# Accidentally connected my goal to Apple Health **URL:** \ **Category:** Newbee\ **Created:** [February 24, 2018, 8:51pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781 "2018-02-24T20:51:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![eucleides](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e9c0ed/32.png) [@eucleides](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/eucleides)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 8:51pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/1 "2018-02-24T20:51:29Z")
Newbie (in terms of actual proper use) of a few weeks here. I’m suddenly not able to enter data into my meditation goal. When I login to my account on the web, I can see a new message that “This goal gets its data automatically from Apple.”, and I confess I was messing about with that in an attempt to connect the data from my timer of choice (Insight Timer on iOS) to Beeminder. Is there a way to undo that connection (since I’ve since discovered that Insight Timer isn’t one of the apps that can talk to … _I_ don’t know; Beeminder itself? or Apple Health?, or something called “Mindful Minutes” or … ???) I vaguely recall a warning about “if you do this, it’s done for life”, but then a caveat that by mailing someone, then something might happen, some day… (Sigh. Great app, but helluva hard learning curve.) Any ideas? thx! ---
**Author:** ![cgamer1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@cgamer1](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/cgamer1)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 3:49pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/2 "2018-02-25T15:49:31Z")
@eucleides: Typically to change the data source you can do the following: 1. Go to the goal in question 2. Go to settings tab (near the right) 3. Go to the data section within settings 4. Change data source to manual. I do not have my iPhone in front of me right now but hopefully that works 🙂 ![48%20AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/beeminder/original/2X/4/44f1667032ab6bdbbfa8500532362e4dccf864ba.png) ---
**Author:** ![philip](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/philip/32/1505_2.png) [@philip](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/philip)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 5:03pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/3 "2018-02-25T17:03:32Z")
And if that doesn’t do it, email [support@Beeminder.com](mailto:support@Beeminder.com) and we’ll sort it out beehind the scenes. ---
**Author:** ![eucleides](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e9c0ed/32.png) [@eucleides](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/eucleides)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 5:31pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/4 "2018-02-25T17:31:08Z")
@cgamer1, thanks for the suggestion! But when I try it, I don’t see what you see (in your screenshot). Mine says, _“At the moment we don’t have a way for you to swap data source here yourself for auto-data goals. But won’t it be cool when we do have a handy way to do that?”_ (To which my answer is somewhere between, _“Well, yuHU!”_ and _“Rassen sassen rassen frassen…”_). ![18%20AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/beeminder/original/2X/2/28948f018de81382e1557262a5dbc067743ac647.png) I checked in case maybe this is a Beemium feature (I’m only a Bee Plus; and a clueless Wee Bee Plus as you can see; a Baybee Bee Plus if you will), but the extra features in Beemium don’t look like they would explain it. Also, you’d said _“I do not have my iPhone in front of me…”_, but when I tried it on mine, I couldn’t find anything like a settings tab or a data section, so I reckoned you must have meant it to be done on the main website. The above screenshot is from there, not my phone. Thanks again for your input though. I see another reply from @philip philip who I beelieve is one of The Powers That Bee. I think I’ll take this to him/support since in continuing to try to fix it I think I’ve added two more pieces of brokenness. One is that apparently I did connect _an_ app to Beeminder via Apple, but it’s not the app I wanted to. The other is that I did manage to add data, but by replying to an SMS. So now my meditation history is well and truly messed up. It’s stressing me out so much I think I need to go meditate. Hey … ahhhh! It’s all just part of their cunning habit-building algorithm? _I_ see! Beeyootiful.[1] e [1] My apologies; I assume the punning phase is one all Newbees just have to go through. I hope I make it beefore one of the veterans beets me over the head. ---
**Author:** ![eucleides](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e9c0ed/32.png) [@eucleides](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/eucleides)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 5:31pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/5 "2018-02-25T17:31:40Z")
@philip, thanks, I’ll do that. ---
**Author:** ![apb](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/apb/32/100_2.png) [@apb](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/apb)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 2:23pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/6 "2018-02-26T14:23:14Z")
Hi @eucleides - thanks for live-punning your way through the difficulties you’ve been having! Right now the only way to disconnect an Apple Health goal is by emailing support, but that should be fixed in the next release of the iOS app. Did you determine if the data from Insight Timer is making it into Apple Health? If it is, it _should_ be getting to Beeminder that way, but mindful minutes are also known to still be a little buggy (another thing I’m hoping to have fixed soon). As an alternative, the Beeminder iOS app does have a timer mode that you can use to start a clock and then after stopping it, add that amount of time to a Beeminder goal. It’s on the goal screen in the app. ---
