that progress against your daily goal. But your Apple Watch also tracks the total calories you burn, which are active calories plus passive calories.

Active calories are the calories you burn by moving around. Passive calories are the amount of calories your metabolism burns just by being alive, even if you sit on the couch all day. That’s called your basal metabolic rate.

Let’s look at how to calculate your passive calories, along with where to view your overall numbers to get a better idea of your metabolism, help with meal planning, and more.

While the Apple Watch tracks and records your calorie metrics, you must use an iPhone to see the most calorie data.

If you’re interested in measuring your metabolic data in real time, check out our full review of the Lumen, which works with Apple Health and iPhones.

How to view calories burned on Apple Watch: active, passive, and total

Apple Watch – Active Calories

On your Apple Watch, go to Activity application.
Swipe or scroll down with the Digital Crown.
You will see your Active calories burned based on movement goal.
You can also add the Activity complication to a variety of watch faces, or use an Activity watch face to see your active calories burned at a glance.

iPhone – active and passive calories

He Fitness app on your iPhone lets you see more calorie data.
Once you open it, Tap the activity rings on top.
Just below the movement data, you will see your Total calories burned during the day at the bottom left of the screen.
- To view total calories burned for more days, choose another day at the top of the screen or tap the calendar icon in the upper right corner.
Subtract your active calories (“Move” goal) from the total to get your passive calories burned (base metabolic rate).

Here’s what these steps look like on an iPhone: