Over the past year or so, we’ve heard a plethora of Health app related rumors. Tim Cook has stated that one of Apple’s largest contributions to society will be in health, and this series of upgrades will be a key part of that vision. We’ll be recapping those upgrades, and you should be seeing them on your iPhone in just a few months.
Simplified app design
According to a report from Macworld’s Filipe Esposito, Apple will be redesigning the health app in iOS 26.4. Per the report, there’ll be multiple “major upgrades”, including a ‘new layout for categories’ and ‘simplified metric logging.’
It isn’t otherwise clear what’ll be changing, but as this app gets more and more important to Apple’s ethos, it makes sense for it to get a design overhaul to make things simpler.
If things go according to plan, we should be seeing iOS 26.4 in beta as soon as next month, with a release set for sometime in the spring.
Food tracking
In a newsletter last year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that one of the features of Apple’s new Health app measure would be a meal tracking feature, to assist users with tracking calories and helping them with weight loss:
Food tracking will be a particularly big part of the revamped app. That’s an area that Apple has mostly avoided, so far, though the current Health app does let you enter data for things like carbohydrates and caffeine. Going big on food tracking would mean challenging services such as MyFitnessPal and, to some extent, weight-management apps like Noom.
Apple has avoided this in the past, but it should finally come to light with the new Health app in iOS 26.4, per Mark Gurman. Development is ‘full steam ahead.’
Health+ videos
Apple is also looking to launch another video service, similar to Apple Fitness+. It might not necessarily be called Health+, but in essence, you’ll be able to watch videos from doctors and physicians to both learn about your health and get assistance.
According to Bloomberg, Apple is looking to bring in sleep experts, nutritionists, mental health experts, physical therapists, and cardiologists to create pointer videos for users. They’ll even have a facility in Oakland, California for these health experts to record these videos.
One of the ideas with these videos is that if your Health app notices a poor trend, it can show you a video giving you advice on how to improve.
AI agent
Outside of food tracking and health videos, Apple is also working on an AI health agent. This one will be less revolutionary since ChatGPT just recently launched Apple Health integration. Nonetheless, it’s in the pipeline, and will likely be part of the same Apple Health+ service outlined above.
With Apple’s AI agent, it’ll take in all of your Apple Health data from your paired devices, then give you health recommendations based on what its learned. It’ll also be able to give you nutritional advice.
There’ll also potentially be features where you can utilize the rear camera on your iPhone to share a real time visual of your workout. The agent would be able to give you advice on how to improve your form. This camera feature could potentially tie into other Apple services down the road, like Apple Fitness+.
Wrap up
All in all, the Health app in iOS 26.4 sounds like a rather noteworthy overhaul. With a new design, AI agent, meal tracking, and health videos, it could be a pretty big game changer for users. Obviously, things are subject to delay, but as of current reporting, everything here is set to launch with iOS 26.4.
Personally, I think it’d be cool if Apple added some sort of end of year recap, that way you could get an encompassing overview of the progress you’ve made throughout the year. Yes, I know – the ‘wrapped’ concept is overplayed, but I think it’d actually be important to see this data.
What do you think of the changes coming to Apple Health? Let us know in the comments.
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