The topic iOS 26.4 improved Apple’s Health app, and bigger upgrades are coming soon is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
Apple’s Health app got a pair of welcome improvements in iOS 26.4, and rumors indicate Apple has major upgrades coming soon in iOS 27.
Apple’s Health app got two new features in iOS 26.4, both of which involve sleep data.
First, under the ‘Highlights’ section in both the Sleep and Sleep Score screens, you’ll find a new bedtime highlight.
The bedtime highlight visualizes your recent bedtimes with a bar chart. You can see the last two weeks of bedtimes at once, along with two useful metrics: Average Bedtime and Last Night’s Bedtime.
Highlights are one of my favorite features in the Health app, so I’m always glad to see a new one.
Second, iOS 26.4 brought back an old sleep-related feature that used to be available, but got removed as a casualty of the Masimo patent battle.
Last summer, Apple relaunched its Blood Oxygen feature that had been removed due to the Masimo legal fight. But until iOS 26.4, that Blood Oxygen data was still missing from the Vitals screen in the Health app.
Now though, Blood Oxygen has returned to Vitals, so there are now five metrics being tracked by the feature: heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and sleep duration.
These improvements are welcome, but rumors indicate Apple has bigger Health upgrades coming in iOS 27.
For years, rumors indicated Apple was working on an ‘Apple Health+’ service that would add a bunch of nutrition logging features, educational videos, guided AI coaching, and more.
But earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Eddy Cue decided to pivot and launch some of these new features inside the Health app completely free, without a paid subscription.
We don’t know exactly which features will make it into iOS 27, but the report indicated that several would.
And yesterday, a new report all-but-confirmed that nutrition logging will be among them.
Mark Gurman reported that Apple is baking Siri into the Camera app in iOS 27 by integrating the current visual intelligence features. Visual intelligence will also get new upgrades, per Gurman:
Beyond integration into the camera, Apple is expanding the feature with additional in-house capabilities. That includes the ability to scan a nutrition label on food packaging to log dietary information.
No doubt this will be connected to the Health app offering a more robust set of nutrition features in iOS 27. But per prior rumors, educational video content from health experts and AI-related coaching are likely coming too.
Apple will unveil iOS 27 on June 8 at WWDC, so it won’t be long now before we learn exactly what’s coming to the Health app next.
What new features do you want to see in Apple Health in iOS 27? Let us know in the comments.