Google Health Is Not Syncing With Apple Health (iPhone)

Your iPhone is counting steps. You can open the Health app and see them. But the Google Health app shows an empty week, or it stopped on a date weeks ago, and eFit shows the same gap.

Short version: Apple Health and Google Health are two separate apps, and the bridge between them is a connection you switch on inside Google Health. In most cases it was never switched on, it was switched on with some data categories left off, or iOS has quietly stopped letting the app run in the background. All three take about a minute to fix from your phone.

eFit reads your activity from Google Health. Anything Apple Health keeps to itself never reaches your eFit week, however carefully your iPhone recorded it.

Before you try anything: do not type your steps in by hand. Google Health lets you enter steps manually, and it is the first thing most people reach for when syncing breaks. Steps entered by hand earn no course credit. eFit grades the activity your device actually recorded and removes manual entries from the total before grading, so a day you typed in scores zero no matter how large the number looks in the app. If you have already lost days, the section Days that never arrived below has the route that does work.

One reassurance before the steps. Your setup is the right one. An iPhone with no wearable is fully supported: your phone counts steps into Apple Health, Google Health collects them, and eFit reads Google Health. Nothing about this is a workaround, and you do not need to buy a tracker. It is also normal for the failure to look patchy, with some days arriving and others missing, because the handoff happens whenever the apps get a moment to run.

The chain your steps travel

1. Your iPhone or Apple Watch	Records steps and workouts into Apple Health.
2. Apple Health to Google Health	The connection this article repairs.
3. Google Health to eFit	eFit reads your steps and activity on its own schedule.

Each link depends on the one above it. Work through them in order, because a repair at step 2 does nothing if step 1 is empty.

Step 1: Check that Apple Health actually has your steps

Do this first. It takes ten seconds and it decides which half of the article you need.

Open the Health app on your iPhone.
Tap Browse at the bottom, then Activity, then Steps.
Look at today and yesterday.

If today is blank here, Apple Health has nothing to pass along, and the Google Health connection is working fine. Skip to When Apple Health has nothing to give near the bottom of this page.

If your steps are there, carry on to step 2.

Step 2: Check that the Apple Health connection exists

Open the Google Health app.
At the top left, tap Connections, then Apps and services.
Some app versions put this behind your profile picture, under Partner apps. Either route reaches the same screen.
Look for Apple Health in the list.

If Apple Health sits under a heading like “Add connections”, the bridge was never built. This is the most common cause by a wide margin. Build it now:

Tap Apple Health.
Tap Get started.
Read the Sync Google Health with Apple Health screen, then tap Agree.
iOS then shows you a list of health categories. Turn on every one, or use Turn On All if it is offered. Steps and Workouts are the two eFit depends on.

If Apple Health is already listed as connected, the connection exists and the categories are the likely problem. Carry on to step 3.

eFit only needs data travelling from Apple Health into Google Health. Google Health can also write its data back into Apple Health, which is useful if you own a Fitbit, and it makes no difference to your eFit activity. Leave that direction however you like it.

Step 3: Turn on every category

A connection that exists can still be handing over almost nothing, because the categories are switched individually and a single missed toggle is invisible until your steps go missing. Check both apps, since each one keeps its own switches.

In Google Health:

Tap Connections, then Apps and services, then Apple Health.
Tap Manage data and access.
Switch on everything, and confirm Steps and Workouts are among them.

In the Apple Health app:

Tap Sharing at the bottom, then Apps, then Google Health.
Every switch under the heading that allows Google Health to read your data should be on.

This is the one that bites after an app update. When Google Health adds a new metric, that metric arrives switched off, and you have to grant permission for it before the app can read it. If your steps were arriving happily and then stopped for no reason you can see, come back to this screen and look for a switch that is off.

Step 4: Let Google Health run in the background

This is the step that fixes the most stubborn cases, and it is the one nobody thinks of, because the connection looks perfectly healthy while it happens.

The bridge only moves data while the Google Health app is actually running. iOS pauses apps you have not opened lately to save battery, so an app you installed once and never returned to gets very little time to run, and your steps sit in Apple Health waiting. That is why a connection that worked in September can go quiet in October with nothing changed.

Open Settings, tap General, then Background App Refresh.
Make sure the setting at the top is on, using Wi-Fi & Cellular Data or Wi-Fi.
Find Google Health in the list below and switch it on. Do the same for your tracker’s app if you use one.
Check Low Power Mode is off (Settings, Battery). It suspends background refresh entirely.

