How to keep your HealthKit data
Don’t lose your history when getting a new phone!
There’s been a lot of excitement this week about new phones and new OS’s, and we just wanted to make sure everyone doesn’t lose their last few years of data along the way.
Many people are not even aware of this, but if you have an iPhone, it has been tracking your steps every minute since the day you first got it. All of your steps go into a mysterious place called “HealthKit”, alongside your heart rate measurements if you wear an Apple Watch.
Many apps rely on this historical data to graph trends and changes over time. It is an amazing feeling to seeing your daily adjustments reflected in trends. Last year, we released the 2015 Annual Reports using this data, and the 2016 version will probably be even more detailed. But this historical features only work if you’ve kept that data over the years.
The Health data is stored only on the phone, and isn’t always included in a backup. Keeping this data is especially important in the next few months, when a lot of you may be getting new phones or upgrading to iOS10, and a lot of it will get reset.
Your Health Data is encrypted and only stored on your iPhone. There is no place in the “cloud” (unless you’re using Gyroscope) to view your raw health data. You also can’t perform a manual back up or copy your Health data from one phone to the other.
The only way to move the data from one phone to another is by restoring from a backup. There are a couple ways you can back up your phone.
Backups through iCloud
As of iOS9, your iCloud backups can be encrypted and include the Health data. Making sure that data is part of the backup, and not just your photos and apps, is a bit tricky.
In order to create a back up of your phone that includes your health data, Apple’s official instructions are to:
- ̶U̶p̶,̶ ̶U̶p̶,̶ ̶D̶o̶w̶n̶,̶ ̶D̶o̶w̶n̶,̶ ̶L̶e̶f̶t̶,̶ ̶R̶i̶g̶h̶t̶,̶ ̶L̶e̶f̶t̶,̶ ̶R̶i̶g̶h̶t̶,̶ ̶B̶,̶ ̶A̶,̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶r̶t̶
- Make sure your device is connected to Wi-Fi.
- Go to Settings > iCloud > Backup. Make sure iCloud Backup is turned on.
- Tap Back Up Now and then immediately lock your device by pressing the Sleep/Wake button. Make sure your device stays locked until the backup is complete.
How do you know when the back up is complete, without unlocking your phone? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On that same page they provide instructions on what to do if your Health data doesn’t make the trip. Rinse, Repeat, Pray.
Do not delete your backup or wipe your old phone until you verified all the health data made it to your new device.
Local Backup
The other option, and my suggestion, is to use iTunes to make an encrypted local back up of your current iPhone.
You can follow the Apple’s detailed instructions to do that here. It is pretty straightforward.
What can you do once you’ve got all your HealthKit data safe and sound? That data is best viewed with the new Gyroscope iPhone app. Then you’ll be able to see detailed reports about your life, compete with your friends, and share that HealthKit data with beautiful cards.