**Author:** ![eucleides](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e9c0ed/32.png) [@eucleides](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/eucleides)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2018, 4:10am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/7 "2018-03-01T04:10:01Z")
Hi @apb, Chelsea at Beeminder disconnected the data channel, so that part was solved. And it turns out that yes, Insight Timer _can_ feed data to AppleHealth after all, and from there it can reach Beeminder. So that all sounds good on the surface. However, I think I bumped into one of the bugs you mention (although it may be I just set it up wrong). That is, there appears to be a unit translation failure going on as my data moves from its source in Insight Timer (measured in minutes) and on to its destination in Beeminder (measured in “sessions”). My goal is to meditate for at least one 5-minute session every day. When I set it up in Beeminder, I chose to make the unit “sessions” and quantity 1, rather than have the unit be “minutes” with a quantity of 5. However, insight Timer only knows about minutes. Somewhere along the path from Insight Timer through Apple Health to Beeminder, the “exchange rate” of 5 minutes = 1 session is being lost. As a result, when Insight Timer reports that I meditated for five minutes, Beeminder appears to hear only the “five” and takes that to be a number of _sessions_. As a result my tracking line is now asymptotically approaching the vertical, and I am currently way above my yellow brick road and orbiting somewhere around _“You can afford to miss 40 days and still not get fined”_ and on my way to _“You must have attained enlightenment several times by now dude, given the fact that you appear to be meditating more than 24 hours a day”_. ([https://www.beeminder.com/eucleides/meditate5](https://www.beeminder.com/eucleides/meditate5)) I’ve decided to simply archive that original goal completely, and I have created a new one which is based on minutes, not sessions: [https://www.beeminder.com/eucleides/meditate](https://www.beeminder.com/eucleides/meditate) I’ve then backfilled with my earlier data, and rebased the x-axis back to my original start date. It seems to have worked, although I’ve no idea what kind of havoc it may be wreaking on my payment level or on whatever hyperbolic discounting algorithm you’re using. If I see a charge for a million dollars on my credit card, I’ll know that the kind of havoc is “vast”. Beelieve me when I say that that would Bee Unbeelievably Beestly. ---
**Author:** ![kim](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/kim/32/1373_2.png) [@kim](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/kim)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2018, 11:48pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/8 "2018-03-01T23:48:55Z")
@eucleides, thanks for asking this question. I’m NOT a newbie but I often shy away from Apple health integration with ANY of my preferred apps. I also use insight timer and now thanks to this post I’m thinking of automating my meditation tracking on Beeminder. Now I just have to figure out a manageable goal!! ---
**Author:** ![eucleides](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e9c0ed/32.png) [@eucleides](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/eucleides)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:42pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/accidentally-connected-my-goal-to-apple-health/3781/9 "2018-03-09T21:42:28Z")
By way of summarizing my experience thus far, here’s a little bit more on my experience with auto-feeding meditation data from _Insight Timer_ on the iPhone, to _Beeminder_, via Apple _Health_. I think I’ve got it working OK now, although it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride. First, here’s how to set up the connection. This assumes you have already set up a meditation goal in Beeminder. And, for the reason I mentioned in another post but will explain again below, you should set up the goal with units of minutes, not “sits”, or “sessions” etc. There are then really only two steps: connect _Insight Timer_ to Apple \_Health; and then connect Apple _Health_ on to _Beeminder_. Note: I wish I could be 100% sure on the sub-steps, but to do that I’d want to completely remove my current setup and then re-establish it, but it feels a bit fragile so I’m not going to risk it! This, therefore, is largely from memory, so _caveat meditator_. 1. **Connect your phone’s _Insight Timer_ app to Apple _Health_.** From within _Insight Timer_: a) Go to _Settings_ by pressing the little head’n’shoulders icon at the bottom left while at the app’s home screen b) Press _Apple Health_ c) Push the _Apple Health Mindful Minutes_ slider to the right, making it go green 2. **Connect your phone’s _Beeminder_ app to Apple _Health_.