How to switch Apple Health from miles to km
Apple Health, the Fitness app and your Apple Watch each keep a distance unit. Where to change miles to kilometres, or back, so every screen agrees.
Your iPhone picks miles or kilometres from your region when you set it up. Move country, buy a phone abroad, or simply prefer the other unit, and you will find that Apple keeps the setting in more than one place. Here is each one.
In the Health app
Health keeps a unit per type of data, so change it on the distance you look at.
- Open Health and tap Browse.
- Tap Activity, then Walking + Running Distance.
- Scroll to the bottom and tap Unit.
- Choose km or mi.
Do the same for Cycling Distance or Swimming Distance if you track those. The numbers on your Summary follow straight away.
On Apple Watch
The Workout app has its own setting, and it decides what you see during a run.
- On the watch, open Settings.
- Tap Workout, then Units of Measure.
- Under Walking and Running Workouts, choose Kilometres or Miles.
Or from your iPhone: open the Watch app, tap Workout, then Units of Measure. The two stay in step, so you only need to change it once. Your pace changes with it, to minutes per km or minutes per mile.
The Fitness app
The Fitness app shows your workouts in the unit set for the Workout app above. Change it there and your run history in Fitness follows.
The default for the whole iPhone
New apps and new data types start from your region. To change that default, open Settings, General, Language & Region, and set Measurement System to Metric, US or UK. This does not change the Health and Workout settings you already picked, so set those as above too.
Your data is not touched
Switching units changes the display only. Health stores every run in one base unit, so your old runs, totals and records all reappear in the new unit, with nothing lost or rounded twice.
Questions
Does changing the unit change my old runs?
No data changes. Health stores every distance in one base unit and only displays it in the unit you pick, so old and new runs show in the new unit.
Why does my Apple Watch show miles when Health shows km?
The Workout app has its own unit setting. Change it on the watch under Settings, Workout, Units of Measure, or in the Watch app on your iPhone.
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