How to add your symptoms to the Health app in iOS 13.6

The newly released iOS 13.6 software update brings quite a few new features to iPhone, including a new Health symptoms tracker. Here's how to use it.

An important aspect of tracking your health is constant monitoring of symptoms and other important metrics. The Health app has long excelled at tracking measurable metrics such as steps, weight and hours of sleep. It even captured any diagnosed conditions, but symptoms weren't specifically included.

Now, with iOS 13.6, there is a new "symptoms" category within the Health app. Here's how Apple describes it:

"Ability to log new symptoms, like fever, chills, sore throat or coughing, and share them with third-party apps"

Inside this new category are 39 different symptoms that users are able to add and track. Without listing all 39, nearly any symptom you can imagine is included. There are options for nausea, runny nose, sleep changes, fatigue, dry skin, coughing, and more.

New symptoms tracking in the iOS 13.6 Health app

New symptom tracking in the iOS 13.6 Health app

To add a symptom

Open the Health app
Tap Browse
Either search for your symptom, or scroll down to the "symptom" category and browse the available options
Tap Add Data in the top-right corner and choose the level of your symptom

Those symptoms will be viewable on a graph to track over time. Data points will also be opened up to third-party apps that want to read or write that data.

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6 Comments

GeorgeBMac 8 Years · 11421 comments

About 4 years ago

There is a lot of exciting potential here for computer generated algorithms to diagnose conditions and diseases.

But, I am leery of it.

Physicians have long been the sole source of diagnosing diseases and conditions because they are able to understand what people are trying to say, tease out the fine points of symptoms and make appropriate suggestions. A good example here is the "body and muscle aches" which is presumed to be the result of a medical condition. But quite often those aches are the result of strenuous activity and/or medications.

In my own case, right now I experience an ache in the lateral posterior of my upper right arm when I throw a football. A physician would be able to tease all that out -- but a simple black and white, yes/no list would probably point in the wrong direction.

Hank2.0 5 Years · 151 comments

About 4 years ago

Why would I want to waste my time logging real or perceived symptoms? And with what 3rd party apps would I share this very personal information? Insurance companies? Employment apps? Background checks? At best this "feature" sounds gimmicky; at worst a privacy disaster waiting to happen.

fastasleep 14 Years · 6451 comments

About 4 years ago

GeorgeBMac said:

There is a lot of exciting potential here for computer generated algorithms to diagnose conditions and diseases.
But, I am leery of it.

Physicians have long been the sole source of diagnosing diseases and conditions because they are able to understand what people are trying to say, tease out the fine points of symptoms and make appropriate suggestions. A good example here is the "body and muscle aches" which is presumed to be the result of a medical condition. But quite often those aches are the result of strenuous activity and/or medications.

In my own case, right now I experience an ache in the lateral posterior of my upper right arm when I throw a football. A physician would be able to tease all that out -- but a simple black and white, yes/no list would probably point in the wrong direction.

Well of course it's not meant to be a substitute for a physician. Perhaps yours asks you to track your symptoms? Now you can, just as before you could track your blood pressure, etc. and relay that information to your doctor to make a better diagnosis.

SpamSandwich 19 Years · 32917 comments

About 4 years ago

Hank2.0 said:

Why would I want to waste my time logging real or perceived symptoms? And with what 3rd party apps would I share this very personal information? Insurance companies? Employment apps? Background checks? At best this "feature" sounds gimmicky; at worst a privacy disaster waiting to happen.

Clearly you’ve never had a serious illness or have never known a person with a serious illness. For the people this would help, they often keep diaries with extensive tracking of their conditions for treatments or to monitor health decline or improvement.