Get more from Apple’s Health app for iOS

Everything about the Health app

The Health app on iPhone lets you keep your health and fitness data in a central place. Apple collects data from all kinds of apps and accessories in the Health app thanks to the link with HealthKit. This gives you a good insight into your physical condition, body values ​​and exercise activities. Below you can read how to set up and use the Health app.

Below you can read about:

• What is the Health app?
• Set and view health data
• Sources for Health Data
• View measurements
• Clear measurements
• Set up medical ID
• Health app privacy
• More tips about the Health app

What is the Health app on iPhone?

The Health app brings together all measurements of body values, sports and fitness data and apps in one clear list. Previously, each app collected this data separately, making it difficult to get a complete picture of your health situation. This also made it more difficult to compare data.

The Health app contains data about your sleeping behavior, exercise, heart rate and much more. This way you can see at a glance whether there is a connection between certain changes. Through Apple’s health platform HealthKit, developers can ensure that their apps and accessories can write data to the Health app. For example, a connected scale can automatically save your weight in the Health app, so that other apps can read it again. You give permission for this per app, so that your privacy is not jeopardized. The Health app is only available on the iPhone, not on the Apple Watch, iPad or Mac.

The Health app first appeared in iOS 8 on the iPhone.

The app has three tabs at the bottom of the screen:

• Overview
• To share
• Facts

You will spend most of your time on the Data tab. Here you can also indicate which apps are allowed to read data. If you set certain dates as favorites, they will appear on the Overview tab.

Set and view health data

As indicated above, you decide which data you want to see on the Overview screen. You set this via Data.

To add a favorite to the Overview screen:

1. Go to the Data tab.
2. Choose a category, for example Mobility.
3. Choose the measurement you want to mark as a favorite, for example Cardio Fitness.
4. Scroll down and put a star next to Add to Favorites.

If you cannot find a specific measurement, use the search function on the Data tab. The first letters are sufficient. For example, enter ‘Sat’ to search for Saturation.

If you want to add a manual measurement, you can do that too:

1. Go to the desired data, for example Saturation.
2. Tap Add details.
3. Enter the data manually and press Add.

Sources of Health app

The Health app reads all kinds of data from apps and accessories that are suitable for HealthKit. How do you know where all that data comes from? Very simple: by looking at the data sources:

1. Go to the desired data, for example Saturation.
2. Scroll down and tap Data sources and access.
3. You will now see which apps you have given access to read and write. You can also see which devices performed the measurement. Multiple Apple Watch generations can be listed here.
4. Tap a device or app to see the measurements provided by that source.

You can read all about this in our tip about data sources of the Health app.

View measurements in the Health app

You will see a nice graph for most data, but you can also view all individual measurements. You do this as follows:

1. Open the Health app and scroll to the desired data, for example Saturation.
2. Tap Show all data.
3. You will now see a list of all measurements.
4. Tap a particular measurement to see more details, such as the time of the measurement.
5. You also see which app or device performed the measurement.

Clear measurements from the Health app

Is a certain measurement incorrect or does your graph look strange due to an unwanted peak or an incorrect measurement? Then you can delete the measurement from the list. That’s how you do that:

1. Open the Health app and scroll to the desired data, for example BMI.
2. Tap Show all data.
3. Tap Edit at the top right.
4. A delete icon will now appear for each measurement. Delete the measurement you no longer want to see.
5. Tap Done.

Set up medical ID

You can also set your medical information in the Health app, so that in the event of an emergency, emergency responders immediately know who you are, which contacts to call and what allergies you have. You can read how this works in the tip Setting up Medical ID on the iPhone.

Health app privacy

Good to know:

• The data that the Health app collects on your iPhone is not shared, not even with Apple. However, the Health data is synchronized with iCloud. If you are afraid that your data could leak in this way, you can also opt for a local encrypted backup of health data in iTunes.
• You can give all kinds of apps access to your health data in the Health app. If you do this, you will of course not know what these companies do with your data. You can use sliders to indicate exactly which sources are allowed to read and write the data. If you give permission to share data with developers, that is your own choice. Therefore, only choose to share data with parties you trust.

You can read more about this in our tip about data sources of the Health app:

If you want to better protect your privacy, you can choose that the Health app no ​​longer collects movement data. Below you can read how.

https://www.iculture.nl/tips/gezondheid-app-bewegingsdata-verzamelen/

Even more tips about the Health app

We have even more tips about the Health app, such as:

• This is how you determine which apps have access to Health data on your iPhone
• Sync health data with iCloud
• This prevents the Health app from collecting movement data