You open your Vitality app expecting to see your steps, your workouts, all that effort counted and rewarded. But nothing is there. Apple Health has the data, Vitality does not, and your points are sitting at zero for the day.
It is a frustrating glitch, and it happens more often than you would think. The good thing is that most of the time, the fix is quick and painless. This article walks you through exactly why Vitality stops syncing with Apple Health and how to get everything flowing again on your own.
What Does “Vitality Not Syncing With Apple Health” Actually Mean?
When Vitality and Apple Health are working properly together, data moves between the two apps automatically. Your steps, heart rate readings, workouts, and other health metrics recorded by Apple Health get pulled into the Vitality app so you can earn points and track your activity goals. When syncing breaks, that connection goes silent.
What makes this tricky is that everything can look fine on the Apple Health side. Your iPhone or Apple Watch is still counting steps. Your workout rings are still closing. But Vitality acts like none of it happened. The data stays stuck in Apple Health and never reaches Vitality.
If you leave this unfixed for too long, the consequences pile up. You miss out on Vitality points and rewards that you have legitimately earned. Some users have reported losing days or even weeks of tracked activity because they did not notice the sync had stopped. And depending on your Vitality plan, missed syncs could affect your status level or premium discounts.
A few things worth knowing about how this sync works:
- Vitality pulls data from Apple Health, not the other way around. Vitality reads what Apple Health shares, so the permissions need to flow in a specific direction.
- The sync is not instant. There can be a delay of a few minutes to a few hours, so do not panic if your morning walk does not show up right away.
- Both apps need to be running and updated. An outdated version of either app can quietly break the connection without any error message.
Vitality Not Syncing With Apple Health: Likely Causes
This syncing issue usually comes down to a handful of common culprits. Once you figure out which one is causing the problem on your device, the fix is usually straightforward.
1. Health Data Permissions Were Turned Off or Never Granted
When you first installed Vitality, your phone should have asked you to allow the app to read data from Apple Health. If you skipped that step, tapped “Don’t Allow,” or accidentally toggled those permissions off later, Vitality literally cannot see your health data. It is like locking a door and wondering why nobody is walking through it.
Even if you are sure you gave permission before, iOS updates can sometimes reset app permissions without warning. So this is always worth double checking, even if you have had the apps working together for months.
2. The Vitality App Needs an Update
App developers push updates to fix bugs and maintain compatibility with the latest version of iOS. When your Vitality app falls behind on updates, it can lose the ability to communicate with Apple Health properly.
This is especially common after a major iOS update. Apple sometimes changes how third party apps are allowed to access Health data, and Vitality needs to release a patch to keep up. If your app has not been updated in a while, this could easily be the issue.
3. Background App Refresh Is Disabled
Vitality needs to run in the background to periodically pull new data from Apple Health. If Background App Refresh is turned off for Vitality on your iPhone, the app can only sync when you physically open it. And even then, it might not catch everything.
A lot of people turn off Background App Refresh to save battery life, which makes total sense. But it can quietly break syncing for apps like Vitality that depend on it.
Your iPhone’s Low Power Mode also disables Background App Refresh automatically, so if you keep your phone in Low Power Mode most of the time, that could be your culprit right there.
4. A Temporary Software Glitch
Sometimes the connection between the two apps just hiccups. No real reason, no setting changed. The software equivalent of a bad handshake. This happens on all smartphones and is usually the easiest to fix because a restart or a quick re-link clears it up.
These glitches tend to pop up after iOS updates, after restoring from a backup, or if your phone’s storage is nearly full and the system is struggling to keep everything running smoothly.
5. Apple Health Data Source Priority Is Wrong
Apple Health can receive data from multiple sources: your Apple Watch, your iPhone, third party fitness apps, and more. It ranks these sources in a priority order. If the data source that Vitality is trying to read from is buried at the bottom of that list, or if conflicting data from another source is overriding it, Vitality might pull incomplete or zero data.
Most people do not even know this priority list exists, but it plays a real role in how data gets shared between apps.
Vitality Not Syncing With Apple Health: How to Fix
Now that you know what tends to cause this problem, here is how to fix it yourself. Start from the top and work your way down. Most people find their solution within the first two or three steps.
1. Check and Re-enable Health Data Permissions
This is the single most common fix. Head into your iPhone’s settings and make sure Vitality has full permission to read your Apple Health data.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Scroll down and tap Health.
- Tap Data Access & Devices.
- Find and tap Vitality.
- Make sure all the relevant categories (steps, workouts, heart rate, etc.) are toggled on.
If everything was already toggled on, try turning all the toggles off, waiting about ten seconds, and then turning them all back on. This forces the connection to refresh and often clears up syncing issues that a simple check would miss.
2. Update Both Apps
Open the App Store, tap your profile icon at the top, and scroll down to see if Vitality has a pending update. Install it if it does. While you are at it, go to Settings > General > Software Update and make sure your iPhone is running the latest version of iOS.
Running the latest versions of both ensures that no compatibility gap is causing the disconnect. After updating, open Vitality and give it a few minutes to pull in your latest data.
3. Turn On Background App Refresh
Without this setting enabled, Vitality cannot sync your data unless you have the app open on your screen. Here is how to turn it on:
- Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
- Make sure the master toggle at the top is set to Wi-Fi & Cellular Data (or at least Wi-Fi).
- Scroll down to find Vitality and make sure its individual toggle is on.
If you had Low Power Mode turned on, switch it off temporarily and see if that gets the sync going again. You can always turn it back on once the data has come through.
4. Force Close and Restart Vitality
A quick force close can clear out temporary glitches that are blocking the sync.
Swipe up from the bottom of your screen (or double press the Home button on older iPhones) to open the app switcher. Find the Vitality app and swipe it up and off the screen. Wait about fifteen seconds, then open the app again.
Once the app reopens, it will attempt a fresh connection to Apple Health. Give it a minute or two and check if your recent activity starts appearing.
5. Unlink and Relink Vitality to Apple Health
If the simpler fixes have not worked, try disconnecting Vitality from Apple Health entirely and then reconnecting it. This forces both apps to set up the connection from scratch.
- Open the Health app on your iPhone.
- Tap your profile picture in the top right corner.
- Tap Apps under Privacy.
- Find Vitality and tap it.
- Toggle off all permissions, then delete the app from this list if the option is available.
After that, open the Vitality app. It should prompt you to reconnect with Apple Health. Grant all the permissions again, and the sync should restart with a clean slate.
6. Restart Your iPhone
It sounds too simple to work, but restarting your phone clears out background processes and temporary files that can interfere with how apps talk to each other.
Hold down the power button (and the volume button on newer models) until the “slide to power off” slider appears. Turn the phone off, wait about thirty seconds, and then power it back on. Open Vitality after the restart and check if the sync picks up.
7. Contact Vitality Support
If you have gone through every fix above and your data is still not syncing, it is time to reach out to Vitality’s support team. There could be a server side issue on their end, or something specific to your account that needs manual attention. You can usually reach them through the app itself, their website, or by phone. Let them know what steps you have already tried so they can skip ahead to the deeper troubleshooting.
Wrapping Up
Most Vitality and Apple Health syncing problems come down to a permission toggle, an outdated app, or a minor software hiccup that clears up with a restart. The fixes are simple, and you can usually get everything working again in under five minutes.
Your health data and activity points matter, so it is worth taking a few moments to make sure that connection between Vitality and Apple Health stays solid. Keep both apps updated, check your permissions once in a while, and you should have smooth sailing from here on out.