Health App ghost data

TidBITS Talk
1

For the most recent OS update, I was prompted to reduce the data my iphone (a 12 Mini running 17.7). In the process of doing data clean-up, I discovered that the Health app alone was consuming over 2GB of data. I don’t actually use that data much, so I thought I’d just trash it all.

After a internet search, in order to delete Health app data, as far as I could find, you must

  • open the Health app
  • select a category (Such as “Activity”)
  • select a sub-category (such as “Active Energy”)
  • scroll down to the bottom
  • click “Show All Data”
  • click “Select All”
  • click the trash can icon
  • and finally click to confirm that you indeed intended to delete all your data and hadn’t gotten through all that by accident. (I’m all for protecting folks from accidental clicks, but…this seems ridiculous.)

Then repeat that for every sub-category, in every category. Ouch.

An hour later, I’d deleted all the data in the Health app. Every category in the app reported “No Data.” I also worked through the other settings and found a couple other places you can delete data (I don’t understand what data it is that isn’t covered in the main app interface, but went ahead anyway since I was cleaning out data I don’t care about).

The Settings app, however, still reports that the Health app is consuming over 700MB of data. It lists the categories, including “Active Energy” and several others. I double-checked on the Health app to confirm it was gone and inside Health it does indeed report that there is either No Data or only one point in the subcategory, just recorded from my Apple Watch a few minutes ago.

Ok…reboot, maybe it’s a cache. Nope, same result after a reboot. I opened a chat with Apple support. They asked to update the phone to the newest OS (in spite of telling them that this started because I need to remove data in order to do that) and had no other helpful ideas.

I tried deleting the health app and reinstalling it (which requires unpairing the Apple Watch prior to deleting it) but even with the app removed, Settings reports there is 700MB+ of data that I cannot access without reinstalling the Health app. Sigh. I reinstalled it, and it again reports that there is no data stored (except, again, those few single data points recorded since I wiped it out the first time). The Settings app still reports a bit over 700MB of data for it, though.

At this point, I’ve cleared out enough caches and moved photos and other media to the cloud to clear up the space for my update to proceed easily. However, I’m absolutely bugged by that 700MB. What health data is Apple holding onto that I am not allowed to see?! How do I access it and delete it?!

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

2

One that may be easier is Health app, tap your Photo/icon top-right, tap “Devices”, and tap each one. You have to wait for the spinner to finish a bit, but there should be a “delete all data” that pops up.

Unfortunately I have a lot of devices, but I’m guessing most people don’t.

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3

Oh, yes, thanks for mentioning that one! I forgot that was the first one I found and tried, before the internet search. As far as I can tell, for my two devices (iphone and apple watch) it did absolutely nothing. No change after “delete all data” for both devices on the report from Settings app, and there were still tons of sub-category areas with lots of data that I had to delete one-by-one.

I just tried it again, to be sure. Before anything, Settings reported 722.5MB. Health app showed data in 11 sub-categories of Activity, Body Measurements and Mobility categories. The “Devices” screen listed my watch twice (once as “no longer paired”) plus my phone. Deleted all data from each of the 3, which removed the watches from the device list entirely and changed the phone’s device listing to show “No data found.” The main screen then listed “No data found” for every category on the pinned list except body measurements, which still showed my height and weight. The Settings app: 725.3MB. What the heck? It certainly seems like this is a cache, but how/when is it removed?

I’ll be updating to the new OS tonight, so we’ll see tomorrow how it behaves.

4

Just as a data point, I have never used the Health App on iPhone, it was showing ~17MB of iPhone storage used.
I deleted the App and in Storage it’s now 15.1 MB Health Data. What that could be, I have no idea.

5

Update: post 1.18 upgrade, minor differences but no real change in the problem. Settings app reports 730.7MB of data for the Health app, across 10 sub-categories. The “Devices” list in the Health app nows lists 8 (!?!) devices, 6 of them just “iPhone” with no data attached. Deleting all data from my actual phone and apple watch cleared all data listing from the Health app, but the Settings app still lists 731MB of Health app data (same sub-categories).

6

Same…except I show 94MB used.

7

I wonder if this is the motion sensor data collected in the background that’s used by the Health app? I know the phone can be used to track steps and other stuff – is it possible that this is storage used by that raw data? If you go into the Health app–even if you never have used it before–does it show you a historical record of steps?

