I have recently come across a couple of odd HealthKit step samples from WatchOS. They represent step data measured in 2022 by my Apple Watch, but they have a creation date ("Date Added to Health") within the past couple of days. These odd samples show a "View All Quantities" button at the bottom of the sample Details page in the Health app on iOS 26 (which I've never seen before); the button leads to a list of many small step quantities, almost as if some older, smaller samples were consolidated into these newer samples. Even weirder is that at least some of these samples seem to be getting re-created repeatedly. For example, I've seen the same sample with a "Date Added to Health" of 9/5/25, then 9/8/25, twice on 9/9/25, and twice on 9/10/25. These samples were originally created by WatchOS 9, and are not being deleted/recreated by any apps on my device. I have only observed it since I updated to the iOS 26 beta (and now the RC); my watch was still running iOS 18 the first time it happened, but it has also happened since my watch was updated to WatchOS 26 beta. I did some debug printing of the odd samples and the normal samples surrounding them for comparison. Here's a normal sample: Sample: 80AC5AC5-CBD7-4581-B275-0C2ACA35B7B4 6 count 80AC5AC5-CBD7-4581-B275-0C2ACA35B7B4, (9.0), "Watch6,1" (9.0) "Apple Watch" (2022-09-15 16:20:14 -0500 - 2022-09-15 16:20:16 -0500) Device: <<HKDevice: 0x10591eee0>, name:Apple Watch, manufacturer:Apple Inc., model:Watch, hardware:Watch6,1, software:9.0, creation date:2022-08-25 18:22:26 +0000> Source revision: <HKSourceRevision name:My Apple Watch, bundle:com.apple.health.EE83959D-D009-4BA0-83A5-2E5A1CC05FE6, version:9.0, productType:Watch6,1, operatingSystemVersion:9.0> Source: <HKSource:0x110588690 "My Apple Watch", bundle identifier: com.apple.health.EE83959D-D009-4BA0-83A5-2E5A1CC05FE6, localDeviceSource: 0, modification date: 2024-01-31 05:49:18 +0000> Date added: 2022-09-15 21:20:16 +0000 Days between end and add: 0 And here's one of the odd samples: Sample: 4982487F-1189-4F16-AB00-61E37818A66D 676 count 4982487F-1189-4F16-AB00-61E37818A66D, (9.0), "iPhone12,1" (16.2) "Apple Watch" metadata: { HKMetadataKeySyncIdentifier = "6:38082859-D9C8-466A-8882-53443B2A2D94:684969619.25569:684970205.31182:119"; HKMetadataKeySyncVersion = 1; } (2022-09-15 16:20:19 -0500 - 2022-09-15 16:30:05 -0500) Device: <<HKDevice: 0x10591ce40>, name:Apple Watch, manufacturer:Apple Inc., model:Watch, hardware:Watch6,1, software:9.0, creation date:2022-08-25 18:22:26 +0000> Source revision: <HKSourceRevision name:My Apple Watch, bundle:com.apple.health.EE83959D-D009-4BA0-83A5-2E5A1CC05FE6, version:9.0, productType:iPhone12,1, operatingSystemVersion:16.2> Source: <HKSource:0x110588640 "My Apple Watch", bundle identifier: com.apple.health.EE83959D-D009-4BA0-83A5-2E5A1CC05FE6, localDeviceSource: 0, modification date: 2024-01-31 05:49:18 +0000> Date added: 2025-09-08 21:11:12 +0000 Days between end and add: 1088 Here's that same odd sample a day later, apparently recreated: Sample: 9E8B12FC-048D-4ECD-BE5B-D387AADE5130 676 count 9E8B12FC-048D-4ECD-BE5B-D387AADE5130, (9.0), "iPhone12,1" (16.2) "Apple Watch" metadata: { HKMetadataKeySyncIdentifier = "6:38082859-D9C8-466A-8882-53443B2A2D94:684969619.25569:684970205.31182:119"; HKMetadataKeySyncVersion = 1; } (2022-09-15 16:20:19 -0500 - 2022-09-15 16:30:05 -0500) Device: <<HKDevice: 0x12f01c4e0>, name:Apple Watch, manufacturer:Apple Inc., model:Watch, hardware:Watch6,1, software:9.0, creation date:2022-08-25 18:22:26 +0000> Source revision: <HKSourceRevision name:My Apple Watch, bundle:com.apple.health.EE83959D-D009-4BA0-83A5-2E5A1CC05FE6, version:9.0, productType:iPhone12,1, operatingSystemVersion:16.2> Source: <HKSource:0x12f0f8230 "My Apple Watch", bundle identifier: com.apple.health.EE83959D-D009-4BA0-83A5-2E5A1CC05FE6, localDeviceSource: 0, modification date: 2024-01-31 05:49:18 +0000> Date added: 2025-09-09 20:53:18 +0000 Days between end and add: 1089 It's worth pointing out some differences between the "normal" and "odd" samples (besides the "View All Quantities" button in the Health app). The recreated "odd" samples have a different Source Revision - the "productType" and "operatingSystemVersion" refer to my iPhone, not the Apple Watch device that actually captured the samples. The odd samples also have metadata keys that don't exist in the other samples - HKMetadataKeySyncIdentifier and HKMetadataKeySyncVersion. Questions I'm hoping someone can help with: What are these samples? Why/how do they have a "View All Quantities" button that shows sub-samples? Is this new to iOS 26? Why are some of the samples getting recreated multiple times?

