Guide · October 23, 2026

How to export your Apple Health data, and what is inside

Your iPhone and Apple Watch have probably been recording steps, sleep, heart rate and workouts for years. Apple lets you take all of it with you in one file. Here is how, and what you will find inside.

Export everything in four taps

1. Open the Health app.
2. Tap your profile picture in the top right corner.
3. Scroll down and tap Export All Health Data, then Export.
4. Wait while it prepares (a minute for a light user, ten or more for years of Apple Watch data), then save export.zip to Files or send it to your computer.

What is in export.zip

The important file is apple_health_export/export.xml. Every measurement is one Record line with a type (for example HKQuantityTypeIdentifierStepCount), the device it came from, a start and end time, a value and a unit. Workouts are Workout lines. There may also be export_cda.xml (clinical records, if you connected a health provider) and a workout-routes folder with GPS tracks.

Sizes vary a lot. A year of iPhone-only data is often under 50 MB unzipped; several years with an Apple Watch can pass 2 GB, mostly heart-rate readings.

The double-counting trap

When you carry your phone and wear a watch, both count the same walk. The Health app quietly de-duplicates them, but the export contains both. If you add up every step record you can get close to double your real total. The fix is to total each device separately per day and keep the larger one, which is what CalibrateYou does.

A few other gotchas

• Heart rate variability in Apple Health is SDNN, not the RMSSD that Oura, Whoop and most studies use. They are different numbers and should not be compared directly.
• Weight can be stored in pounds or kilograms depending on your settings; check the unit on each record.
• Sleep has separate records for time in bed and for each sleep stage. Only the asleep stages count as sleep.

Privacy

The export is a complete copy of your health history, so treat it like a passport scan. Do not email it around. If you upload it anywhere, check that the service deletes the file after reading it.

CalibrateYou reads your export into daily totals, deletes the file right away, and shows your fitness score and your trend going back years. See your first score