Importing From Apple Health

Apple Health gathers data from your iPhone, your Apple Watch, and the apps and devices that write to it. The Health app can export all of it as one file, export.zip, which Kaizora imports.

Export From Your iPhone

1. Open the Health app.
2. Tap your picture or initials at the top right. If you don’t see them, tap Summary or Browse at the bottom, then scroll to the top.
3. Tap Export All Health Data, then Export.
4. Wait while Health prepares the file. Keep the Health app open until it’s done.
5. When the share sheet appears, choose where the file goes: Save to Files (then iCloud Drive or a folder on the iPhone), AirDrop to a Mac, or another app that can hold a large file.

The export holds everything Health has, with no choice of dates or types. A few months of data is a few megabytes; years with an Apple Watch are often hundreds of megabytes zipped, and the file inside is several times larger. Preparing it takes from a few seconds to several minutes, longer for a long history.

What’s in the File

export.zip unzips to a folder, apple_health_export, holding:

• export.xml, every sample Health has, which is what Kaizora reads;
• export_cda.xml, a clinical summary, which Kaizora doesn’t read;
• for some people, a folder of electrocardiograms, one file per ECG recording, which Kaizora reads from the ZIP, and a folder of workout routes, which it doesn’t.

You don’t need to unzip it: import the ZIP as it is. The export.xml inside it imports on its own too, but without your ECGs.

Import It

1. Open Data Sources, from the account menu at the bottom of the sidebar.
2. Under Imports, find Apple Health Export and choose Import from file.
3. Under File, choose export.zip or export.xml, and select Import.

The file is read a piece at a time, on your device, so even an export of several gigabytes doesn’t have to fit in memory, and a multi-year history imports in minutes. Progress shows how much of the file has been read. Keep the page open until it finishes. Importing on a computer is fastest for a large export.

The file is never uploaded or kept: only the rows read from it reach your account. If its import fails, import the same file again; what it had already written is updated, not doubled.

What Comes In

• Body and vitals: weight, height, body fat percentage, lean body mass, and waist circumference; heart rate, resting and walking heart rate, heart rate recovery, heart rate variability (SDNN), blood oxygen, and respiratory rate; body, basal, and sleeping wrist temperature; blood glucose; spirometry, peak flow, and inhaler puffs; atrial fibrillation burden; and VO₂ max.
• ECGs: each recording with its classification, such as sinus rhythm, from the ZIP’s electrocardiograms folder.
• Blood pressure: each reading’s systolic and diastolic as one reading; the heart rate taken with it comes in on its own, at the same time.
• Food: a named food from an app that logs foods, with its nutrients, as one food eaten. Nutrients logged on their own, such as a glass of water, become a food with no name, shown as “Unnamed food”.
• Sleep: each stretch of time in bed, asleep, awake, or in a stage (core, deep, and REM, which Kaizora calls light, deep, and REM) when your watch or app records them.
• Workouts as activities, with their type, start, and end, and mindful sessions as meditations.
• Steps and Apple’s Exercise ring minutes, as Apple Exercise Time, kept apart from Kaizora’s own exercise time.
• Hearing: the sound levels around you and in your headphones, and audiograms.
• Symptoms, such as headaches or nausea, with their severity, and alcoholic drinks.
• Cycle tracking: each day’s flow, spotting, cervical mucus, and home test results, sexual activity, and pregnancy, lactation, and contraception over their spans.
• Devices: the watch, phone, or other device each sample names, on your Devices page.

A sample of a type Kaizora has no metric for yet is skipped, and so is a value outside what its metric allows.

Avoiding Duplicates

If you import from Withings or Cronometer directly, their copies in Apple Health are skipped, so the same weight or meal doesn’t come in twice. Import from those services first, then Apple Health.

Your iPhone and your watch can both count the same steps. Kaizora’s daily total counts the device with the largest total, so one walk isn’t counted twice. See Importing Files for how overlapping sources are counted.

Keeping Up to Date

Export again and import the new file whenever you want your latest data. Readings you already have are updated in place, not duplicated, so importing the same file twice adds nothing new.

If Something Goes Wrong

• The export never finishes: keep the Health app open and the iPhone unlocked, and make sure it has free storage for a file of that size, then try again.
• The file is refused: check it’s the ZIP from Export All Health Data, or the export.xml from inside it, not export_cda.xml or a file from another app.
• The file is hard to move: for a large export, AirDrop to a Mac or Save to Files in iCloud Drive is more reliable than email or a messaging app, which may refuse or shrink large files.