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If your daily step goals on your Pixel Watch have felt a bit too easy to achieve lately, it unfortunately looks like it wasn’t just a sudden burst of energy on your part. It turns out a software update inadvertently caused Pixel Watches to overestimate step counts, but Google has now deployed a fix to get things back on track.
The issue appears to have originated with the March 2025 security update pushed out to the Pixel Watch, Pixel Watch 2, and even the current flagship Pixel Watch 3. Following that update, users began noticing discrepancies, specifically that their watches were reporting higher step counts than usual under certain conditions. An initial software update in April didn’t address the problem, leading to continued inaccurate tracking for several weeks.
For those who’ve been diligently tracking their activity, this meant the satisfaction of hitting that 10,000-step milestone might have been based on slightly inflated data. Your Pixel Watch was essentially getting a little overenthusiastic with its counting.
Thankfully, Google has acknowledged the issue and released a second April software update specifically targeting this step-counting bug. In the official release notes for this latest update, Google clarified that it “resolves an issue where some reported receiving a step count in certain scenarios that was higher than expected, by reverting the step algorithm enhancements to the original step algorithm for all users.” This applies to users who were on the March and initial April software versions.
Unlike the preceding updates, this secondary April release seems solely focused on correcting the step counter algorithm, reverting it to the previous, presumably more accurate, version. No other security patches or major bug fixes are mentioned in the notes for this specific update.
While it took a couple of updates to rectify, the fix is now rolling out. Pixel Watch users can expect their step counts to return to their previous levels of accuracy. It might mean putting in a little extra effort to hit those daily goals again, but at least the data reflecting that effort will be accurate once more.
VIA: VICE
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