Which Apple Health data types does Life Dashboard send?

By Owen Vogelaar, who maintains Life Dashboard. Updated October 21, 2026.

The iPhone app reads 28 Apple Health types, and each one is off until you switch it on. It sends them under the Android app's payload keys, with the same fields and units: steps, distance and calories, workouts, weight and body composition, heart rate, resting heart rate and HRV, blood pressure, glucose, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, VO2 max, sleep with stages, hydration, nutrition, mindfulness and six cycle tracking types. Menstruation goes out as two keys, so an iPhone sends 29 of the Android app's 33 keys.

Get the iPhone app

Every record carries a uuid, the Apple Health sample's own, and a source: the name Apple Health gives the app or device that wrote it. The app only reads; it never writes into Apple Health.

All types at a glance

The Apple Watch column says where Apple's documentation describes the watch recording the type; Apple Watch in Home Assistant links each page. The other types come from the iPhone, from what you log yourself, or from apps that write into Apple Health.

"No" and "Unknown" in the Apple Watch column mean Apple's watch documentation, as cited on this site, doesn't describe the watch recording it, not that nothing can. To see what writes a type on your own iPhone, open the Health app, find the type and look under Data Sources & Access.

Which source writes which type

• Apple Watch: steps, distance, active and resting energy, workouts, heart rate, resting heart rate, HRV, sleep with stages, respiratory rate while you sleep, VO2 max during some outdoor workouts, and blood oxygen on models and in regions that have it. Apple Watch in Home Assistant has the details and Apple's pages.
• iPhone: steps and distance. An iPhone without a watch usually records no resting energy, so total_calories mostly comes with a watch.
• Other apps and devices: the apps of other watches, rings and scales, such as Garmin Connect, Oura and Withings, can write into Apple Health, and so can apps you log food, water, cycle tracking or meditation in. What they write depends on the app and your settings there; each record names the app in source.

Apple Health keeps a walk that both the iPhone and the watch recorded twice, once per device. The daily_totals in every payload count it once, in the order of the data sources you set in the Health app, so use those for day totals.

Activity

Steps

Key steps: count, a whole number, over an interval from start_time to end_time. Up to 1000 new records per sync.

Distance

Key distance: meters, over an interval. Apple Health keeps a distance type per kind of activity, and the app reads them all: walking and running, cycling, swimming, wheelchair, downhill snow sports, and from iOS 18 rowing, paddling, cross-country skiing and skating. They don't overlap, so adding them up counts nothing twice. A record doesn't say which activity it's from.

Active Calories

Key active_calories: calories in kcal, over an interval. Apple Health's active energy.

Total Calories

Key total_calories: calories in kcal, over an interval. Apple Health has no total energy type, so this is its resting and active energy records together. One active energy sample is therefore part of both active_calories and total_calories. Up to 1000 new records per sync. In daily_totals, it's only sent on days with resting energy.

Exercise Sessions

Key exercise: type, start_time, end_time and duration_seconds, from Apple Health's workouts. type is the activity in snake_case, such as running, walking, downhill_skiing or hiit; other is Apple's own Other, or an activity from an iOS newer than the app. duration_seconds includes pauses, so it can be longer than the workout time the Health app shows. Android sends a number as a string here instead, such as "56" for running.

Body

Weight

Key weight: kilograms, at a moment (time), with up to 2 decimals, so a weight entered in pounds survives the conversion.

Height

Key height: meters, at a moment.

Body Temperature

Key body_temperature: celsius, at a moment.

Body Fat

Key body_fat: percentage, 0 to 100, at a moment.

Lean Body Mass

Key lean_body_mass: kilograms, at a moment.

Heart and breathing

Heart Rate

Key heart_rate: bpm, a whole number, at a moment, one record per sample. Up to 1000 new records per sync. Every sample has its own uuid; Android's <uuid>#<time> form doesn't apply.

Resting Heart Rate

Key resting_heart_rate: bpm, a whole number, at a moment.

Heart Rate Variability

Key heart_rate_variability: heart_rate_variability_millis, at a moment. This is SDNN, the measure Apple Health stores. Android sends RMSSD, the one Health Connect stores, under the same key; the two aren't the same number, so keep them apart. Up to 500 new records per sync.

