Open your Apple Health export.zip on a Mac

Apple Health can hand you your entire history as a single export.zip archive. You do not need the Health to Mac iPhone app to use it. If you have a Mac and want to open that archive in a form you can browse, chart and query, here is how the import works and what it keeps.

Create the archive on the iPhone

1. Open the Health app and tap your profile picture.
2. Choose Export All Health Data. iOS prepares an export.zip of your health records, including any workout route GPX files.
3. AirDrop it to your Mac, or save it to Files and transfer it however you like.

Open it on the Mac

1. Make sure Health to Mac.app is installed.
2. Drag export.zip onto the app, or open it from the app's import command.
3. Wait for the import to finish.

The app reads the archive into the local database at ~/Library/Application Support/Health to Mac/health.sqlite. It is plain SQLite — you can open it with any SQLite tool or the bundled healthtomac command-line tool. From there the dashboard and the steps, running and strength pages chart what is stored.

Importing again later

Apple's export is a snapshot, so to bring in new records you export again and drop the newer archive on the app. Records already in the database are skipped, so re-importing does not duplicate your history. You can also pair the free iPhone app so new data arrives on its own; the archive import and the live sync can be used together, or the archive alone if you never install the phone app.

Two things to know

Workout routes — the GPS maps — are not kept yet. The import stores a route's GPX file name, not the map itself, so a route's path will not appear on a chart. Everything else in the archive, including workouts, sleep, ECGs, State of Mind, medications and Activity rings, is stored.

The archive never leaves your devices: you create it on the iPhone, move it yourself, and the Mac app reads the local file. There is no account, no upload and no server of ours involved. Health data cannot be read from a locked iPhone, but an archive you already exported is just a file, so the import itself does not need the phone to be unlocked.

Once the import is done, the same database feeds scheduled CSV, JSON, REST, MQTT and Home Assistant exports, and a read-only MCP server for your own AI assistant. Starting from an export.zip is simply the other front door into Health to Mac.