Can’t get the live data from ppg sensor (se os 26.x) for 0 latency parsing of haptics per each pulse (heart beat). any help would be cool. b

I'm currently collecting real-time heart rate data using HKWorkoutSession. I want to track when the Apple Watch is physically removed from the user's wrist during an active workout. However, I've noticed that workoutBuilder(_:didCollectDataOf:) continues to be called even after the watch is removed from the wrist. Is there a way to detect when the Apple Watch is removed from the wrist during an active HKWorkoutSession? Or is this tracking not possible through the HealthKit framework? Any guidance or alternative approaches would be appreciated.

How to legally and compliantly upload users' fitness and health data to our own server—while adhering to Apple's strict privacy policies—for analysis by our AI large model to provide personalized feedback and recommendations to users.

Some users have switched to wearing smart rings instead of an Apple Watch, but they still want their rings to close throughout the day in Apple Fitness to keep their streaks going. I've noticed that the 3rd party smart ring apps do not affect the progress of the exercise and move rings unless the user puts on their Apple Watch and syncs with there iPhone throughout the day. Is there a way to make the progress rings update throughout the day without having to connect an Apple Watch periodically?

I'm trying to hook into the new workoutEffort score supported in iOS 18, I am collecting this information from users when they submit their workout and trying to add a sample to the HKWorkout in the same manner as I've been adding other samples like bodyweight, calories burned, etc. I'm receiving the error: HKWorkout: Sample of type HKQuantityTypeIdentifierWorkoutEffortScore must be related to a workout I tried adding the samples using HKWorkoutBuilder.add([samples]) as which has been working perfectly for calories burned & bodyweight, but I am receiving the above error for workoutEffortScore As a second approach, I tried adding the sample after I called finishWorkout on the HKWorkoutBuilder and received back the HKWorkout object using HKHealthStore.add([samples], to: HKWorkout) and am still receiving the same error! I don't know otherwise how to relate a sample to a workout, I thought those were the APIs to do so? I'm using Xcode 16.0 RC (16A242) and testing on an iOS 16 Pro simulator

I have FB12696743 open since July 21, 2023 and this happened again today. I get home at approx 10 mins after the hour, walk appox 50 ft across my yard, up 5 steps into my house, let the dog out and pace on my deck watching the dog, go back in the house walk around the kitchen while preparing dinner. A total of about 200 ft. I sit down about 35 past the hour and start to eat and at 10 mins to the next our and I get the reminder to stand. On the other side I wake up at 5 mins to hour. Walk 8 steps to the bathroom and successfully achieve the stand for that hour. WHY!?!?!? 😁🤣

We are developing a mobile app focused on lone worker protection, which does not include any fitness tracking features. We require the use of HKWorkoutSession solely to enable background execution of critical safety-related code. Could you please confirm whether this use of HKWorkoutSession is permitted under App Store Review guidelines, given that our app does not offer fitness or workout-related functionality?

I have a watchOS app with a connected iOS app using Swift and SwiftUI. The watchOS app should read heart rate date in the background using HKOberserQuery and enableBackgroundDelivery(), send the data to the iPhone app via WCSession. The iPhone app then sends the data to a Firebase project. The issue I am facing now it that the app with the HKObserverQuery works fine when the app is in the foreground, but when the app runs in the background, the observer query gets triggered for the first time (after one hour), but then always get terminated from the watchdog timeout with the following error message: CSLHandleBackgroundHealthKitQueryAction scene-create watchdog transgression: app<app.nanacare.nanacare.nanaCareHealthSync.watchkitapp((null))>:14451 exhausted real (wall clock) time allowance of 15.00 seconds I am using Xcode 16.3 on MacOS 15.4 The App is running on iOS 18.4 and watchOS 11.4 What is the reason for this this issue? I only do a simple SampleQuery to fetch the latest heart rate data inside the HKObserverQuery and then call the completionHandler. The query itself takes less than one second. Or is there a better approach to read continuously heart rate data from healthKit in the background on watchOS? I don't have an active workout session, and I don't need all heart rate data. Once every 15 minutes or so would be enough.

