Apple Health on iPhone

Apple Health is how your Apple Watch’s heart rate reaches Upscore, and where your finished sessions go so they count in the Fitness app. This page covers what Upscore reads and writes, why it asks for each permission, and how to put permissions right if the first setup went wrong.

Do I need Apple Health?

Only if you use an Apple Watch as your heart-rate source. The watch’s heart rate reaches your phone through Health, so without it Upscore can’t see your pulse. With a Bluetooth chest strap or armband, Apple Health is optional: sessions, recaps and heart rate all work without it, and connecting it just adds your sessions to the Fitness app.

What does Upscore put in Apple Health?

Each finished session becomes a workout, filed as High Intensity Interval Training because that’s the closest type Apple offers. What’s attached depends on your heart-rate source:

• With an Apple Watch: the workout, your heart rate, active calories and steps. It counts toward your Move and Exercise rings like any other watch workout.
• With a Bluetooth strap: the workout and your steps. Your strap’s heart rate and the calorie estimate stay in Upscore’s recap; they aren’t written to Health.

Steps are counted from the charts you played, not from your iPhone’s motion sensor.

What permissions does Upscore ask for, and why?

iOS shows one sheet with two groups. Each line, and what it’s for:

Allow Upscore to write:

• Workouts: the session itself.
• Active Energy: calories, on Apple Watch sessions.
• Steps: your DDR steps.

Allow Upscore to read:

• Heart Rate: how your Apple Watch’s readings get to the phone during a session. Upscore never reads heart rate from any other app or device.
• Workouts, Active Energy and Steps: only to find the workout it just wrote, so steps land on the right one instead of a duplicate.

You can allow some and decline others. Decline Heart Rate and Upscore can’t show your pulse during an Apple Watch session, even though the watch itself is still measuring it.

How do I set it up?

1. Open Profile → Connected devices.
2. Tap Apple Health.
3. iOS shows the Health permission sheet. Tap Turn On All, or pick the lines you want, then Allow.
4. The row now says Apple Health connected.

The Train tab also offers Connect Apple Health until you’ve done this.

Using the Apple Watch app? Upscore on the watch asks for the same permissions the first time you open it. Allow them there too; the watch and the phone keep one set of switches between them.

I declined something and want to change it

iOS only shows the permission sheet once, so Upscore can’t ask again. Change the switches yourself in either place:

• iPhone Settings → Apps → Health → Data Access & Devices → Upscore on iOS 18. On iOS 16 and 17 it’s Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → Upscore. Turn on the lines you want, or Turn On All.
• Or in the Health app: tap your picture at the top right, then Privacy, then Apps, then Upscore.
• On the Apple Watch, if the watch app’s own prompt was declined: on the watch, Settings → Health → Apps → Upscore.

Upscore has a shortcut under Profile → Connected devices → Apple Health → Open Apple Health. Any change takes effect from your next session; there’s nothing to redo in Upscore.

Everything’s on and something still isn’t saving? Turn every Upscore switch off, wait a moment, then turn them all back on. Apple deliberately doesn’t tell apps when a permission was declined, so Upscore can’t warn you; the switches are the only place the truth lives.

My session isn’t in the Fitness app

Check the workout permission first. Open the switches as above and make sure Workouts is on; that’s the one that puts a session in Fitness. Then:

1. Look in the Health app: Browse → Activity → Workouts. If the session is there, Health has it and Fitness will catch up.
2. Give it time. Health usually shows a new workout within a minute or two, and other apps report waits of up to a couple of hours after a session ends in the background.
3. Look under the date it happened, not today. Workouts are filed by their start time.
4. No Apple Watch? The Fitness app on an iPhone alone shows your Move calories, and a strap session writes no calories, so look for the workout in the Health app rather than the rings.

My steps aren’t showing up in Apple Health

Health picks one source for steps to avoid double-counting, and your iPhone usually wins. To make Upscore’s steps count during a session:

1. Open the Apple Health app
2. Browse → Steps → Data Sources & Access → Edit
3. Drag Upscore above iPhone

The same session shows up twice

Two things recorded it. If you start a workout in the Apple Watch’s own Workout app while an Upscore session runs, Health gets both. Start the session from Upscore on the watch instead, and leave the Workout app alone.

Where does this data go?

Apple Health stays on your iPhone, and syncs to your other Apple devices only if you’ve turned on iCloud sync for Health. None of it passes through Upscore’s servers. Separately, Upscore stores your heart-rate data on its own servers for your session recaps, which you can turn off any time in Settings. The Session Mode overview has the details.

How do I turn it off?

Turn off the switches in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → Upscore, or tap Turn Off All there. Upscore keeps working with a strap; an Apple Watch needs Heart Rate back on to be a source again. Workouts already saved stay in Health until you delete them in the Health app.

If something here didn’t match what you see, tell us on Discord and we can help troubleshoot.