How to Ask Siri to Display Activity Data From the Health app

The iPhone stores a vast amount of data about our daily activities. Our steps, distance walked, and flights climbed, being just a few.

Wouldn’t it be great if, rather than opening up the Health app and navigating around to find the information you need, you could simply ask Siri to read a summary of your day’s activities?

You’d think that would be as easy as saying:

Hey Siri, how many steps have I walked today?

Unfortunately, Siri is pretty unhelpful in this regard, replying with:

I can’t answer that on your iPhone, but you can find it in the Activity app.

Not very obliging, but luckily the Shortcuts app comes to the rescue.

In this article, we’ll show you how to build a Siri shortcut to tell you how far you’ve walked and how many steps you’ve taken on the current day.

What are Siri shortcuts?

If you haven’t used shortcuts before, take a look at our in-depth article, which should help get you started. Put simply; the Shortcuts app allows you to combine a set of actions to speed up tasks on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, HomePod, and Apple Watch. A shortcut can be triggered using a Siri command.

How to build the ‘How much have I walked today?’ shortcut

We will build a shortcut to create an alert that will tell you how many steps you’ve taken and how far you have walked so far that day.

Tip: when words in an action are highlighted in blue, their value can be edited by tapping them and entering text using the on-screen keyboard or selecting from a popup list.

Create and name a new shortcut

Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone.
With the Shortcuts tab open, tap on the + button at the top of the screen to create a new shortcut.
Tap the text at the top of the screen that says New Shortcut, then tap Rename in the popup. Name the shortcut ‘How Much Have I Walked Today’. The name will be the phrase you use to run the shortcut with Siri.
Tap Done.

Get the distance walked

Tap on the blue Add Action button.
In the search field, type ‘Health’ and select Find Health Samples from the actions displayed in the search results.
In the inserted action, next to Type, tap on the word ‘Steps’ and select Walking + Running Distance from the popup list.
Change Start Date from ‘is in the last’ to is today.
For Unit, tap on ‘km’ if you want to change the unit of distance.
Tap on ’None’ next to Group by and select Day.
Toggle the Fill Missing switch off.

The settings for getting the distance walked

In the search field, type ‘Var’ and select the Set Variable action from the results.
The results from the previous action will automatically be inserted in the variable. Rename the variable to Distance.

Set a variable and name it 'Distance' — Set a variable and name it ‘Distance’

In the search field, type ‘Round’ and select the Round Number action from the list. This action will convert the distance value from the previous action into a readable format.
Tap Ones Place and select Tenths from the list.

Convert the distance variable into a round number

Get the number of steps walked

In the search field, type ‘Health’ and select Find Health Samples from the actions displayed in the search results.
Leave the Type field set to Steps.
Change Start Date from ‘is in the last’ to is today.
Tap on ’None’ next to Group by and select Day.
Toggle the Fill Missing switch off.

The settings for getting the steps taken

In the search field, type ‘Var’ and select the Set Variable action from the results.
The results from the previous action will automatically be inserted in the variable. Rename the variable to Steps.

Set a variable and name it 'Steps' — Set a variable and name it ‘Steps’

Create an alert

In the search field, type ‘Alert’ and select the Show Alert action from the list.

Add the 'Show Alert' action — Add the ‘Show Alert’ action

The ‘Show Alert’ action allows us to input text using the keyboard and insert variables from previous actions by tapping on them in the menu bar above the keyboard.

Tap the ‘Do you want to continue’ text and edit it to say: ‘Today you walked’ followed by a space.
Tap the Rounded Number variable displayed above the keyboard (you may need to swipe left to see it).
Enter a space then type ‘km and took’ followed by a space.
Tap the Steps variable displayed above the keyboard, enter a space, then type ‘steps.’
Tap on the blue around in a circle to show more options, and toggle off the Show Cancel Button switch.

The final alert should read:

Today you walked Rounded Number km and took Steps steps.

Type in the alert message and insert the variables

Tap Done at the top right of your screen, and the shortcut will be added to your library.

Test the shortcut

Now ask Siri:

Hey Siri, how much have I walked today?

Siri will display a notification on the screen, automatically inserting the distance and steps variables into the alert.

Shortcuts can be a little daunting at first, but hopefully, this example has given a taste of what is possible.

Want to discover more about using Siri, Apple’s popular virtual assistant? We’ve written a helpful collection of tutorials full of techniques for using apps, dictation, using Siri Shortcuts, and a comprehensive beginner’s guide to activating and using Siri.