The recent WWDC presentation on HealthKit demonstrated how to associate side effects with a medication dose using HKObjectType.categoryType(forIdentifier:) and HKCategorySample, a subclass of HKObject. There also appears to be an object type specifically for medication doses: HKMedicationDoseEventType, accessible via HKObjectType.medicationDoseEventType(). However, there’s no corresponding public subclass of HKObject that supports this identifier. The most relevant class, HKMedicationDoseEvent, exists but has an inaccessible initializer. Is there currently a supported way to use HKMedicationDoseEventType, or is this functionality not yet available? https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/321/

I'm a bit confused as to what we're supposed to be doing to support starting a workout using Siri in iOS/watchOS 26. On one hand, I see a big push to move towards App Intents and shortcuts rather than SiriKit. On the other hand, I see that some of the things I would expect to work with App Intents well... don't work. BUT - I'm also not sure it isn't just developer error on my part. Here are some assertions that I'm hoping someone more skilled and knowledgable can correct me on: Currently the StartWorkoutIntent only serves the Action button on the Watch Ultra. It cannot be used to register Shortcuts, nor does Siri respond to it. I can use objects inherited from AppIntent to create shortcuts, but this requires an additional permission to run a shortcut if a user starts a workout with Siri. AppIntent shortcuts requires the user to say "Start a workout in " - if the user leaves out the "in " part, Siri will not prompt the user to select my app. If I want to allow the user to simply say "Start a Workout" and have Siri prompt the user for input as to which app it should use, I must currently use the older SiriKit to do so. Are these assertions correct - or am I just implementing something incorrectly? Using the latest Xcode 26 beta for what it is worth.

New in iOS 26 and WatchOS 26 is a Sleep Score calculation for users based on Duration, Bedtime and Interruptions. Unfortunately I can't find any APIs for developers to tap into this metric. Yes, in theory it's all created off the same Sleep Analysis data already available with HealthKit but that makes it very hard to recreate in our apps. If the numbers don't match up exactly, users will understandably complain. Can anyone confirm that this is the case and I've not missed a Sleep Score API? I'll then file feedback. Hopefully this doesn't go the way of Heart Rate Zones where the Apple Watch iPhone app has generated them for years and provided no way for third party apps to access these values (yes many feedbacks provided previously).

We are developing a health app that relies on HKObserverQuery and BackgroundDelivery to monitor Heart Rate data. On watchOS 10.6 and 11.6 , these data updates are typically delivered reliably every 8–12 minutes, occasionally exceeding 12 minutes, but generally not longer than 15 minutes. This frequency has been sufficient for the real-time data requirements of our app. However, after adapting our app to watchOS 26, we noticed that HKObserverQuery triggers much less frequently, with longer and very inconsistent intervals. This issue has had a major impact on our product: data collection for essential features is unreliable, resulting in a greatly diminished user experience on watchOS 26 and making the app essentially useless from the user’s perspective. Observed Behavior: HKObserverQuery and BackgroundDelivery are extremely unstable, with trigger intervals frequently exceeding 15 minutes, and sometimes even 20 minutes. When the user is sedentary, intervals become even longer; there are cases where no heart rate or active energy updates are delivered for 30 minutes, or even over 1 hour. Request for Support and Guidance: Have there been any changes to the HKObserverQuery background delivery mechanism on watchOS 26, specifically for Heart Rate and Active Energy data? If these changes are intentional system optimizations, could you provide guidance or recommended practices to ensure our app can reliably retrieve updates and maintain a smooth experience for users? Thank you for your support.

I want to insert the medication data which is available from ios 26 from my app to apple health kit. I have tried to get the permission to read and write data but app got crashed while I tried to request that permission. Does apple allow to insert the medication data to apple health kit likewise we are able to add other health and fitness data or not? let healthStore = HKHealthStore() @available(iOS 26.0, *) @objc func requestAuthorization(_ resolve: @escaping RCTPromiseResolveBlock, rejecter reject: @escaping RCTPromiseRejectBlock) { guard HKHealthStore.isHealthDataAvailable() else { print("not available ") return } let doseType = HKObjectType.medicationDoseEventType() let medType = HKObjectType.userAnnotatedMedicationType() healthStore.requestAuthorization(toShare: [doseType], read: [doseType]) { success, error in if let err = error { reject("auth_error", err.localizedDescription, err); return } self.healthStore.requestPerObjectReadAuthorization(for: medType, predicate: nil) { s, e in if let err2 = e { reject("per_obj_auth", err2.localizedDescription, err2); return } resolve(["ok": success && s]) } } }

We are using HealthKit in our app to synchronize step count data. The data is correctly synced with the Health app, but the step count does not appear in the Fitness app (although workout data does). Is there anything developers need to do to synchronize step count data with the Fitness app as well?

