Ryan
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Apple sneaked in to today’s announcement that iOS 8.2 would be released with Apple Watch support. While the Apple Watch support comes well over a month before it is needed, iOS 8.2 also includes some improvements to Apple’s Health app.
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:
- Go to “Settings”, then “Privacy”.
- Select “Motion & Fitness”.
- Turn off the “Health” app.
You’ll still need to remove the old step data from the Health app.
- Open the “Health” app and tap your “Steps” dashboard (or go to “Health Data > Fitness > Steps”)
- Under the graph, tap “Share Data”
- Under Data Sources, tap “(Your name)’s iPhone”
- 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
