Smartwatches and trackers store a lot of data about you and your activities. They can be removed completely or partially. Here’s how to do it depending on your device.
The smartwatches and trackers we wear on our wrists are designed to keep track of our activities every minute, but there may be times when you’d prefer certain data not to be recorded. Know that deleting data from a wearable device is not very difficult.
Apple Watch
If you have an Apple Watch on your wrist, all data is synced to the Health app on your iPhone. Most of them can be removed partially or completely, but you still need to know where to look. Open the Health app and select ‘Browse’, select the data you want to work with, then ‘Show all data’.
In the top right corner, click the Edit button and you can delete individual entries in the list with the red icon on the left. You can also remove everything by selecting Remove All. The confirmation window will always ask you to confirm.
You can also manage the data synced with your Apple Watch. To do this, in the Health app, tap Summary, then your profile picture, then Devices. Select your Apple Watch from the list and choose “Privacy Settings”.
You can also completely reset your Apple Watch. This erases everything on the device, but does not affect data already synced to your iPhone. On your Apple Watch, open the Settings app and select General, Reset, and Erase All Content and Settings.
Fitbit
Fitbit offers many trackers and smartwatches, but they are all controlled through the Fitbit app for Android or iOS; and you can also view your data online. The information is very diverse and you can delete a lot of it if you know how.
On the mobile app, open the Today tab and tap the exercise tile. If you then click on an individual action, you can click on the icon with three small dots and select “Delete”to make it disappear. The same goes for sleep tiles, through the three-dot icon “delete logs”.
On the Fitbit website, you can select Log and then Food, Activity, Weight, or Sleep. Each has its own trash icon to empty it, but sometimes you may need to empty them individually. Use the time navigation tool in the top right corner to go back in time.
If you can’t figure out how to delete something, Fitbit has a complete guide: it’s not possible to delete steps, for example, but you can hide them by manually recording activity that isn’t in the same period. It is also possible to completely delete your account. To do this, on the application’s “Today”tab, click “Account Settings”, then “Delete Account”.
samsung galaxy
For Galaxy smartwatches, all data is synced to the Health app for Android or iOS. You can control what information is sent to the app from the Galaxy Wearable app on your phone. From the home screen, select “Watch Settings”, then “Samsung Health”.
Some information can be removed from Samsung Health, some cannot. For example, some exercises can only be deleted through “Exercise”on the “Home”tab, then select the exercise, click on the three small dots and select “Delete”.
The process is similar to sleep. If you click “Sleep”on the “Home”tab, you can navigate every night to remove them. Always through the icon with three small dots. In the same way, you can erase your food and water consumption data.
You can also completely reset your watch in the Settings app on the watch itself. Click “General”, then “Reset”. You can also erase all Samsung Health data in the app on your mobile phone by tapping the three small lines icon, the cogwheel icon, and then “Erase Personal Data”.
Garmin
If you have a Garmin watch, you use the Connect app and you can also view your data online. On the mobile app, open the menu and select Activities and All Activities. Select the one you want to remove, click on the icon with three small dots and “Delete Activity”.
The process is similar to deleting a specific exercise (always from the menu) or showing the weight. Click on the icon with three small dots in the upper right corner and select “Delete”. Some entries can also be edited, sometimes it’s more interesting than deleting.
Some data must be deleted via the website, including health data and workout segments. In the first case, select “Actions and steps”on the left, navigate to the day you want to delete, click the gear icon and select “Delete”. For the other, select “Tutorial”then “Segments”from the menu on the left, select a segment and click the trash can icon, then “Delete”.
If you want to delete everything, Garmin allows you to delete your entire account. Go to this page, then click “Delete your data”and follow the on-screen instructions.