How to Control (stop) the Health App

Joe Weissmann · Oct 20, 2014

I recently purchased an iPhone 5s with IOS 8.0.2 using AT&T as the carrier. I was astounded to find that there seems to be no way to remove or stop the Health App (the one with the heart) from recording my steps. I do a lot of walking and during a walk, it's recording thousands of records per walk. For every minute it's producing dozens of individual records. In about 1 month I'll have over 1 million records. I can manually remove all records by selecting EDIT and deleting ALL but I'd rather just turn off this app.

I tried to remove the app to no avail. Is there any way to shut this app down? I'd prefer to use a dedicated Pedometer App.

Ledsteplin · Oct 21, 2014

Do you have "Show On Dashboard" toggled off?
Select Health Data at the bottom and "Fitness"

Then select "Steps".

Toggle off "Show On Dashboard".

Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5.

Joe Weissmann · Oct 21, 2014

"Show on Dashboard" is off for both "Steps" and "Walking + Running Distance".

Ledsteplin · Oct 21, 2014

Joe Weissmann said:
"Show on Dashboard" is off for both "Steps" and "Walking + Running Distance".

Well then, have you tried to do a hard reset? Hold both the top power/sleep button and the home button at the same time until the Apple logo appears, then release.

Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5.

Mickey330 · Oct 21, 2014

I did as recommended - turned off "Show on Dashboard." After I turned off all the dashboard "stuff," I then edited/deleted all the existing information.

That was this morning and my Health app still has no information showing on the Dashboard (in other words, as far as I can tell, it's not collecting any more information). And, I just checked it while writing this ... I still get a "Dashboard Empty" notice when I open the Health app.

So, maybe it's just a restart that is needed.

Marilyn