Microsoft Band 2 Tip: Get Activity Reminders

Thanks to a recent firmware update, your Band 2 can now remind you to be more active if its noticed you’re not moving around too much. Here’s how to enable and configure this key new feature.

Note: To use activity reminders, you must be using the latest version of the Microsoft Band 2 firmware, which is installed via the Microsoft Health app on your phone. This will happen automatically but you can “force” the update by uninstalling and then reinstalling Microsoft Health.

You enable and configure activity reminders on your Band: Navigate to Settings (Gear) and then Activity Reminders (Snail).

There are three main options here:

Activity reminder. Here, you determine whether activity reminders are On or Off.

If inactive for… This option determines the timing of the reminders: Every 30, 45, 60 (the default), 90, or 120 minutes.

Between. Here, you configure when activity reminders will trigger each day by setting a beginning and end time for these reminders. The defaults are between 8 am and 7 pm, but you can change either of these times.

Notify me. This options determines which days you will receive activity reminders: Everyday (the default), weekdays, or weekends.

Based on my experience using activity reminders with Apple Watch, I’ve pretty much left most of these options set to their defaults, so activity reminders will occur on my Band everyday between 8 am and 7pm, seven days a week.

Band 2 reminds you to be active on your configured schedule using a vibration (haptic) alert. Based on just a few days of use, it’s not clear yet what triggers this alert, but it’s been about as reliable as are activity reminders on Apple Watch (which are actually based on standing, not “activity.”) I suspect that part of the reason is that Band 2 measures activity more broadly, whereas with Apple Watch, the reminders were simply unreliable.