# Daytime resting heart rate (RHR)

The device’s resting figure for the whole day. Noisier than overnight because of meals, caffeine and posture.

Type: biomarker · Unit: bpm · Domain: Cardio-Respiratory Health · Accuracy: Measured · Importance: Supporting

Also called: resting heart rate, daily resting heart rate, Apple Watch resting heart rate, resting HR

## In one sentence

The resting heart rate your watch or band works out for the whole day, from the quietest minutes it can find while you are awake.

## Why it is kept separately

It is the same quantity as the overnight figure, taken under worse conditions. During the day you are upright, digesting, talking, warm or cold, and caffeinated, and each maker chooses its own rule for which minutes count as rest: some take the lowest stretch of the day, some blend the night in, some exclude it. The result usually sits several beats above the overnight figure and is comparable only with itself on the same device. VT keeps it because it is the one resting figure a watch gives on a night you did not wear it to bed, and because a rise that shows in both the night and the day is more telling than a rise in one.

## What moves it

Everything that moves the overnight figure (fitness downward over months; fever, alcohol, being unwell, a hard session, heat, dehydration and short sleep upward), plus the daytime things the overnight figure is spared: caffeine, a stressful meeting, standing for long periods, and whether the device happened to catch a quiet hour.

## How to measure it well

Wear the device through the day, every day, on the same wrist. If your sleep device and your daytime device differ, that is fine: VT keeps the two figures apart and never averages them.

## How Vitality Tracker uses it

A supporting reading in Symptom Radar (weight 0.4, higher is the direction it watches), compared with your own 30-day baseline. Symptom Radar does not yet start a new baseline for this reading by itself when you change device, so expect a few unsettled nights after a switch while the baseline catches up. It is not used by Capacity, which reads the overnight figure.

## How far to trust the number

Measured, as a heart rate: optical sensors at rest err by under 5 percent (Shcherbina 2017). As a *resting* rate it is only as good as the maker's rule for choosing the minutes, which is why it is supporting rather than core.

## Method

Stored as the day's resting heart rate from the source you chose for it. Baseline and comparison as for the overnight figure, at weight 0.4.

## Sources

1. Shcherbina A, et al. Accuracy in wrist-worn, sensor-based measurements of heart rate and energy expenditure in a diverse cohort. J Pers Med 2017;7:3. [doi:10.3390/jpm7020003](https://doi.org/10.3390/jpm7020003)
2. Vitality Tracker, What VT measures (catalogue of 15 October 2026).

## Related

- [Overnight resting heart rate](https://vitalitytracker.app/knowledge/overnight-resting-heart-rate)
- [Daily average heart rate variability](https://vitalitytracker.app/knowledge/daily-average-hrv)
- [Symptom Radar and Symptom Trend](https://vitalitytracker.app/knowledge/symptom-radar-and-symptom-trend)
- [How your data reaches VT, and why you sometimes have to sync first](https://vitalitytracker.app/knowledge/how-your-data-reaches-vt)

Reviewed October 2026 · v1

Source: https://vitalitytracker.app/knowledge/daytime-resting-heart-rate