** From within _Beeminder_: a) Press the _Settings_ cog-wheel at the top right b) Press _Health app integration_. You should be presented with a list of all your active _Beeminder_ goals, on the right of each being either the words “Add source…”, if you have not connected the goal, or the name of the “source” if you _have_ made the connection c) Press on your meditation goal d) Read the scary warning about choosing wisely, and how you’ll be attacked by an albatross with poor grammar skills if you make a mistake, but how the nice people at Beeminder support will come to your rescue if needed (and they did, 'cuz it woz) e) Scroll down to find the _Mindful minutes_ source, take a deep breath, and press it That is, IIRC, (mostly) all there is to it. Now when you have completed a meditation session, _Insight Timer_ will automagically tell Apple _Health_ about it, and _Health_ in turn will pass on the good news to _Beeminder_, and you’ll have successfully pushed back, for one more day, the dreaded, diabolical, hyperbolical hit on your credit card. Finally, some things to watch out for, and other jiggery-pokery: 1. Concerning that “mostly” above. If you have more than one meditation timery thingon your iPhone, it’s possible to have more than one of them provide data to _Health_ and on to _Beeminder_. For example, although my current timer of choice is _Insight Timer_, I have also used _10% Happier_ of Dan Harris fame. If you have a similar setup, and you want to give one of them priority, I think you can do that in _Health_, but I’m not sure how 2. _Insight Timer_ will still allow you to record a log entry, but that data does not appear to be passed to _Health_ and so does not find its way to _Beeminder_ 3. There appears to be a wee rounding error somewhere between _Insight Timer_ and _Beeminder_ because I often see the data expressed in _Beeminder_ to a precision of up to 14 decimal places, which is just the tiniest bit of an overkill. For example, I’ve seen several sits of 5 minutes be recorded in _Beeminder_ as 4.99999999801318 minutes. Doesn’t seem to make any difference to anything important, but it’s eyebrow-raising 4. I’ve seen a couple of puzzling interactions between my use of _Insight Timer_ on my iPhone, and the same app on my iPad. The first is that as far as I’m aware, you cannot have Apple _Health_ on the iPad, and so I’m not sure it even makes sense to use the Timer on the bigger device. Nevertheless, I’ve done it by mistake (i.e. forgetting I’m now doing the auto connect thing), and it looks like data _might_ still be getting through. The second is that to make matters worse, I used my iPad while traveling and at a point where the time zone on my iPhone was different from that on my iPad. The result of all of the above was … well, confusion. Moral of the story; use the phone and only the phone. 5. _Insight Timer_ speaks only in minutes; _Beeminder_, by contrast speaks in whatever units you tell it to; miles, slices of cake, bangings of head off wall, and so on. And for my first attempts, I chose “sessions” as my meditation unit. My initial goal was one session every morning. Yes, I had defined a session to mean “five minutes”, but that all-important number 5 was not represented in a numerical way in my goal. As a result, by initial sits of 5 minutes or 10 minutes according to _Insight Timer_ (and reality), were interpreted by _Beeminder_ as 5 _sessions_ or 10 _sessions_, rapidly creating for me a huge, but entirely bogus, safety buffer. I was, to paraphrase Joey in _Friends_, when criticizing Chandler who had kissed Joey’s new girlfriend and had therefore “crossed the line”, I was so far above my yellow brick road that I couldn’t even see the road; the road was a dot to me. So minutes, minutes, always minutes. Make your _Beeminder_ meditation goal unit be minutes. And then I’ve left the thorniest bit for last. If you decide to take the fateful step (2e above) of connecting your goal, it can look as if you have forever forfeited the ability to provide data manually. After making the connection then on the website where on the right of your chart there used to be a box into which you could add data, there will be only a notice saying, > **_Hahahahaha! This goal now gets its data automatically from Apple now, so you can’t touch it anymore! Haha!! Oh sure, you can open the Beeminder app on iOS to sync the latest data, but that’s all we’ve left you with. Hahahaha! I’ll get you my pretty; and your little dog too!_** (Well, words to that effect. I don’t remember them _verbatim_.) However, it turns out that – although this may depend on your level of Beeminder account – it is still perfectly possible to add/delete/modify entries (although clearly you’d do such a thing _only_ while ironing out connection problems, and _never_ to lie through your teeth about your goal.). Modifying, including deleting, can be done on the website. Login to your account, go to the goal in question and look below your chart. Those yellow words in a dark grey background are actually tabs. Click on _Data_ and there, amazingly, you’ll find your data, along with buttons marked _Update_ and _Delete_. Use those to modify or delete any and all parts of a given datum To add new data points, you can use the SMS or email interfaces (although, again, that may be a function of your account type). So with email you can send a message to [bot@beeminder.com](mailto:bot@beeminder.com), with subject / containing one or more lines of the form: 2018 03 09 10 “optional comment” So for example, if I used subject eucleides/meditation, and included the following as the email body: 2018 03 02 10 “Meditation is really hard” 2018 03 03 15 “I don’t know why I even bother” 2018 03 04 15 “In fact, I’m going to chuck it if it doesn’t improve” 2018 03 05 480 “Holy cr\*p! Is this stream entry!? It’s got to be at least first jhana! Awesome!!!” then I’d get data entries for those four days, times, along with respective comments. That’s already more than I know, so I’ll stop here. e