How to track habits automatically with Apple Health

By the Streaks team · 20 October 2026

If your iPhone or Apple Watch already measures something, you don't need to log it again. The Health app collects steps, workouts, sleep, heart rate and more from your devices and apps, and a habit tracker that reads Health can check those habits off on its own. That leaves your attention for the habits nothing can measure.

Why automatic tracking helps

Logging is the weak point of most habit tracking. You do the walk, forget to tick it off, and the next morning your streak is gone, or you stop logging altogether because it's one more chore. When the data is already being collected, letting it complete the habit removes that step. It's also honest: the habit counts because the steps or the sleep were recorded, not because you remembered to tap a button.

What Apple Health can track

Most of this comes from Apple Watch or iPhone sensors. The rest comes from other apps and devices that save to Health, such as a sleep tracker, a smart scale or a meditation app.

Activity

Steps, walking and running distance, and flights climbed
Exercise minutes, stand hours and active energy, and closing your Activity rings
Workouts of any type, or specific types such as running, cycling, swimming or yoga, by count, duration, distance or energy
Time spent in a heart rate zone
Time in daylight, measured by Apple Watch
For wheelchair users: pushes, distance and roll hours

Rest and mind

Sleep: how long you slept, and which sleep stages count
Bed time: asleep before, or out of bed before, a time you choose
Mindful minutes from meditation and breathing apps
State of Mind: how you feel, logged in the moment or for the day

Food and drink

Water, caffeine, alcohol, sugar, protein and calories
Dozens of nutrients, from fibre and sodium to vitamin D

Health and body

Medications logged as taken in the Health app
Brushing your teeth, flossing and washing your hands
Measurements such as weight, blood pressure and blood glucose

Choosing a good automatic habit

Make sure something records it. Steps, exercise and sleep need a device that measures them, usually Apple Watch. Water and caffeine only reach Health if an app saves them. Open the Health app and check the data is there before relying on it.
Set the goal from your real numbers. Look at your last month in the Health app. If you average 4,000 steps, start at 5,000, not 10,000.
Think about the period. Some goals are better as a weekly total. 50,000 steps a week lets a long walk on Saturday make up for a busy Tuesday.
Use limits for cutting back. "Under 200 mg of caffeine a day" or "no more than 3 drinks a week" works as well as a positive goal.

Setting up an automatic habit in Streaks

Streaks calls these Health tasks. To create one:

Tap Add a Task.
Choose the heart icon for health and activity tasks, or the cutlery icon for food and drink.
Choose the task, such as Walk or Run, Sleep or Drink Water, and set the goal.
Save it, and allow Streaks to read that data when the Health app asks.

You can also link a habit you already track by hand. Open its Edit Task screen, select Convert Task, then Link to the Health app, and choose the type.

Health tasks can be day-long or, for most types, week-long or month-long, such as "Walk 50,000 steps a week". Activity rings are measured one day at a time.

When a task checks itself off

Streaks watches Health in the background on your iPhone, so you don't need to open the app. When new data is recorded and it meets your goal, the task is marked as complete. Your Apple Watch, widgets and other devices then show the result.

Some data arrives in batches. iOS delivers steps, distance and some other types at most about once an hour, so a goal you reach at 6:05 may tick off a little later.
Sleep is usually decided in the morning, because sleep data reaches Health when you wake up. A Sleep task's Sleep Records setting chooses which night counts for each day.
Opening Streaks checks again, if you want to see a result straight away.
A day you set yourself stays set. If you mark a day by hand, Health data won't change it later.

Habits that save to Health

Some Health tasks work the other way: you complete them in Streaks and they save the data to the Health app. Drink Water adds a glass of water when you tick it off, Brush Your Teeth has a timer, three minutes to start with, and saves the session, and Mindful Minutes records the time you meditated. Tasks such as Weight or Blood Pressure let you enter a value you measured. These tasks show a heart-with-arrow icon.

If you also log the same thing in another app, the task's Data Source setting chooses whether only this task counts, or all the data in Health. See Data Source.

Breaking a habit with Health data

Food and drink tasks can be negative: a limit instead of a target. A task like "Decrease Caffeine Intake" starts each day as complete, and is marked as missed if the caffeine recorded in Health reaches the limit. Set the limit one higher than you're allowed: to allow three drinks a week, set four. See How Do Negative Tasks Work?

Where it works

iPhone reads and checks your Health data. This is where the automatic tracking happens.
Apple Watch records much of the data (steps, exercise, sleep, heart rate, daylight) and shows your tasks' progress, which comes from your iPhone.
Mac and Apple Vision Pro don't have the Health app. They show the results synced from your iPhone with iCloud.

Privacy

Health data is only shared with an app when you allow it, one type at a time, and you can change it any time in Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices. Streaks only asks for the types your tasks need, and your Health data never leaves your devices: it isn't sent to our servers or anyone else. See our privacy policy.

If a task isn't completing

Open the Health app and check the data is actually there for today.
Check Streaks is allowed to read it: Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices > Streaks.
For workouts, check the workout type matches the one the task tracks, or allow all types.
Some meditation apps save sessions as workouts, not mindful minutes. Use the Work Out task for those.
Open Streaks to check again.

Related help

More guides

Streaks is a habit tracker for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Apple Vision Pro. A one-time purchase, with no subscription.