Gadgetory

whether you want it or not the health app comes with iOS 8 it's apples way of trying to help you make sense of all the fitness and health data you collect using your phone wearables and fitness apps the health dashboard is entirely customizable so you can display the data that you care about most that can be steps walked blood glucose levels calories burned or even really specific things like vitamin D intake each item you track gets a chart that visualizes the data over time let's build a dashboard I'll go over to health data then fitness then I'll add steps show on dashboard and flights climbed each of these things can be tracked using my phone's built-in motion processor and the barometer alright those two things are in there let's give it a try now I can see how many steps I took and how many stairs I climbed plus the app will continue to track that data all the time but that's just the beginning the health app can also access data that comes from other apps for instance there's the seven-minute workout app which has this theory that all you need is to workout seven intense minutes per day to track the app I'll go to the sources tab and enable data importing from the seven-minute workout app there is also an option to allow it to read my weight from the health app which will help it determine how many calories I actually burned so not only does health collect data it also enables apps to talk to each other finally I'll go to health data and add calories burned to my dashboard let's give it a shot now that I completed the app I can launch health and see how many calories I burned alongside my weight steps and flights climbed giving me a complete picture of my overall health if you have any questions or tips of your own and hit me up on Twitter and check out cnet.com / - for the complete guide to the health app for CNET I'm Sharon Profis