Whether you want it or not the health app comes with iOS 8. It's Apples way of trying to help you make sense of all the fitness and health data you collect using your phone, wearable's and fitness app.
The Health Dashboard is entirely customizable, so you can display the data that you care about most.
That can be steps walked, blood glucose levels, calories burned, or even really specific things, like vitamin D intake.
Each item you track gets a chart that visualizes the data over time.
Let's build a dashboard.
I'll go over to health data, then fitness.
Then I'll add steps, show on dashboard and flights climbed.
Each of these things can be tracked using my phone's built in motion processor and the barometer.
All right.
Those two things are in there.
Let's give it a try.
[MUSIC]
Now, I can see how many steps I took and how many stairs I climbed, plus the Apple continues to track that data all the time.
But that's just the beginning.
The health app can also access data that comes from other apps for instance there's the 7 minute workout app which has the theory that all you need is to work out 7 intense minutes per day.
To track the app I'll go to the sources tab and enable data importing from the 7 minute workout app.
There also an option to allow it to read my weight from the health app.
Which will help to determine how many calories I actually burn.
So not only does Health collect data, it also enables apps to talk to each other.
Finally, I'll go to Health Data and add calories burned to my dashboard.
Let's give it a shot.
[MUSIC]
Now that I completed the lap I can launch health and see how many calories I burned alongside my weight, steps, and flights climbed.
Giving me a complete picture of my overall health.
If you have any questions or tips of your own, hit me up on Twitter and check out cnet.com/how-to for the complete guide to the Health app.
For CNet, I'm Sharon Profis.
