How to import Apple Health data

There are two ways to get Apple Health data into Mitta. This article is about the first.

The import is a good fit for your history. The live link is for what you do from now on. The two do not exclude each other. For the live link, see How to connect Apple Health.

Mitta shows these steps on screen. You do this on the iPhone:

1. Open the Health app and tap your profile picture in the top right.
2. Tap Export All Health Data and wait until the export is ready.
3. Save export.zip to Files.

The export holds everything in your Health app, so it can be large, often hundreds of MB. You do not need to unzip it. Mitta takes export.zip as it is, and it also accepts the export.xml from inside the zip.

If you use Mitta on another device, make sure the file is somewhere you can reach from there.

1. In Mitta, open Settings. Under Connections, tap Import from Apple Health (Once, from an export file).
2. Tap Choose export and pick export.zip.
3. Wait while Mitta reads the file. A progress bar shows how far it is. Keep Mitta open. You can tap Stop at any time.
4. Check the preview, then tap Import.

You can also get there through Settings, Data, Switch to Mitta. Under Cardio you find Apple Health.

The file is read on your device and is not uploaded. Mitta reads the large XML file inside the zip piece by piece, so even a big export does not have to fit in memory at once. Unzipping needs iOS 16.4 or newer. On an older version, unzip the file first and choose export.xml.

Three things come in:

• Weight. Stored in kg. Mitta converts from other units and rounds to 0.1.
• Waist. Stored in cm.
• Cardio workouts. Each one becomes a cardio workout in your history, with sport, start time, duration, distance, calories, and average and maximum heart rate, where the file has them.

When there is more than one weight or waist measurement on a day, Mitta takes the earliest of that day. Values that cannot be right, such as a weight above 400 kg, are left out.

What does not come in:

• Strength workouts and meditation. Strength sessions in Health have no sets, so they are not usable. You log strength in Mitta with sets. Breathing, cooldown and similar entries are skipped too. The preview tells you how many were left out.
• Everything else in the export, such as steps, sleep, heart rate outside workouts, body fat and food. The import does not read it.

The on-screen text names running, cycling, walking, swimming and rowing. The preview lists every sport it finds in your file, each with a count. A workout type Mitta has no specific sport for is imported as Other sport.

Before anything is saved, you see:

• Three cards with the number of weight measurements, waist measurements and cardio workouts.
• The cardio workouts per sport, with a count.
• A line like From 3 Jan 2023 to 20 Oct 2026.
• A note when a measurement falls on a day where you already entered a value. Your own entry stays.
• A note when workouts are already in Mitta. Those are skipped.
• A note with the number of strength or meditation sessions that are not imported.

A workout counts as already there when it starts at exactly the same time as one in Mitta. If a day has a weight but no waist in Mitta, and the file has a waist, only the waist is added. Your existing weight is not touched.

If you picked the wrong file, tap Different file. If there is nothing new, the button says Nothing new to import and stays off. If the file has no weight, waist or cardio at all, you get a message that none were found.

When the import is done, a notification lists what came in, for example 12× weight, 3× waist, 40 cardio workouts imported. It has an Undo button. Tapping it removes the imported workouts and the weight and waist rows the import added, and you see Import undone. On a day where the import only filled in a missing weight or waist, just that value is cleared again.

Use it straight away if the preview was not what you wanted. You can import the same file again afterwards.