Does iOS 14.0 permanently DAMAGE the pre-existing Health and Activity/Fitness GPS data, or iOS 14 just cannot properly DISPLAY Health and Activity/Fitness data yet?

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Level 1

31 points

Does iOS 14.0 permanently DAMAGE the pre-existing Health and Activity/Fitness GPS data, or iOS 14 just cannot properly DISPLAY Health and Activity/Fitness data yet?

As described in https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865 , after updating to iOS 14.0 I noticed:

Workout route maps are missing in the Fitness app on iPhone for previous GPS-enabled workouts from the Apple Watch.
Health app fails to load Heart rate data for some years on the iPhone.

Does anybody know, did iOS 14.0 permanently DAMAGE the pre-existing Health and Activity/Fitness GPS data? Or iOS 14 just cannot properly DISPLAY Health and Activity/Fitness data yet, which could be fixed by an update in a few weeks?

Thank you.

Posted on Oct 1, 2020 8:36 AM

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Answer 1

Aidar Author

Level 1

31 points

Nov 16, 2020 11:38 AM in response to TrevorRu

This is wonderful news for cases like kiralaura’s – if Health was being synced to iCloud before iOS 14.0 upgrade, then good data is still in the iCloud, waiting to be restored!

Logically, it would seem that whatever iOS 14.0 upgrade did to local Health was illegitimate, so iOS never bothered to sync/backup illegitimate changes to iCloud, leaving preexisting good Health data on Apple servers intact.

I have another issue with Health app on iOS 14.2.

My Health database (Settings -> General -> iPhone Storage -> Health) is around 3GB:

On iOS 13 it took 10 minutes to export the data ( https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-health-and-fitness-data-iph27f6325b2/14.0/ios/14.0 ). It produced export.zip archive that included all GPS workout routes in separate files in GPX format:

Whenever I try to “Export All Health Data” on iPhone SE2 with iOS 14, the process just hangs at “Exporting Health Data – Preparing…” stage for hours with no result:

Given that your data might be similarly large, I am curious what is its approximate size (Settings -> General -> iPhone Storage -> Health) and does “Export All Health Data” work on your fast iPhone 12?

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Answer 2

Oct 17, 2020 12:53 PM in response to Aidar

I recently upgraded my iPhone 11 Pro to iOS 14 when it came out in September. Then I replaced my Apple Watch to a series 6 and upgraded it to watchOS 7 the first week of October. Now I find out that Apple has permanently deleted 3.5 months of this year's daily distance walked/ran and all workout GPS routes history! And 2 months of heart rate data is completely missing.

Their solution is unpair my new watch, erase my phone and restore from backup but the backup has the same problem since it backs up daily and I discovered this days after it happened. They have a whole support page dedicated to this problem to "prevent FUTURE data loss." If it's too late to recover it, oh well it's permanently gone. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865

I can't believe more people aren't having this problem! SOOOOO disappointed in losing hard-earned data!

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Answer 3

Aidar Author

Level 1

31 points

Nov 12, 2020 1:04 PM in response to kiralaura

For me it was several years’ worth of GPS routes. Fortunately, I had a local iOS 13.7 backup made a day before the upgrade, still intact.

So, I purchased an iPhone SE2 with old iOS 13 at a local retailer to experiment with the backup, got my Health data back, including GPS routes. Merged it with fresh iOS 14 Health data this week.

On a positive side, having spent some time studying the problem, including opening a few cases and talking to several senior specialists at Apple Support, I believe I am better positioned to deal with these issues in the future. Somewhat like the case with Apple laptop in SATC episode back in 2001 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0698650 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWSZJXhOvBw .

Apparently, Health synchronization, when enabled, is end-to-end encrypted in most cases; also, Health is backed up (synced) separately, not included in daily iCloud backup: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 .

Synchronization is done incrementally (only new/updated records, not the whole database every time). Which means that, theoretically, if you had Health iCloud sync enabled on iOS 13 before upgrade to iOS 14.0, some old data may still be there in the iCloud.

The easiest way to check without interfering with daily life is to use a spare empty iPhone (like I did), to which one could restore just the Health data. It seems that any iPhone that supports at least iOS 12 (iPhone 5S or later), even with small storage (only Health is restored) would do. If there is no spare iPhone, all the steps are still perfectly doable, but would require extra hours, more efforts, and careful planning to avoid accidental loss of data.

You would still discover the answer though whenever you migrate to the next iPhone, if you would do it using iCloud.

Alternatively, if you still possess a previous iPhone that was not wiped, or sometime backed up an iPhone to iTunes on PC (or Finder on Mac) with encryption enabled ( https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT205220 ), e.g. when migrating data between iPhones, there may be a way to get GPS routes from there. In case of existing backup, one must not connect iPhone back to that PС/Mac prematurely, as the local backup may get automatically overwritten.

HTH

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Answer 4

TrevorRu

Level 1

31 points

Nov 16, 2020 10:13 AM in response to Aidar

Forgive the cross posting of this with other threads, but not everyone reads all the threads on this.

I had this problem and chose not to go through the wipe and restore recommended by Apple as I was about to upgrade to an iPhone 12.

I just got the new phone and restored from an iCloud back-up of my old phone.

All my health data is available again on my new iPhone...

So, I would recommend you back-up your phone to iCloud, wipe it then restore your phone from the iCloud back-up... I think all your 'lost' data will return. The wipe and restore is time consuming but is not as painful as you might think. I had five years of data that I thought I had lost. It's worth the effort to eliminate the stress of worrying if the data is permanently lost.

BTW - My theory is that this is not a data loss issue but a bug that just stops the data from displaying.

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Answer 5

TrevorRu

Level 1

31 points

Nov 16, 2020 10:51 AM in response to Aidar

Good question!

I am afraid the honest answer is I don't remember, but it was certainly a long time before iOS 14.

I actually back up to my MacBook and to iCloud (I don't think you can do this automatically, you have to switch between the two), I suspect that a restore from either location would fix the problem, but this is nothing more than a guess.

I think I know where you are going with this... if someone hasn't been backing up the data may indeed be lost. After a back up, a wipe and restore shouldn't make this situation any worse... if the data is gone, it's gone.

However... per my theory, if the data is on the phone but it is a display bug, backing up now (if only for the first time ever) will save the data and the phone restore appears to fix the bug.

Note that backing up to a Mac requires the back up to be encrypted to save health data.

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Answer 6

Aidar Author

Level 1

31 points

Nov 16, 2020 1:01 PM in response to TrevorRu

From what I see in the logs, the threshold is around 3 minutes: if iPhone with iOS 14 can do the job within about 180 seconds, the export would be successful.

Faster A14 chip in iPhone 12 and 1 GB Health database size might be the combination to remain just below the threshold. Everything might work just fine.

In my case, the problem reproduced on iOS 14.0, 14.0.1, 14.1, 14.2 and 14.3 Beta 1.

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Answer 7

cp_kid

Level 1

11 points

Oct 27, 2020 3:47 PM in response to kiralaura

Yeah it's a bad look. I've already just switched to other programs. Got myself a cheaper Garmin that works just fine. Also if you use Strava for the Apple Watch that keeps GPS data.

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