Climb

Your step count says how far you went. Climb says how far up you went. It's the number of flights of stairs you climbed, counted by your iPhone without you doing anything, and it's one of the simplest signs of how hard your legs and heart worked on an ordinary day.

This page explains what a "flight" actually is, how your phone counts one, why the number sometimes looks off, and why a few flights a day are worth having.

What does Climb measure?

Climb is your flights climbed: how many times you gained about one storey of height on foot. Apple counts one flight as roughly 3 metres (10 feet) of height, which is about 16 stairs in a typical building.

Only going up counts. Walking down the same stairs adds nothing, and neither does a lift or an escalator, because your iPhone also checks that you were taking steps while you rose.

How does your iPhone count flights climbed?

Every iPhone since the iPhone 6 has a barometer, a small sensor that measures air pressure. Air pressure drops slightly as you go up, so the phone can tell when it has risen. It combines that with the motion sensor, which knows you were walking, and when the two agree that you've climbed about 3 metres, it records a flight.

If you also wear an Apple Watch, it counts flights the same way. The Health app merges the two so a staircase isn't counted twice.

Why does flights climbed sometimes look wrong?

Because the phone is measuring height through air pressure, a few everyday things can throw the count:

• Short or slow climbs. A single short staircase, or stairs taken slowly with long pauses, may not add up to a full flight, or may be counted as fewer.
• Indoor air. Air conditioning, heating and closed buildings can change the pressure a little, which can make the phone miss or add the odd flight.
• Hills. A steep climb on foot usually counts, because you gain height quickly while walking. A long, gentle slope often doesn't, even if you rose a lot over the whole walk.
• The phone wasn't with you. If your phone sat on your desk while you took the stairs at work, those flights only appear if your Apple Watch saw them.

Day to day, these errors are small and mostly cancel out. Climb is most useful as a trend: whether you're climbing more this month than last, not whether today was 7 flights or 8.

Why do flights of stairs matter?

Stairs are one of the hardest things most people do in an ordinary day. Lifting your whole body upward works the big muscles of your legs and quickly raises your heart rate, which is why even a couple of flights leave many people out of breath.

The research on everyday stair climbing is encouraging:

• Song et al., 2023. A study of 458,860 adults in the UK Biobank, followed for a median of 12.5 years, found that people who climbed more than five flights of stairs a day had about a 20% lower risk of heart disease and stroke than those who didn't. People who stopped climbing stairs over the study had a higher risk than those who had never climbed regularly.
• Paddock et al., 2024. A review presented at the European Society of Cardiology's preventive cardiology congress pooled studies of more than 450,000 people. Climbing stairs was associated with a 24% lower risk of dying from any cause and a 39% lower risk of dying from heart disease.
• Allison et al., 2017. In a small trial, inactive women who climbed stairs as hard as they could for three bursts of 20 seconds, three times a week, improved their aerobic fitness by about 12% in six weeks.

The first two are observational studies: people who climb more stairs may be healthier in other ways too, and the 2024 review had not been peer-reviewed when it was presented. But the direction is consistent, and the trial shows stairs can build fitness directly.

How many flights should you climb a day?

There's no official target for flights climbed. The clearest marker from the research is the one above: more than five flights a day, or roughly 50 to 80 stairs, was where the UK study saw a lower risk.

Five flights sounds like a lot until you count them. Taking the stairs to a third-floor office in the morning and again after lunch is already six.

If you're starting from almost none, add one flight a day and build from there, the same way you'd raise a step goal. If you have a heart, lung or joint condition, or stairs cause pain, ask your doctor what's sensible first.

How can you climb more flights?

• Take the stairs for anything under three or four floors. Make the lift the exception, not the default.
• Use the stairs at home. One extra trip up and down each time you go upstairs adds up by evening.
• Pick routes with a hill. A walk with one steep section adds flights without adding minutes.
• Try stair "snacks". A minute or two of brisk stair climbing a few times a day counts, and the 2017 trial suggests it builds fitness.
• Go up briskly. You don't need to run. Climbing at a steady pace that makes you breathe harder is enough to raise your heart rate.

How Climb works in StepUp

StepUp reads your flights climbed from Apple Health, where your iPhone and Apple Watch have been recording them all along, and shows how many flights you climb day by day and how that compares with your usual. Like every StepUp metric, the data is read and stored on your iPhone and never leaves it.

Climb doesn't need an Apple Watch: any iPhone with a barometer counts flights on its own. It sits alongside StepUp's other walking metrics, which together show not just how much you walk but how. See How many steps should I walk a day? for how flights fit into an active day.

The short version

• One flight is about 3 metres (10 feet) of height gained on foot, roughly 16 stairs.
• Your iPhone counts flights with its barometer. Going down, lifts and escalators don't count.
• The count can be off by a flight or two on any day, so watch the trend, not the single number.
• More than five flights a day was linked to about a 20% lower risk of heart disease in a large UK study.
• Start with the stairs you already pass, and add a flight at a time.

Written by Dheeraj Kumar Sharma, who makes StepUp. How the guides are written.