(I just got an Apple Watch last month, and my Health app shows that since that date my average # of steps per day has gone up significantly. I assume it’s some combination of the phone is less sensitive and that I move around without the phone more than I do without the watch.)

Dave

8

I wonder if there is simply no easy way to fully recover data - iOS just leaves behind some deleted data and doesn’t try to fully recover the storage space. (Maybe to save battery or keep performance high?)

It’ll be interesting to see if a simple iOS update to 18.2 is enough to kick off a storage recovery. I also wonder if deleting the Health app and then reinstalling would do the same. Or perhaps the ultimate solution is to factory reset and start over from scratch. (I imagine restoring data would just restore the Health database.)

My Health database is 5.21 GB but there is no way I am clearing it - I have almost eight years of fitness data in there I don;t want to lose.

It’s interesting that Settings / General / iPhone Storage / Health actually breaks down how much each data type stores. For me, 840.5 MB for active energy, 532.2 MB for resting energy, 442.1 MB for walking + running distance, 383.3 for MB heart rate, etc.

9

I could imagine some of this “deleted” data only disappearing for good with an erase and restore pass.

10

The update to 18.2 didn’t change anything about the storage, unfortunately. I’ve already tried removing the Health app (see previous; also requires unpairing & repairing Apple Watch), but no change to ghost data.

11

Do you mean a full wipe of the iphone and restore completely from backup?

12

Yes. The hope is that the ghost data wouldn’t have been stored in the backup.

A full erase and restore sounds dire, but it’s actually not that big of a deal. It just takes some time, and a few things want authentication or the like afterward, but nothing terrible.

13

I really think that a factory reset and restore should be the next step. By default Health data is synced with iCloud so it should not be in the backup file - iOS will sync it back down from iCloud, presumably (hopefully) creating a new Health database rather than simply restoring all of the tables. So restoring data should not restore the Health data at all - it will be synced (and from past experience it can take several hours before the full data is synced back down.)

14

Most of the time. But there’s one gotcha - Apple doesn’t backup/restore apps. When you do a wipe/restore, your apps are reinstalled from the App Store.

If your phone and apps are all up to date, this shouldn’t be a problem. But if you were deliberately refusing to update an app for some reason (don’t like the new version, switching from a free to a subscription pricing model, etc.), this wipe/restore is going to upgrade that app to the latest version.

Additionally, if an app was deleted from the App Store for some reason (withdrawn by the author, or author’s account shut down, maybe because the company went out of business or was acquired), you won’t be able to reinstall it at all.

Third-party tools like iMazing (commercial, licensed by the number of devices) can back up and restore apps, but it won’t help if you’ve already wiped your phone to find that something didn’t restore properly (or at all).

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15

(In all cases, where I say iPad, I mean iPhone or iPad.) I believe that iMazing has the ability to save an app before installation (including multiple versions), but I’m not aware that it can back up an app from the iPad for re-installation later.

In other words and in more detail, iMazing can save an iPad app to a Mac disk and retain that version of the app when a new version is released (whether or not the new version is installed on the iPad and whether or not the new version is saved to the Mac disk) or when that version is removed from the App Store. As far as I am aware, iMazing cannot save an app that has been installed on an iPad from the iPad to a Mac disk so that the app can be re-installed after wiping the iPad.

Corrections are welcome, especially with details on how to accomplish the backup and restore of old versions of apps.

16

This corresponds to my experience with iMazing.

I have been using iMazing for many years and keep older versions of a few apps. And I was doing this even before I used iMazing. Back when iTunes handled the apps you could access the app library (~/Music/Mobile Applications) and I would zip these and save them. iMazing can import these *.ipa files.

Drifting off topic…

17

I’m pretty sure you used to be able to do this (not sure about today, but I’d be surprised if the feature was removed).

I used a free trial-licence for iMazing several years ago to move a game and its settings from an iPad to an iPhone. I couldn’t just install the app on the phone, because it would restart the game (progress could only be backed up via Facebook, which I don’t use), and Apple doesn’t allow restoring just one app, and I didn’t want my phone to become a clone of the iPad.

I made a backup of the iPad and then selectively restored that one app using iMazing. It’s been a while, but I don’t remember the iPhone downloading the game via the App Store. I remember being surprised that it didn’t. I’ve always assumed that iMazing restored the app along with its data.

But maybe I’m misremembering.