Seven Things That Surprised Me About Apple's New Health App
· Lifehacker
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Apple is revamping its Health app, which I've previously written is a huge deal. Most wearables come with dashboards to help you understand your data and advice on what to do about it, but Apple hasn't provided anything like that for the Apple Watch or for the data it collects from other devices or apps you might use. The Health app has always contained a wealth of information and well-hidden power tools, so it's nice that the app is finally getting a better interface to make it easier to actually use. I installed a beta version, and here's what I'm learning.
Visit turconews.click for more information.
Apple Watch Series 12 (GPS, 42mm) $399.00 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $399.00 at AmazonApple's Health app doesn’t come with iOS 27 or with the new Apple Watches
I was using the public beta for iOS 27 and didn’t have the new Health app. Then iOS 27 officially came out, I updated, and I still didn’t have the new Health app. That was a disappointment—it turns out the update is coming “later this year.”
Fortunately, there is a way I was able to get it. It’s in the Developer Beta of iOS 27.2. To get access to that, you have to sign up as a developer, which is free. (There is a higher tier of developer membership that costs $99, but the free registration is all you need to download developer betas.) Once you’re signed up, go to Settings on your phone, then General, Software Updates, and then tap Beta Updates to get the options for public and developer betas.
Step count is at the top of the screen on the Health app
Apple announced that the Series 12 and Ultra 4 watches will be getting step counts on watch face complications and in the Smart Stack. Unfortunately, WatchOS 27 does not bring step counts to older Apple Watches. But the Health app has its little “insights” cards at the top of the home screen, and right on the Fitness one, I can see my step count for the day.
You can see your Fitness rings from the Health app
Credit: Beth Skwarecki"Closing your rings" is an Apple Watch-based thing: Do enough activity throughout the day, and you'll complete each of three counters, represented as rings. Until now, those rings were only viewable from the Watch or from the Fitness app. But the new Health app has a card for your rings right at the top of the screen (the same card as your step count), and when you tap on it, you'll see your rings and their status.
The Fitness app is still available and seems to give the same information it always did, so it seems rings will be available in both places for now. Still, I wonder if Apple is thinking about doing away with the Fitness app in the future since you'll be able to get that data right in the Health app.
You need to give Apple a lot of new data to get your full “longevity” report
Credit: Beth SkwareckiAfter installing the new beta, I checked the Longevity tab to see how it thinks my long-term health is doing—and found that only four of the petals of the longevity graphic were active. It’s not entirely clear what data is needed to fill in each one. You can tap each petal and see a list of factors for that area, some of which have a “classification” like good or excellent. You don’t need to fill everything in, though. For example, my heart health is classed as excellent even though I don’t have recent blood pressure data or cardiac, cholesterol, or glucose labs, or heart rhythm. I do have data for my resting heart rate and my cardio fitness, and that seems to be enough. Here’s a list of the areas in the longevity graphic and what data I added to be able to see the results.
Mental well-being: Uses screening questionnaires for anxiety and depression.
Nutrition: Uses a nutrition assessment questionnaire. You can also track your food.
Daily movement: Uses steps and stand hours.
Heart health: Uses cardio fitness and resting heart rate, with other factors available, as I mentioned above.
Metabolic health: Uses body composition, which includes a waist and hip measurement assessment. Height and weight alone didn’t fill this out for me, but the measurements did. This section invites you to add labs, but that isn’t necessary to get this area to show up on the graphic.
Sleep: Uses sleep data from your Apple Watch or possibly other wearables. There is also a sleep assessment questionnaire that asks whether you typically wake up rested; I didn’t need this to get a sleep petal on the graphic, but that may be because I already had sleep data.
Hearing health: Uses environmental sound exposure (measured by Apple Watch) and headphone audio exposure.
I don’t love that Apple asks for so much data, and I especially don’t love that it doesn’t tell you what is the minimum amount of data that will let you fill in the graphic. People are going to want to get the full graphic, and for a moment, I thought I was going to need to upload results from medical labs. Even though I didn’t need those labs in the end, I felt a little uncomfortable having to measure my body just to make my phone happy.