Hey everyone I'm working on a health app that's heavily focused on HRV tracking and analysis, and I'm trying to figure out what's actually possible with AirPods Pro 3 from a developer standpoint. The hardware clearly has a much better heart rate sensor than the previous generation, but I'm hitting some walls when it comes to actually accessing the data I need. So here's the situation I'm dealing with: When I query HealthKit for HRV samples, I'm not seeing anything coming from AirPods Pro 3. The device is obviously capable of tracking heart rate continuously during workouts and listening sessions, and from what I've read about the hardware, it should theoretically be able to capture the inter-beat intervals needed for HRV calculation. But either that data isn't being processed on-device, or it's just not being made available through the standard HealthKit data types that third-party apps can access. What I'm really after is either direct HRV metrics (like SDNN, which Apple Watch already provides through HKQuantityTypeIdentifierHeartRateVariabilitySDNN) or even better, access to the raw R-R interval data. With R-R intervals, I could calculate RMSSD, pNN50, and other time-domain and frequency-domain HRV metrics that are super valuable for tracking recovery, autonomic nervous system balance, and stress levels. This would be especially useful since a lot of users wear AirPods during activities when they're not wearing their Apple Watch. Has anyone managed to find a way to pull this data from AirPods Pro 3? Are there any private frameworks or entitlements I should be looking into? Or is this just fundamentally not exposed to developers at the OS level right now? I've gone through the HealthKit documentation pretty thoroughly and haven't found anything that specifically addresses this, but I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if there are any known workarounds. I'm also curious if anyone has heard anything from Apple about future plans to expose this data. It seems like a missed opportunity given how capable the hardware is and how much value developers could provide with access to this physiological data. Would love to hear if anyone else is working on similar features or has insights into the technical limitations here.

Ever since upgrading to OS 26.1, I've noticed that HealthKit anchored object queries seem to be much slower-updating than normal. I was curious if Apple stated anything explicitly changed on this front? I use anchored object queries to update some of the workout metrics that HKLiveWorkoutBuilder doesn't report (like stepCount).

Hi everyone, we’re developing an app that lets users export selected bike rides to the HealthKit ecosystem. We created our app icon using the Apple Icon Composer and referenced the composer file in Xcode. Everything works fine, except that the logo doesn’t appear correctly in the Fitness app. Has anyone experienced this issue or knows how to fix it?

I am the developer of a workout app that allows users to create interval programs (e.g. Warm Up, Fast, Cool Down). It is possible for me to store the data for the intervals along with the workout in the Health system by using WorkoutKit (or any other method)? My aim is to make it so that the Fitness app shows the interval details when users view workouts created by my app. Thanks in advance.

I'm developing a watchOS nap app that detects when the user falls asleep by monitoring heart rate changes. == Technical Implementation == HKWorkoutSession (.mindAndBody) for background execution HKAnchoredObjectQuery for real-time heart rate data CoreMotion for movement detection == Battery Considerations == Heart rate monitoring ONLY active when user explicitly starts a session Monitoring continues until user is awakened OR 60-minute limit is reached If no sleep detected within 60 minutes, session auto-ends (user may have abandoned or forgotten to stop) App displays clear UI indicating monitoring is active Typical session: 15-30 minutes, keeping battery usage minimal == The Problem == HKWorkoutSession affects Activity Rings during the session. Users receive "Exercise goal reached" notifications while resting — confusing. == What I've Tried == Not using HKLiveWorkoutBuilder → Activity Rings still affected Using builder but not calling finishWorkout() (per https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/780220) → Activity Rings still affected WKExtendedRuntimeSession (self-care type) (per https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/721077) → Only ~10 min runtime, need up to 60 min HKObserverQuery + enableBackgroundDelivery (per https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/779101) → ~4 updates/hour, too slow for real-time detection Audio background session for continuous processing (suggested in https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/130287) → Concerned about App Store rejection for non-audio app; if official approves this technical route, I can implement in this direction Some online resources mention "Health Monitoring Entitlement" from WWDC 2019 Session 251, but I could not find any official documentation for this entitlement. Apple Developer Support also confirmed they cannot locate it? == My Question == Is there any supported way to: Monitor heart rate in background for up to 60 minutes WITHOUT affecting Activity Rings or creating workout records? If this requires a special entitlement or API access, please advise on the application process. Or allow me to submit a code-level support request. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!