Track Your Time in Daylight with Apple Watch & iPhone

Did you know your Apple Watch can track the amount of time you spend in daylight? Indeed, Apple Watch models can use a built-in light sensor to automatically detect when you’re outside, recording the total amount of time you spend in daylight, and this is documented as a Health metric.

Time in Daylight matters for various health reasons, ranging from eyesight and eye health, to mood, sleep, and the critical hormone Vitamin D, which NIH says is linked to bone health, neurological health, and health of the immune system – pretty important stuff!

So, want to see how much time you’re spending in daylight and add it to your Health metrics to review on Apple Watch? We’ll show you how.

How to See Amount of Time in Daylight with Apple Watch & iPhone

Here’s how to access and see the amount of time you spend in daylight using your Apple Watch:

1. Open the “Health” app on your iPhone that is paired with Apple Watch
2. Use the Search function and type in “Daylight”



3. Tap on “Time in Daylight” to see your daylight data as detected by Apple Watch



4. Optionally, scroll down in “Time in Daylight” and tap on the “Pin to Summary” to add the Time in Daylight metric to your general Health summary stats

Apple notes that time in daylight offers benefits to health, including improved eyesight and eye health, increased Vitamin D levels, improvements to mood and sleep, and more.

As someone who spends a majority of time in cloudy and rainy environments (San Francisco and Seattle), a metric like this is important to me, because many people in these climates and areas are Vitamin D deficient and I am likely in that camp too. Plus, as a tech worker who spends all working hours on a screen or at a desk, it’s not like there’s ample opportunity to be outdoors during work hours.

Apple’s blurb on “Time in Daylight” says the following about the feature and why it matters:

“Time in Daylight is an estimate of the amount of time spent in sunlight. For children, spending 80-120 minutes outside each day can help lower the risk for myopia or nearsightedness. For adults, spending around 20 minutes outdoors every day has numerous physical and mental health benefits.

Time outside allows your eyes to focus on objects farther away, reducing eye strain associated with working on something close, such as a screen or sketchbook. Sunlight also helps your body produce vitamin D, which your body needs to absorb calcium, protect your bones, teeth, and muscles and support your immune system.

When unobstructed, Apple Watch can automatically record an estimated amount of Time in Daylight in Health.“

That last part is important, since if you have long sleeves on covering the Apple Watch will not be able to detect if you’re outdoors, so you can either adjust clothing or Apple Watch exposure as necessary.

My personal data from the past week is pretty good because I have recently spent a lot of time outdoors with friends, family, and walking, but when I review some of the other months, particularly this prior winter, fall, and early spring months, the Time in Daylight is almost nonexistent. Understandable because nearly nobody enjoys being outside getting soaked by rain in 45 degree temps, as is basically a daily occurrence in Seattle for 10 months of the year, but after seeing this metric being so low during those times, it makes me realize I will have to commit to more time outside regardless of the weather.

Some things I plan to do to personally, to improve my Time in Daylight readings:

• Spend more time working outside on good weather days, if there’s no rain, take the laptop outside for a bit!
• Take regular eye breaks outside, to focus on something further away, then back again at my screen
• Make an effort to take walks outside, rain or shine
• Exercise outside more often
• Engage in more outdoor activities

As for taking my MacBook Air outside and working in the direct sun, I have found that it overheats quite fast. Remember, the latest gen MacBook Air models have no cooling fan, so it does not have a way to quickly cool off or negate the heat of direct sunlight. This poses somewhat of a challenge, because even on a mild 70 degree day the MacBook Air gets hot quite fast in direct sun and quickly grinds itself to a halt as the M chip dramatically throttles itself to prevent overheating. Fortunately, many of the tips I covered a while ago about keeping a MacBook cool in hot weather still apply today, perhaps even more so with the fan-less MacBook Air (or MacBook Neo for that matter), and so I try to keep the Mac itself out of direct sun, and well ventilated. If you have a fan cooled MacBook Pro, you still might find some of these tips helpful, but not as essential, since that internal cooling fan makes a huge difference.

I have been a daily Apple Watch user since the introduction of the device, gave it up for a while, and picked one up again for several years now, mostly for tracking workouts and health metrics, and yet I had no idea this featured even existed, so don’t feel bad if you had never heard of the capability to track time in daylight either. It wasn’t until I was reading an article over at 9to5mac that casually mentioned this as a health metric that I discovered the functionality, so a big shoutout to them for raising awareness of this feature.

Did you know Apple Watch can track daylight exposure and time in daylight? Do you care to keep track of the time in daylight metric on your Apple Watch? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments!