Connect Apple Health or Health Connect

Connect the health store on your phone

Achetrace reads from the health store your phone already has — Apple Health on iPhone, Health Connect on Android. It is one connection per phone.

Most of the app works without it, and the last section says what. One feature does not: on iPhone, a head-orientation check with motion-capable headphones only runs once Apple Health says you have been sitting still, so the connection decides whether it can run at all. Two different things happen when it cannot, and which one you get depends on where you stopped. Without the connection the check says so plainly — the card reads "Head orientation needs Apple Health". Connect it but leave both stand hours and hourly steps unshared and it cannot say so, because Apple never tells an app which reads were allowed: it reports that it cannot tell whether you have been sitting instead of taking a reading, and the card reads "Head orientation can't tell if you're sitting". Sharing either one can be enough, once it has something recent to read: steps recorded within the last day, or a stand hour an Apple Watch recorded for the last full hour. Sharing alone does not clear the card while neither has been recorded.

On iPhone, the Connect Apple Health card carries the current state and a Connect button. It opens an explanation — which categories the request covers, and that Achetrace only reads — before Health is asked anything. Choose what to share is the tap that produces the system sheet.

On Android, the Connect Health Connect card works the same way: the explanation first, then Health Connect's own permission screen. You can also open Health Connect ▸ App permissions ▸ Achetrace yourself at any time.

Each connection belongs to that phone, not to your account. A second phone you sign in on starts unconnected and asks for its own access.

What Achetrace asks to read

Achetrace only reads. It writes nothing back to Apple Health or to Health Connect, on either platform.

On iPhone the categories it can request are hourly steps, workouts, active energy, sleep, stand hours, walking steadiness, walking asymmetry and walking speed.

On Android the request covers steps, sleep and active energy — those three, every time. That is a shorter list than the iPhone one, and the reason is what the Android app asks for rather than what Health Connect holds: exercise sessions, for instance, are a category Health Connect offers, but nothing in the Android app requests them, so they never appear on the permission screen and are never read.

You pick from that list on the sheet the system shows; Achetrace never selects a category on your behalf.

What the app can tell you about the answer

On iPhone, Achetrace is never told which categories you allowed. Apple Health deliberately does not disclose read authorization to an app — that is what stops an app inferring a condition from a refusal — and the effect is that a category you turned down and a category with nothing recorded in it look exactly the same from here: both return no samples.

So once Health has been asked, the Apple Health row reads "Asked" beside a question mark, never a check mark, and the readiness card says "iOS does not say which you allowed". Where it shows a number it is counting the categories it asked for, not the categories Health agreed to. Read it that way. If every category had already been asked for on this iPhone, Health shows no sheet at all, and the row says "Already asked on this phone" so the missing sheet is not mistaken for a failure. To find out which categories you actually allowed, open Settings ▸ Health ▸ Data Access & Devices ▸ Achetrace: that screen knows the answer and the app does not.

The status the iPhone card shows collapses two different situations into one word. Denied there means Achetrace holds no access at all: either this iPhone has no Health data available, or the request did not complete. It does not mean the app observed you refusing something.

On Android, Health Connect does tell the app which permissions were granted, unlike iPhone. The Android card does not pass that on, though: once connected it reads "Connected · you choose categories", with no list and no number, so the app holding the answer is not the same as your being able to read it there.

What Android cannot separate is never asked from asked and granted nothing — and, because the app starts each run holding nothing, from connected on an earlier run as well: all three leave Achetrace holding no category, and the card reads the same in each case. Health Connect ▸ App permissions ▸ Achetrace is the remedy for both questions — which categories are granted, and which of those three states you are in — because it is the one screen that shows the real state.

One more Android case is worth naming, because its label is misleading. When the card reports access as permanently denied, what the device is actually reporting is that Health Connect itself is not usable here — not installed, not supported by this Android version, or waiting on an update. There is nothing to grant until that is resolved, and no permission screen to visit.

