Hourly activity breakdown
A daily total tells you how much you moved. The hourly chart tells you when - which is usually the more useful number when you are trying to work out where a walk could fit.
Reading the chart
The Activity card on the Today screen draws one bar for each of the 24 hours in the selected day, running midnight to midnight. Labels sit at 12 AM, 6 AM, 12 PM, 6 PM and midnight again.
A chip in the header calls out your busiest hour, written as a range such as 5-6 PM.
Scrubbing for exact numbers
Tap or drag across the bars and a tooltip follows your finger, showing the hour and the exact step count for it. Tap the same bar again to dismiss the tooltip.
Past days
The chart follows whichever day is selected in the date strip, so you can compare a busy Tuesday against a quiet Sunday. See Viewing past days.
If a day reads No hourly activity recorded for this day, Apple Health has no step samples for it. That is normal for days before you owned the device, or days the phone stayed at home.
Your peak hour over time
The Insights tab carries a Peak Hour tile in its Patterns section, calculated across your last 14 days, which is a steadier read on when you habitually move than any single day.
Frequently asked questions
Why do bars appear in hours I was asleep?
Small counts overnight are usually genuine - a trip to the kitchen registers. Very large overnight counts normally mean the phone was being carried by someone else or was in a moving vehicle.
Does the hourly chart include Apple Watch steps?
Yes. It reads the same merged Apple Health data as the daily total, so Watch and iPhone steps are already combined.
Stepzy is free on the App Store, for iPhone and Apple Watch.