Even if you’ve never opened the Apple Health app, if you have an iPhone, you’ve probably used apps that send information to its on-phone database. Apple Health is a powerful tool for controlling who gets access to your health data, logging data in different ways, and even taking at-home screening tests for certain health issues. If you have an Apple Watch, that’s great, but you don’t need one (or any wearable!) to take advantage of most of these 10 hacks to get more out of the Apple Health app.
Before we get into the other hacks, I’d like to discuss just how private your Apple Health data is (or isn’t). Apple provides its Health privacy policy here, and it says that your data lives on your own device and is encrypted when your phone is locked. There are some exceptions, though, which you can turn on or off. Here are the main things you may want to check on:
Individual apps can ask for permission to read data from Apple Health. (They also need your permission to write data to it.) You can control per-app permissions in Settings. Or, for a specific data point (like “walking and running distance”), go to that area of Apple Health and tap Data Sources and Access.
You can back up your health data via iCloud, which means it will live on Apple’s servers so you can access it from any of your devices. It is encrypted so Apple cannot read it. Manage this from your iCloud settings (in Settings, under your name).