Blood Pressure

Key blood_pressure: systolic and diastolic in mmHg, at a moment, per reading: the two values an app saved together. The rare app that saves them separately gets them paired when they come within a second of each other. A value without its other half isn't sent. uuid is the systolic sample's.

Blood Glucose

Key blood_glucose: mmol_per_liter, at a moment.

Oxygen Saturation

Key oxygen_saturation: percentage, 0 to 100, at a moment.

Respiratory Rate

Key respiratory_rate: rate in breaths per minute, at a moment. Up to 500 new records per sync.

VO2 Max

Key vo2_max: vo2_ml_per_min_per_kg, at a moment.

Sleep and mindfulness

Sleep

Key sleep: session_end_time, duration_seconds and stages, each stage with its own stage, times, uuid and source. Apple Health has no sleep session, so the app groups stage samples into nights, and a gap of more than an hour starts a new one.

• Stages: light (Apple's Core), deep, rem, awake, sleeping and unknown, which Android sends too, and in_bed, which only an iPhone sends: the time in bed around the stages, not a stage itself.
• A night's uuid comes from its earliest stage, so it stays the same while the night grows. Replace the night when it comes back longer. A stage added later sends the whole night again.
• The night's source is the app or device that recorded most of its stages.

Mindfulness

Key mindfulness: start_time, end_time and duration_seconds, from apps that write mindful sessions to Apple Health. No title, which Android can send.

Food and drink

Hydration

Key hydration: liters, over an interval. Apple Health's water.

Nutrition

Key nutrition: calories, protein_grams, carbs_grams, fat_grams, name and 34 more nutrients under Android's keys, such as dietary_fibre_g, sugars_g, sodium_mg and caffeine_mg, over an interval. Every field is optional.

• A food an app logged, with every nutrient in it, is one record, with its name when the app gave one.
• The 34 other nutrients are only read from a food that also has energy, protein, carbohydrates or fat, so a coffee logged with caffeine only isn't sent.
• Apple Health has no type for trans fat, unsaturated fat, energy from fat, folic acid or meal_type, so those never come from an iPhone.

Cycle tracking

Menstruation

One switch, two keys. menstruation_flow has flow at a moment, with the shared schema's values light, medium, heavy or unknown. menstruation_period has only start_time and end_time: Apple Health has no period record, so the app derives periods from consecutive flow days, and a gap of up to 48 hours bridges one missed day. A period's uuid comes from its first flow day, so replace the period when it comes back longer.

Basal Body Temperature

Key basal_body_temperature: celsius, at a moment.

Intermenstrual Bleeding

Key intermenstrual_bleeding: only the time.

Ovulation Test

Key ovulation_test: result at a moment: positive (LH surge), high (estrogen surge), negative, inconclusive or unknown.

Cervical Mucus

Key cervical_mucus: appearance and sensation at a moment. Apple Health records no sensation, so sensation is always unknown.

Sexual Activity

Key sexual_activity: protection_used at a moment: protected or unprotected when the writing app recorded it, unknown otherwise.

Over MQTT, the cycle tracking entries aren't published, because a retained topic is no place for reproductive data; basal body temperature is. Home Assistant's integration and a webhook get them all.

The four Android keys an iPhone never sends

Numbers, limits and resolution

• Decimals. 3 for meters and liters; 2 for kilograms, calories, Celsius, mmol/L and the nutrients; 1 for percentages, blood pressure, breathing rate, HRV and VO2 max. Trailing zeros are dropped, so 97.0 arrives as 97. Counts, beats per minute and durations are whole numbers.
• Per sync. Up to 1000 new records for heart rate, steps and total calories, 500 for HRV and respiratory rate, and 200 for every other type. The next sync continues where this one stopped.
• Data Resolution. Heart rate, HRV, oxygen saturation and respiratory rate can be sent as one average per 1, 5 or 15 minutes or per hour, with a minimum and maximum; steps, distance and both calories as a sum. Every type starts at every record.

The iOS payload page has every detail, and the Android app's JSON Schema covers both apps. For Android, see Health Connect data types, app by app.