On iPhone, the app asks Health at launch what this install has already asked for. It keeps no record of its own of what Health was asked. Each time it opens, it asks Apple Health which categories this installation of Achetrace has already requested, and restores those as requested — not as allowed, which Health still does not say. So a card that read as connected yesterday reads the same today without asking you anything, and that includes a category you have since turned off in Settings, which simply returns no samples. After a reinstall, or if Health could not answer that question, it restores nothing and the card reads as needing permission. Once access is restored the Apple Health row offers an Import button: it reads the categories already requested again and never asks Health for a new one, so the system sheet only ever appears from Choose what to share.

On iPhone, Use Apple Health movement on the Privacy tab turns movement on or off for your whole account. Turning it off rejects any days still waiting for your review and deletes their data, and no phone on the account sends movement after that. Turning it back on collects movement from that day; the days it was off are not collected later. The switch appears once Apple Health has been asked on this phone, and it never brings up the Health permission sheet. Signing out does not turn it off.

On Android, each run of the app starts holding nothing. The Android app does not store what Health Connect gave it, and it begins with no category in hand, so a card that read as connected yesterday can read as needing permission after the app is opened again. Usually nothing has been revoked and the app has simply not asked again — but it cannot tell you that, because it holds no record of the grant to compare against. That is why the Android not-connected state covers never having asked, having connected on an earlier run, and having had access withdrawn since, and why the card does not claim to know which of the three you are in. Tapping Choose what to share re-establishes it if the grant is still there.

If access does not come back, or you want to know which categories you allowed, the platform's own screen is the one that holds the answer: Settings ▸ Health ▸ Data Access & Devices ▸ Achetrace on iPhone, Health Connect ▸ App permissions ▸ Achetrace on Android.

What the browser shows

The web app's Data-source status panel on Today shows what your account has heard from: each paired computer, and a Phone app sync row with the time the phone app last synced. That row is not a view of your health store. It reports that the phone app reached your account, and says so itself — "shows when the phone app last synced, not which health data arrived". A recent sync does not mean Apple Health or Health Connect is connected, or that anything was read from it, so the panel is not somewhere to check whether a health connection worked.

You cannot connect Apple Health or Health Connect from a browser either. Neither store has a web interface for an app to ask through, so the connection is made on the phone. To see the state of one, open the card in the phone app, or the platform's own screen named above.

What still works with no source connected

Everything you enter yourself. Pain episodes, posture resets, notes, goals and the trends built from them never depended on a health store, and none of them is withheld or degraded when one is absent.

What a connected source adds today is a record, not a view.

On iPhone, the import becomes an hourly movement summary stored on the phone. It is sent to your account only when you are signed in and the upload succeeds — an import made while signed out stays on the device, and a failed upload is tried again while the app stays open, and not after it is closed, so treat the phone as the copy that is certain to exist. No screen charts it yet. If you have chosen to review days before they are used, a waiting day shows a short summary of it. Every category you allow is read during that import, and which ones you allow is yours to answer on the sheet.

On Android, none of it gets that far yet. Connecting Health Connect imports the last 30 days of the categories you allowed and keeps them on the phone, and the app tells you how many samples arrived — but nothing yet turns them into a chart, and they are not synced. Connecting on Android will not fill a chart today. It is worth doing if you want the import in place for when that lands; it is not worth doing for context you expect to see this week.

And on Android the import that runs straight after the permission screen needs all three. A partial answer — steps but not sleep, say — leaves the card reading as connected while that import does not run. The row keeps an Import button in that state, so you are not waiting on anything: allow the rest in Health Connect ▸ App permissions ▸ Achetrace and tap Import, or tap it as you are and the categories you did allow are imported on their own.

If you would rather not connect a store at all, that is a supported way to use Achetrace, not a setup step left unfinished. The card keeps offering the connection, and everything you enter yourself stays available — with the headphone check named at the top, which is the one thing that waits on Apple Health.