Then build a ten-second habit: open the Google Health app once a day and glance at today’s steps. Opening it is what pulls your newest Apple Health records across and makes them available to eFit. Charging your phone at night or checking it with your morning coffee both work well. More on this in Open the Google Health App Regularly.

Step 5: Requirements that block the connection quietly

iOS 16.4 or higher. The Apple Health connection will not work below that. Check in Settings, General, About, and look at Software Version. Update from Settings, General, Software Update if you are behind.
The latest Google Health app. Google’s own first instruction when data stops updating is to update the app. Open the App Store, tap your profile picture, and check whether Google Health is waiting to update.
An adult Google account. Google Health refuses supervised accounts (Family Link) and most school-issued accounts, so the connection can never complete on one. If Google stopped you at sign-in, see Google Will Not Let You Sign In.
An internet connection while you connect. If Google Health says “Couldn’t connect with Apple Health”, check that your iPhone is online and try again a little later. That message is Google’s way of saying the setup call failed rather than that anything is wrong with your account.

Days that never arrived

Fixing the connection starts your activity flowing again from today. It does very little for the days you already lost, and it is worth being straight about why.

eFit can only read what Google Health holds. When the bridge was down, Google never received those days at all, so there is nothing on Google’s side for a sync to fetch. Pressing Refresh My Activity or reconnecting your tracker will not bring them back, however many times you try. Two separate limits put days out of reach:

The days the bridge was down. Apple Health still has them, and Google Health only collects while the connection is live and the app gets to run.
Anything older than three months. When you first connect, Google Health reads three months of Apple Health history and no more. Older days stay in Apple Health permanently.

Here is what does work. Message your instructor and tell them which days you lost and what you did on them. Instructors can record activity directly against your account, so the days still count towards your grade, and some courses also let you file a report yourself for your instructor to approve. Do this early, while you still remember the days, and do it instead of typing steps into Google Health, which earns nothing. If you are not sure how to reach your instructor, open a support ticket and we will point you the right way.

When Apple Health has nothing to give

If step 1 showed a blank day in Apple Health itself, repairing the Google Health connection will change nothing. Apple Health fills up from these sources:

Your iPhone counts steps only while you carry it. A phone left on a desk or in a bag in another room records nothing. This is the usual explanation for a day that looks far too low.
Your Apple Watch feeds Apple Health on its own, as long as you wear it and it stays paired.
Other tracker apps have to write to Apple Health first. Open the tracker’s own app (Garmin Connect, Samsung Health, Oura, Zepp and the rest), let it finish syncing with your band or watch, and check its sharing setting so it is allowed to write into Apple Health. Then look at Apple Health again.
WHOOP never writes steps to Apple Health. It shares workouts, sleep and heart rate. Carry your iPhone and let it do the step counting.

The full per-brand table is in Compatible Activity Trackers and How to Connect Them.

Google Health has your steps but eFit still does not

Everything above repairs the hop between Apple Health and Google Health. Only work through this section once Google Health itself shows the right numbers, because these steps do nothing for a broken bridge and reconnecting eFit while Google Health is still empty simply wastes an afternoon.

Check the account matches. eFit reads activity from the one Google account you chose when you connected. If the Google Health app is signed in to a different account, your steps sit in an account eFit cannot see. Full steps in Your Activity Shows on Your Phone but Not in eFit.
Ask for a fresh sync. See Refresh My Activity.
Check your course has started counting. A correctly connected tracker can show zero for perfectly good reasons. See Your Activity Tracking Window.

Which page should you be on? eFit’s My steps don’t match troubleshooter opens by comparing the Google account eFit is connected to against the one holding your data. That is the right first question when eFit is reading the wrong account, and the wrong first question when Google Health is simply empty, because there the account is fine and the data never arrived. Stay on this page while Google Health looks wrong, and switch to that one once Google Health looks right and eFit still disagrees.

If you ever disconnect

To remove the connection, open Connections, Apps and services, Apple Health, then tap Disconnect. New data stops flowing straight away, and the permissions you granted stay switched on inside Apple Health. To clear those as well, open the Apple Health app, tap Sharing, Apps, Google Health, and switch them off there.

Still stuck?

Open a support ticket and tell us four things, which is everything we need to place you on this page:

Your iPhone model and its iOS version (Settings, General, About).
Whether the Apple Health app shows today’s steps.
Whether Apple Health appears as connected in Google Health, under Connections, Apps and services.
The Google account the Google Health app is signed in to.

A screenshot of the Google Health Steps screen with Week selected helps a great deal, since it lets us read each day’s count against what eFit received.

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