With this update, you can finally disable the iPhone’s built-in step tracking.  This is especially useful if you use an app like SyncSolver to count your steps from your Fitbit (it stops your iPhone’s steps from mixing in with your Fitbit’s steps).

To disable the iPhone’s built-in step tracking:

1. Go to “Settings”, then “Privacy”.
2. Select “Motion & Fitness”.
3. Turn off the “Health” app.

You’ll still need to remove the old step data from the Health app.

1. Open the “Health” app and tap your “Steps” dashboard (or go to “Health Data > Fitness > Steps”)
2. Under the graph, tap “Share Data”
3. Under Data Sources, tap “(Your name)’s iPhone”
4. Tap “Edit” in the upper-right corner, then tap “Clear All” on the left-corner.

Now you’ll have pure step data from SyncSolver.

From Apple’s change log, iOS 8.2 also contains the following improvements to HealthKit:

• Adds the ability to select the unit of measurement for distance, body temperature, height, weight and blood glucose
• Improves stability when dealing with large amounts of data
• Includes the ability to add and visualize workout sessions from 3rd-party apps
• Addresses an issue that may have prevented users from adding a photo in Medical ID
• Fixes units for vitamins and minerals
• Fixes an issue where Health data wouldn’t refresh after changing data source order
• Fixes an issue where some graphs showed no data values
• Adds a privacy setting that enables turning off tracking of steps, distance and flights climbed

The post iOS 8.2 is released with HealthKit Improvements appeared first on Technically Well.

Check out the full story on Digital Trends.

The post Top Hospitals Are Taking Part in Apple’s HealthKit Pilot appeared first on Technically Well.

Sync Solver does an excellent job of syncing your step, sleep, and other Fitbit data in the background, making integration between Fitbit and Apple’s Health app fairly seamless.

However, a common issue with all applications using Fitbit’s API is that all step data is lumped together in one total per day.  Fitbit offers a Partner API that allows other applications to get step data throughout the day (so you could see how many steps you took in the morning compared to the afternoon, for example).  Jim, Sync Solver‘s creator, has sent multiple requests for Partner API access dating as far back as November 22, but so far has not received any type of response from Fitbit.  “At this point,” Jim writes, “we have to assume they don’t really approve of what we are doing.”

And what Jim is doing is providing the most popular feature request from Fitbit’s customers, but so far the 2,154 comments (and counting) on Fitbit’s forum have resulted in nothing.  One reason that Fitbit has cited for not integrating yet is because HealthKit is iOS only.  “While HealthKit works only on the iOS platform,” Fitbit states on their forum, “we also plan to maintain direct integrations with our partners so that Android, Windows Phone and PC and Mac users in addition to our iOS users can benefit from our partnerships.”  This is an interestingly statement, given that Fitbit released Cortana food and activity tracking which, last time I checked, is a feature available only on Windows Phones.

Despite this, Sync Solver is still one of the best solutions out there for integrating your Fitbit data to HealthKit.  If you want to make your voice heard, check out the special Sync Solver group on Fitbit’s website.

[icon name=icon-circle-arrow-right] Check out Sync Solver in the App Store.

The post Fitbit Still Not Playing Nice With HealthKit Apps appeared first on Technically Well.

The Wristband Manager app was recently updated to incorporate support for HealthKit.  It can take your data from Fitbit and place it into Apple’s Health app for you.  While this does require a few more steps than native integration would, this may be the best solution for now as it doesn’t look like Fitbit plans to update their app for HealthKit any time soon.

UPDATE: Sync Solver was also recently released that also places your FitBit data into Apple’s Health app.  Unlike Wristband Manager, it will try to automatically sync throughout the day, which is a very convenient feature.

Unfortunately, all steps are lumped together at midnight for each day, so the steps automatically counted by your iPhone 5S (or newer) get mixed in.

Sync Solver suggests doing the following:

• Open the Health app and navigate to Health Data > Fitness > Steps > Share Data.
• Next, tap Edit in the top right corner and drag Sync Solver to the top of the list of Data Sources. This will make Sync Solver the highest priority Data Source in Health, which will instruct Health to use data from Sync Solver instead of the built-in sensor on the iPhone.

If you still see double-counting, you need to manually delete the iPhone steps periodically.  Here is a semi-quick way to do that:

• Tap the orange “Steps” graph on your Dashboard (or navigate to “Health Data” > “Fitness” > “Steps”).
• Tap “Share Data” underneath the graph.
• Under “Data Sources”, tap “(Your name)’s iPhone 5S/6/6 Plus”.
• A list of the iPhone’s steps (only) should appear. Tap “Edit” in the top right corner.
• Tap “Clear All” in the top-left corner, then tap the “Delete All” confirmation pop-up.
• Go back and you should only see your Fitbit steps on the Steps graph (you may need to restart the Health app to redraw the line graph).
• Repeat every so often to eliminate the double-counting between Wristband Manager / Sync Solver and your iPhone (and hope that a future iOS update will allow you turn off the iPhone’s pedometer in the Health app altogether).

While it’s definitely not a perfect solution, this at least allows you to get your step data into Apple’s Health app.

Check out Wristband Manager on the App Store

Check out Sync Solver (with automatic background syncing) on the App Store

The post Sync Fitbit to HealthKit appeared first on Technically Well.