Guide · Apple Health Advanced

Show Apple Health on your dashboard

Theatrium has no direct connection to Apple Health. Steps, distance, floors climbed, workouts and the like reach the dashboard by way of Home Assistant and its own iPhone Companion app — not the free Theatrium companion app. It is a setup with a few moving parts, done once, on your phone and in Home Assistant, before it ever touches Theatrium.

What you need

  • Home Assistant, already connected to Theatrium. Apple Home has no health readings at all, so this route only exists for a Home Assistant dashboard.
  • The Home Assistant Companion app — the official Home Assistant app for iPhone, signed into the same Home Assistant instance Theatrium connects to. This is a different app from the free Theatrium companion app, which does not read Apple Health.
  • Health access granted to the Home Assistant Companion app on whichever iPhone carries the Apple Health data you want shown, with the sensors you want turned on.
  • Theatrium Pro — the Activity and Workouts cards that show this data on the dashboard are both Pro cards.

How the pieces fit together

Three separate things, in order:

1

Your iPhone's Health data

Apple Health lives on your iPhone. Theatrium runs on the Apple TV and never talks to it directly — tvOS has no access to Health at all.

2

The Home Assistant Companion app reads it and hands it to Home Assistant

The Home Assistant Companion app can read Health data on the phone it is installed on, once you allow it, and publish the readings you choose — steps, distance, floors climbed and others — into Home Assistant as ordinary sensors.

3

Theatrium reads those sensors from Home Assistant

Theatrium's Activity and Workouts cards do not know or care where a sensor came from. They look at whatever Home Assistant has — a phone's health sensors, a smart scale, a Strava or Garmin integration, a hand-entered number — and match the readings that look like steps, distance, heart rate and so on. Getting Apple Health showing is entirely about the first two steps; Theatrium's side is just adding a card once the sensors exist.

Setting it up

Do this once per iPhone whose Health data you want on the dashboard.

1

Install the Home Assistant Companion app

On the iPhone, install the Home Assistant app from the App Store (the official Home Assistant Companion app, published by the Home Assistant project — not the Theatrium companion app) and sign it into the same Home Assistant instance Theatrium connects to.

2

Turn on the Health sensors you want

In the app, open Settings › Companion App › Sensors and turn on the readings you want — Steps, Distance and Floors Ascended cover the Activity card; turn on others if you want them too. The app asks iOS for permission to read Health data the first time you do this — allow it, or nothing will come through. Home Assistant's own settings screens and menu wording can change between versions, so treat the exact path as a general description rather than a precise map.

3

Wait for the sensors to appear in Home Assistant

Once the sensors are turned on and the phone has sent an update, they show up in Home Assistant within a few minutes as ordinary sensor entities, one per reading.

4

Add the Activity or Workouts card in Theatrium

Back in Theatrium, add an Activity card for steps, distance and floors, or a Workouts card for a Strava, Garmin or Apple Health workout history — both need Theatrium Pro. The full add-a-card steps, including how to point each health reading at the right sensor, are covered in The Activity card and The Workouts card.

If it does not work

  • “No health data yet.” The Companion app's sensors are off, or the phone has not sent an update yet. Check Settings › Companion App › Sensors on the phone, then wait a few minutes.
  • No workout entities found. Home Assistant needs a workout integration already set up — a Strava or Garmin integration, or an Apple Health exporter — before the Workouts card has anything to read.
  • The card is not offered when adding one. Both cards need Theatrium Pro.

Good to know

  • Theatrium's own companion app (the free iPhone remote for this Apple TV) does not read Apple Health. Do not confuse it with the Home Assistant Companion app — the two are separate apps doing separate jobs.
  • Both cards are display only. Nothing on the dashboard changes anything in Apple Health or Home Assistant.
  • Any other Home Assistant sensor with the right kind of reading — a smart scale, a sleep tracker — can be chosen for the Activity card as well, whether or not it started life as Apple Health data.

This guide is general information, provided “as is” with no warranty of any kind. It describes independent third-party software that Theatrium does not control, and the steps involve installing software and changing settings on your own equipment — back up first and proceed at your own risk. Read the full disclaimer.