Apple is working on fixes for Readiness scores that are slow to update on Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Series 12, according to Ray Maker’s in-depth Ultra 4 review at DC Rainmaker, published September 17. After his watches took up to four hours to show a score, he writes: “Apple says they’re working on it, and hope to have fixes shortly.”
That is Maker’s account of what Apple told him, not a statement Apple has published, and it comes with no watchOS version or date for a fix. It also rests on one reviewer’s watches over a few days of testing, so it doesn’t tell you how many owners see the same delay.
What the lag looked like
Readiness gives you a score from 0 to 10 with one of four labels: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready or Go for it. The score is meant to move through the day as workouts, sleep and vitals change, so a number that sits still after a hard session misses the point of the feature.
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Maker wore an Ultra 4 and a Series 12 at the same time, one on each wrist, paired to different iPhones but sharing the same account. After an evening track session of 8 x 600 meter repeats, the Series 12 dropped his score from 5 to 3 (Pace Yourself) straight away. The Ultra 4 “didn’t update my Readiness score” at first. About two hours after the run, it caught up and showed 3 as well.
The Series 12 had a delay of its own. Maker says it showed his sleep score on his iPhone immediately, “but refused for 4 hours to show the sleep score on the watch, and thus no readiness score.” Then both appeared at once. He also saw blank results that filled in seconds later, and wrong values that corrected themselves after a few seconds. He calls these “minor ‘speed’/display bugs.”
Not the same as a missing first score
This is a different problem from a score that never appears on a new watch. Readiness needs 7 nights of heart rate variability data, with at least 4 hours of sleep a night, before the first score shows up, and each watch builds that history on its own. If you’re still in that first week, our guide to what to check when your Readiness score isn’t showing up covers the wait. The delays Maker describes happened on watches that already had a score.
What to do if your score looks stuck
Maker doesn’t offer a workaround. On his watches the score always arrived in the end: after a few seconds for the blank values, about two hours for the Ultra 4 after his run, and about four hours for the Series 12 after a night’s sleep. So if your score looks frozen after a workout, the watch may simply not have caught up yet.
In his case the sleep score reached the iPhone before the watch. Before you decide a score is wrong, check the Readiness section of the Fitness app on your iPhone, and don’t read much into a figure that changes within seconds of opening it.
Readiness still gets a good review
The bugs don’t sink the feature for Maker. He calls Apple’s Readiness implementation “pretty solid” and close in broad strokes to Garmin’s, though he finds Garmin’s “a bit more responsive at this point.” He says he hopes the delays are “merely a one-off fluke” and plans to compare Apple’s scores with other brands’ in a week or two. He hasn’t said which watchOS 27 update will carry the fix, and Apple hasn’t said publicly.
