Your iPhone knows a lot about your health, especially if you use apps like MyFitnessPal or track your activity using an Apple Watch. If given permission, apps can access that data. Here’s how to check which apps have access to your data.
We’ve shown how it can keep tabs on your location and expose that data to apps before, but what about your health data? The Health app collects as much data as you can give it, and if you’re using apps for tracking your weight, calories, blood pressure, and more, that can be a lot. If you’re wearing an Apple Watch, it can be even more information than you may realize.
How to Control Which Apps Can Access Your Health Data
There may be some kinds of health data that you don’t want to be tracked at all, or there may be others that you don’t mind Apple seeing, but would rather not hand over to apps. It’s all something you can control from within the Health app.
To get started, open the Health app on your iPhone and tap “Sources” at the bottom of the screen.
Here, you can see all of the apps that have requested access to your health data, either to read existing or add new health data. Tapping an individual app gives you additional information on the data to which it has access.
You can even see the data uninstalled apps had access to by tapping “Uninstalled Apps.”
There’s a handy button to remove all access at the top of the screen, but if you’d like more granular control that’s possible via a series of switches. There’s also a short explanation of why the app needs access, so your memory can be jogged in case it’s an old app that you may have forgotten about.
To disable the app’s access to all types of health data, tap “Turn All Categories Off.” If you’d rather just disable some categories, flick their corresponding switch to the “Off” position.
Repeat this process for each app displayed here to customize which app has access to which health data.
