April 03, 2025

iOS Today 746: Managing Health & Illness

39 minutes

Struggling with allergies, symptoms, or invisible illnesses? Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard explore a range of iOS apps and features designed to help you track your health, monitor symptoms, and manage illness right from your iPhone and Apple Watch.

Built-in Health app features - Apple has added an extensive list of symptoms you can track directly in the Health app, from abdominal cramps to sore throat, allowing users to log severity and duration.

Peak app - A widget-focused app that displays your health metrics on your home screen, with options to track heart rate, blood oxygen, time in daylight, and other metrics related to health conditions.

My Pollen Forecast Pro - A $4.99 app that shows local pollen counts with color-coded indicators and forecasts, plus a diary feature to help correlate symptoms with specific pollens.

Plume Labs - Free air quality tracking app that provides localized air quality index measurements, pollution maps, and recommendations for outdoor activities based on current conditions.

Pedometer++ and Sleep++ - This pair of David Smith apps track your steps and sleep patterns, with badges for achievements and integration with Apple Health data to monitor trends and potential health indicators.

Visible - A subscription service using a Polar armband to track heart rate and daily exertion, designed for people with long COVID or invisible illnesses, providing "pace points" to help manage energy throughout the day.

Feedback

Separate volume controls - Robert shared a tip about iOS having separate volume channels for Siri/navigation and media, explaining how to adjust the Siri volume by asking Siri to read a message and then changing the volume while it's speaking.

Shortcuts Corner

Symptom logging shortcut - Rosemary created a simple one-action shortcut to log health symptoms directly from your home screen, using the "Log Health Sample" action with customizable options for tracking different symptoms.

Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard

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