Health Sync & Export: Apple Health, Health Connect, and JSON

Updated May 2026

VitaCal does not have to live in a silo. Connect Apple Health on iOS or Health Connect on Android and VitaCal becomes part of your wider health picture, pulling in the sleep, heart rate, HRV, workouts, weight, and cycle data your phone and wearables already record. And whenever you want a copy of what you have tracked, you can export it all as a JSON file.

Sync With Apple Health and Health Connect

Any user can connect VitaCal to the health platform on their device, free:

• Apple Health on iOS
• Health Connect on Android

Once connected, VitaCal can read the metrics your devices capture, including:

• Sleep stages and total sleep
• Heart rate, plus resting and walking heart rate
• Heart rate variability (HRV)
• Workouts and activity
• Body measurements such as weight
• Menstrual cycle

This is what makes VitaCal more than a calorie tracker. With your sleep, recovery, training, and nutrition in one place, the Ask VitaCal AI coach can answer questions grounded in your real numbers, and you can connect Claude or another MCP client to query the same data.

Export Everything You Track as JSON

Your data is yours. Any VitaCal user can export their tracking data as a single JSON file, including:

• Your full food log
• Water intake
• Weight history
• Calorie and macro goals
• Favourite meals

Keep it as a backup, analyse it yourself, or take it elsewhere. The export is plain JSON, so it is easy to read and easy to move. JSON export is available to all users, not just Pro.

Duplicate Workouts in Apple Health

If the same run or gym session shows up twice in Apple Health, it is almost always because two sources recorded it. An Apple Watch logs the workout, and Strava, Nike Run Club or a connected gym app logs the same session independently. Apple Health stores both, because it cannot know they are the same physical activity.

Some nutrition and fitness apps make this worse by writing workouts back into Apple Health, which adds a third copy of a session you already recorded twice.

VitaCal never writes workouts to Apple Health. It writes exactly six things: calories, protein, carbs, fat, general nutrition, and water. Workouts are read-only. Connecting VitaCal cannot add a duplicate workout to your health data, because it does not create workout records at all.

On the way in, VitaCal collapses duplicates rather than importing them. When two sources record the same activity type and their time windows overlap by at least 80% of the shorter session, VitaCal treats them as one workout and keeps the recording with the most measured data. Two genuinely different workouts are never merged: a strength session and a run that happen to share a window stay separate, because the activity types differ.

Removing duplicates already in Apple Health

VitaCal cannot delete records another app wrote. To clear existing duplicates:

1. Open the Health app, then Browse, then Activity, then Workouts.
2. Tap Show All Data.
3. Swipe left on the duplicate and tap Delete. Tap the entry first to check which app wrote it.
4. To stop it recurring, turn off workout writing in whichever app is duplicating, or use Health > Sharing > Apps to control what each app can write.

Deleting a duplicate in Apple Health does not remove it from the app that created it, and vice versa.

What Needs Pro

Connecting Apple Health or Health Connect and importing your sleep, heart rate, HRV, workouts, weight, and cycle is free, including running Sync Now and backfilling your history. Pro adds two things: automatic background sync, so your data stays up to date without opening the app, and sending your nutrition back out to Apple Health or Health Connect. JSON export of your own tracking data is available on every plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Try VitaCal free on iOS or Android: