Apple Health workout sync in Method: what imports, what writes back, and what does not

What arrives in Method

When you connect Apple Health in the iPhone app, Method asks to read workouts, workout routes, heart rate, active energy, walking and running distance, cycling distance, rowing distance, cycling cadence, power, and speed, running power and speed, rowing speed, and step count. It asks to write only workouts.

Each supported workout in Apple Health becomes a cardio activity in Method with the following fields when the source recorded them.

Route points are filtered before import. Points with horizontal accuracy worse than 50 metres, points outside the workout window, and points that imply an implausible speed for the activity are dropped. This is why a Method route distance can differ slightly from the watch's distance; Method keeps both and records which one it used.

Which workout types are supported

Method maps these HealthKit workout types. Running, walking, and cycling split into indoor and outdoor using Health's indoor flag.

Anything else in Apple Health is skipped. That includes swimming, hiking, and functional strength training. Distance is imported for run, walk, ride, row, elliptical, and stair stepper; the other types carry duration, heart rate, and energy.

You can narrow the list in Method's import preferences, and you can switch off routes, heart rate, energy, or performance metrics individually.

How and when import runs

Method registers for background delivery of workouts and workout routes from Apple Health, so a new workout is picked up without opening the app. Import is incremental; Method remembers where it got to and only reads new or changed workouts.

Apple Watch workouts usually reach Apple Health before their route and heart rate series do. Method handles this in two steps. The workout is imported as soon as it appears, but the notification for it is held until the series arrive or 30 minutes pass. If more data shows up later, the existing record is enriched rather than duplicated. An import can therefore be reported as created, enriched, or unchanged.

Workouts that Method itself wrote to Apple Health are recognised by their metadata and not imported a second time.

What Method writes back

When you complete a cardio activity recorded in Method, on iPhone or Apple Watch, Method writes a workout to Apple Health if you granted write permission at that point. The written workout carries the activity type, start and end time, an indoor flag where relevant, and one distance sample when distance is above zero. Heart rate and route are not written back; Apple Health already holds those from the watch where they exist. The write is idempotent, so completing the same activity twice never creates two Health workouts.

Strength workouts are not written to Apple Health.

Limits worth knowing

• No splits or intervals from Apple Health. Lap splits and interval segments exist only for activities recorded in Method or on the Method Watch app. Imported workouts carry duration, distance, heart rate, energy, route, and series.
• Backfill follows your history window. A free account imports workouts from the last 30 days; Pro imports everything Apple Health holds for the supported types.
• Strava and Garmin are indirect. Method has no direct connection to either. Workouts arrive only if those apps write them to Apple Health.
• iPhone only. Import runs on the iPhone app. The web app shows the imported activities in history and analytics but does not connect to Apple Health.
• Imported workouts do not count as "first workout" activity. A workout you never opened Method to create is shown in history but is not treated as app activity in Method's own activity counts.

Why this design

A plan is only useful if the record beside it is complete. Athletes who lift from a program also run, ride, and row, usually with a watch. Keeping those sessions in the same history as the lifting means analytics can read the whole week, and a run that landed on a heavy leg day is visible next to it. Importing the full series rather than a summary means the record can be re-derived later, for example elevation from the route, without asking Apple Health again.