There are so many assessments on the Health app
As a regular user of health features (and an occasional user of the Apple Watch), my phone tells me that I’ve only completed three of 16 assessments—and that includes the depression and anxiety screenings that I last took a few years ago. This information on my missing assessments appears directly below my half-filled-in longevity overview graphic. I feel like I’m being graded, and I have homework.
The body composition assessment asks you to measure your waist and hips. The anxiety assessment asks how many days in the past two weeks you’ve felt certain things (for example, being unable to relax, or feeling like your worrying is out of control. The nutrition assessment asks how often you eat various types of food, like vegetables or red meat.
Fortunately, you don’t need to take every test to fill out the longevity tab. I did three assessments to fill in my three missing petals: a nutrition questionnaire, a body composition assessment that required body measurements, and an updated anxiety screening. There are plenty more I could take, if I like. It’s like when a receptionist hands you a clipboard in the doctor’s waiting room, except there are an infinite number of clipboards and the doctor will never call you back.
Health age is recalculated every Monday
I had to click through a “get started” screen to enable my Health Age, but then it was available instantly. The screen said that my Health Age will be recalculated every Monday. For now, I’m trending about five years younger than I actually am.
To be totally clear, every app’s health age is nonsense. Getting regular exercise, or good sleep, or maintaining the weight that makes the app happy, has nothing to do with your age. We just place some cultural value on youth, which means it sounds good to be young. So the apps subtract years off your age as a sort of vanity reward for good habits.
As much as I get frustrated with the “age” and “longevity” lenses for this data, I have to admit I like what the app does with it: When you scroll down on the Health Age screen, you’ll get recommendations for how to improve your health age—which really means, how to focus on healthier habits.
To find the Health Age, you’ll have to tap on the Longevity tab, and then you’ll find Health Age at the top of the screen. (Visually, it looks like one of the Insights cards on the main screen, but you won’t find it there.)
My Health Age screen tells me that the one thing “raising” my health age (aka, bad) is my sleep score, and I “could benefit from more restorative rest to support healthy aging.” Lowering my health age (that is, good things) are my cardio fitness, exercise minutes, HRV, resting heart rate, and steps. There’s a number associated with each of these, and presumably I could work harder at each of these—get more steps each day, for example—to improve my score. I’m invited to add or order labs for glucose (actually hemoglobin A1c) and LDL cholesterol, which could contribute to the Health Age but currently have no data.
There are four camera-based fitness assessments, not just one
Credit: Beth SkwareckiAfter dipping my toes into the infinite stream of waiting room clipboards, I decided to get up and do some of the slightly more fun stuff: the fitness assessments. I’ve tested camera-based fitness assessments before, when I tried out three flexibility apps to see how each of them would diagnose me.
Unfortunately, the fitness assessments in the beta aren’t ready for testing. Every time I tried one, I’d lean my phone against the wall, step back, and a video would play that tells me what I’m supposed to do. As soon as I was supposed to do it, the app would crash. That’s what I get for testing a developer beta, so I’m looking forward to trying this again on a more stable version of the app in the future.
What I did notice, though: There are actually four camera-based assessments, not just the single VO2max assessment hinted at in the Apple event. Some have options or modifications, and you can skip components that you’re not able to do. These are the available assessments, and what they include:
Flexibility (5 minutes): arm raise, elbow bend, calf stretch, hamstring stretch, hip and knee bend.
Balance (5 minutes): single leg stand
VO2max (5 minutes): step test (on the floor, stepping in time with an accelerating beat)
Strength (5 minutes): pushup (either on knees or not, which you choose before beginning the assessment), overhead squat, and repeated sit-to-stand. If you opt for the knee pushup, you’ll also do a forearm plank.
For the VO2max test, you’ll need a device that can measure heart rate (your Apple Watch can do the job). For the strength test, you’ll need a chair for the sit-to-stand. I’ll reserve my judgement on these tests until I’m able to do them myself. They do seem to be geared toward people of all abilities, and especially older people who may not be very strong or active. I’m not sure that I would bother with a sit-to-stand test for my own sake, but I could see it being useful for someone my parents’ age.