You're walking. You're definitely moving. Maybe you're on a treadmill at the gym or just pacing around your kitchen waiting for the coffee to brew, but for some reason, that 10km Egg is still sitting at 9.9km. It’s infuriating. We have all been there, staring at the screen, wondering why Pokemon Go Adventure Sync has decided to take a day off right when we need that weekly 50km reward.
Adventure Sync was supposed to be the game-changer. Back in 2018, Niantic finally realized that people couldn't keep their screens on and the app open 24/7 without melting their phone batteries or walking into a literal lamp post. They gave us a way to track distance through Google Fit and Apple Health. It’s a bridge. It connects your phone’s internal sensors to the game world. But like any bridge built on layers of code and background permissions, it breaks. Often.
The Reality of How Adventure Sync Actually Works
Most players think the game is constantly "watching" them. It isn't. Not exactly.
When you close the app—and I mean actually close it, not just minimize it—Adventure Sync kicks in. It stops relying on your GPS pings and starts listening to the health data stored on your device. On an iPhone, that's Apple Health. On Android, it’s usually Google Fit, though Samsung Health sometimes tries to butt in and complicate things.
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Here is the kicker: the game doesn't update in real-time.
You might walk two miles, open the app, and see zero progress. Then, three minutes later, the distance suddenly "slaps" onto your avatar. This delay happens because Niantic’s servers have to ping your health app, verify the data isn't spoofed (they are very paranoid about this), and then apply it to your Buddy and Eggs. If your phone is in Battery Saver mode, your OS might kill the background process that allows this handshake to happen. It's a delicate balance of permissions.
Why GPS is Actually Your Enemy Here
If you have the game open, Adventure Sync is off. That’s the rule.
When the app is active, the game uses "straight-line" GPS tracking. If you walk in a giant circle around a park, but the game only pings your location at point A and then again at point B (which happen to be the same spot), you get zero credit. Adventure Sync is smarter. It counts your actual steps via the accelerometer. This means if you are doing laps in a small backyard, you are actually much better off force-closing the app and letting Adventure Sync do the heavy lifting.
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Common Roadblocks and Fixes
Let's get technical for a second because "turn it off and on again" doesn't always cut it.
First, check your permissions. It sounds basic. It is basic. But an OS update can often reset these without telling you. On iOS, you need to go into Health > Sources > Pokémon GO and ensure every single category is toggled on. On Android, you need to make sure "Physical Activity" is allowed.
Battery Optimization is the silent killer.
Android is notorious for "optimizing" apps to save juice. If it decides Pokémon GO shouldn't be running in the background, Adventure Sync dies. You have to manually go into your phone settings, find the apps list, and tell the system "Do Not Optimize" for both Pokémon GO and your health app.
The Google Fit "Journal" Trick
If you're on Android and things feel sluggish, open Google Fit. See if your walk actually registered there first. Sometimes the health app itself is the bottleneck. A pro tip that many veteran players swear by is manually starting a "Track Workout" in Google Fit before you start walking. This forces the phone to poll sensors more frequently. Once you finish your walk, end the workout, wait a minute for the data to sync to the cloud, and then open Pokémon GO.
It feels like a ritual. It kind of is. But it works when the automatic tracking fails.
The Rewards: Why We Suffer Through the Tech Issues
Why do we care so much? Because the rewards are actually decent if you hit the 50km or 100km milestones.
Every Monday at 9:00 AM local time, the game tallies your total distance for the previous week. If you hit that 50km mark, you’re looking at a 10km Egg that often contains a "rarer" pool of Pokémon than the ones you get from spinning stops. We’re talking about the stuff that's actually hard to find in the wild. Plus, the 10,000 Stardust and a handful of Silver Pinap Berries aren't nothing.
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- 5km: 20 Poke Balls.
- 25km: 10 Great Balls + 500 Stardust + 1 Rare Candy or 5km Egg.
- 50km: 5 Ultra Balls + 1,000 Stardust + 5 Rare Candy, 5 Silver Pinaps, 5km Egg, or 10km Egg.
- 100km: An extra 10,000 Stardust.
Note that the Egg rewards require you to have an open slot in your Egg storage. If you're full, you just lose the Egg. It doesn't go into a queue. It's just gone. This is a classic Niantic move that still catches people off guard years later.
Misconceptions About Speed Caps
I see this all the time on Reddit and Discord: "I was biking and Adventure Sync didn't work!"
Yeah, because you were going too fast.
The game has a hard speed cap. If you're moving faster than about 10.5 kilometers per hour (roughly 6.5 miles per hour), the game assumes you're in a car or on a bike and stops counting it as "walking." Adventure Sync is designed for footsteps. If your phone's accelerometer detects the smooth motion of a vehicle rather than the rhythmic "thump-thump" of a human gait, it ignores the distance. Even on a treadmill, you should keep your phone in your pocket, not on the cup holder. If the phone doesn't move, the steps don't happen.
Troubleshooting Your Connection
If you’ve checked permissions and battery settings and it’s still broken, you might need a "Deep Reset."
Log out of Pokémon GO. Uninstall the app. Go into your Google or Apple ID settings and remove the "Connected Apps" permission for Pokémon GO. Restart your phone. Reinstall. It's a pain, but it clears the cache and forces a fresh handshake between the game and your health data provider.
Also, check your time settings. This is a weird one, but if your phone is not set to "Automatic Time," the timestamps between your health app and the Niantic servers won't match. If they don't match, the server rejects the data as potentially fraudulent. Ensure your time zone and clock are synced to the network.
Actionable Steps for Max Distance
- Toggle Adventure Sync off and on once a week. This seems to "wake up" the connection.
- Keep Egg slots open on Sunday night. You don't want to miss that 10km Egg on Monday morning.
- Don't use Low Power Mode. It throttles the very sensors you need for tracking.
- Use a phone swing? Honestly, some people use these devices to rock their phones back and forth to mimic walking. While it's a bit "cheaty," it proves that the system relies entirely on physical motion, not just GPS.
- Check the "Last Synced" time. Inside the Pokémon GO settings, look at the Adventure Sync section. If the timestamp is hours old, try force-closing the app and re-opening it.
Adventure Sync is a brilliant feature when it works, and a source of deep frustration when it doesn't. By understanding that it’s a conversation between two different apps, you can usually spot where the signal is getting lost. Stop leaving the game open while you walk; let the background processes do their job. Your battery—and your buddy Pokémon—will thank you.