This article outlines a lively feature in your Oura toolkit: Automatic Activity Detection (AAD).
What is Automatic Activity Detection?
How AAD Works
The Benefits of AAD
Things to Keep in Mind
Most Popular Activities Detectable by AAD
What is Automatic Activity Detection?
AAD automatically reports all detected physical activity captured by your Oura Ring—suggesting the time, duration, type and intensity of activities you take part in.
With AAD, you have the option to edit or confirm each of the detected activities, ensuring the time, duration, type and intensity are correct—or, you can choose to dismiss activities altogether.
AAD also presents you with helpful guidance on how to best incorporate physical activity into your lifestyle based on your movement patterns, recent trends and current activity goal. A unique characteristic of AAD is that the more this feature gets to know you and your movement tendencies, the more personalized your insights become. In this sense, the more activities you confirm over time, the more actionable guidance you’ll receive from Oura.
No action on your part is required to start or stop tracking. Currently, over 40 unique activity types are detectable with AAD—a wider range than what’s currently offered by other wearables. Please check out the most popular (i.e., frequent) activity detections at the end of this article.
How AAD Works
As you move around and engage in different physical activities, Oura keeps track. By viewing the movement graph on your Activity tab, you can quickly understand when and how you’ve moved throughout your day.
By identifying unique patterns in your movement over short periods of time, Oura can identify particular activity types, such as cycling, soccer, tennis, or use of an elliptical machine.
Start Using Automatic Activity Detection
There is no action required on your part to start or stop tracking activities with Automatic Activity Detection. Below, we provide step-by-step guidance for how to use AAD to your advantage.
Step 1. Any detected activities will appear in a card at the top of your Home 
tab when you open your Oura App—including the time, duration, type and intensity of activity.
Step 2. You have the option to edit or confirm each of the detected workouts, ensuring the time, duration, type and intensity are correct—or, you can choose to dismiss them altogether.
If confirmed (including after an edit is complete), the activity will be added to your full list of activities, found on the Home tab beneath your Activity Goal Progress. This same full list of activities is also located on your Activity tab.
The Benefits of AAD
- Edit or confirm activities from yesterday. Activities detected by your Oura Ring can be edited in the Oura App for a full day after the initial time of detection.
- Activities are never double, or triple counted. If you already track your activities using another device, Oura can identify when the same activity has been detected and will only present one of them in your Oura App. Any activity you’ve manually added in the Oura App will take precedence, followed by workouts imported via Apple Health or Google Fit. If your activity hasn’t already been tracked using one of the methods above, AAD will pick it up—given it’s longer than 10 minutes and is included in our current list of tracked activities located at the end of this article.
- Higher accuracy, that builds with time. Because movement captured by AAD comes from your real-time physical experience, this feature offers a more accurate calculation of calories burned during an activity. As you continue to use AAD and confirm activities, your detected workouts and their details become more precise as your personal movement tendencies add up over time.
- More activities, captured in a shorter time. We can accurately detect over 40 unique activity types (most popular listed below). This list will continue to grow over time. Most other wearables can only detect a small subset of activities. Due to the way Oura captures your daily movement and calculates exertion, AAD is accurate to within one minute.
Things to Keep in Mind
- Activities confirmed by Automatic Activity Detection will be reflected in the current day’s Activity contributors and, potentially, your next day Activity Goal—depending on the type and intensity of your confirmed activity.
- Please note that all movement picked up by your Oura Ring will be shown in your daily movement graph found on the Activity tab—including unconfirmed activities. By editing and confirming activities captured by AAD, you can ensure your activity data accurately reflects your lifestyle.
- Activities shorter than 10 minutes will not be picked up by AAD.
- If you completed an activity and AAD couldn't detect it, please feel free to add it manually using the + icon on the Home tab. All manual activity entries count towards making the detection of your movement more accurate and reflective of you.
- AAD will continue to detect activities even while your Oura Ring is in Airplane Mode. However, your detected activities will not be visible in the Oura App until Airplane Mode is turned off and your data has been synced. If more than two calendar days have passed since you turned on Airplane Mode, only detected activities from the current and previous day will be shown.
Most Popular Activities Detectable by AAD
The sensitivity at which Oura captures different types of movement is what allows your ring to track activities that go beyond traditional, step-based workouts.
Our most popular list of automatically detected activities can be found below.
Please note, this is not a comprehensive list of all activities Oura can pick up. If you're unsure if a certain activity you partake in is detectable by Oura, the good news is, if Oura can detect it, you're likely to find out by wearing your ring while completing it and waiting to see what surfaces on your Home tab. New and improved AAD activities are consistently being added based on customer feedback we receive. Please don't hesitate to share your ideas with us!
- Walking
- Cycling
- Running
- Housework (i.e., household chores)
- Yardwork
- Strength training (i.e., weight lifting)
- Hiking
- Swimming
- Tennis
- Elliptical
- Cross-country skiing
- Dance
- Golf
- HIIT
- Soccer
- Cross-training
- Yoga
- Surfing
- Basketball
- Boxing
Keep in mind: this list is separate from our list of 50+ activities one can add manually in the Oura App. To learn how to manually add an activity and explore other activity options available, we suggest checking out this article.
