Project 1: Your data in one place

Goal: your own Open Health Sync running on your computer, your iPhone, watch or ring connected to it, and one command that tells you how many days of data came in.

Time: 20 minutes, most of it waiting for an export or a download. Level: first steps.

1. Start your instanceCopy Anchor Link

Follow the quickstart up to Start the stack: clone the repository, create .env with a fresh encryption key, and start it with Docker Compose. Every command below runs from the repository root.

docker compose --env-file .env -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -d --wait
curl -s http://localhost:8080/healthz

{"status":"ok"}

2. Make it yoursCopy Anchor Link

This creates a tenant called personal, a user called me, and a key, and writes them to a file every project of this series reads:

docker compose --env-file .env -f deploy/docker-compose.yml exec -T ohs \
  /ohs admin personal setup > ~/.ohs.env
chmod 600 ~/.ohs.env

The key in that file reads everything on your instance: treat it like a password.

3. Bring your data inCopy Anchor Link

Pick the source you have. You can add the others later, and they all land in the same lists.

An iPhone (and an Apple Watch). On the phone, open the Health app, tap your picture, then Export All Health Data. Send the export.zip to your computer (AirDrop works). Install the ohs command from the latest release: take the archive for your system (darwin is macOS), unpack it and put ohs on your PATH. Then import the export through a token that can only upload:

set -a; . ~/.ohs.env; set +a
export OHS_TOKEN=$(curl -s -X POST "$OHS_URL/v1/users/$OHS_USER/tokens" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OHS_KEY" -d '{"scopes":["upload"]}' | jq -r .token)
ohs import apple-health export.zip

A few years of data take a minute or two. The command prints counts, never a health value.

A ring, a band or another watch (Withings, Oura, WHOOP, Fitbit, Polar, Suunto, Strava, Ultrahuman, intervals.icu). Each provider asks for your own developer keys first, because nothing is shared between installs: the page of each connector says where to get them, in about ten minutes. Then:

python3 recipes/connect.py withings    # or oura, whoop, fitbit...

Allow access on the page that opens. The first data arrives within seconds, and your history follows in the background.

4. See what came inCopy Anchor Link

python3 recipes/connect.py

Source          Status        Synced through        Last error
apple_health    fresh         2026-10-13 01:37

And how many days each source covers:

set -a; . ~/.ohs.env; set +a
curl -s "$OHS_URL/v1/users/$OHS_USER/coverage" -H "Authorization: Bearer $OHS_KEY" \
  | jq -r '.days | group_by(.provider)[] | "\(.[0].provider): \(length) days, \(map(.records) | add) records"'

apple_health: 71 days, 245 records

That is your checkpoint: one place, one shape, whatever measured it.

Make it yoursCopy Anchor Link

• Connect a second source, then run the last command again: two lines, one per app.
• Add ?start=2026-01-01 to the coverage address to count this year only.
• Read one night as the API serves it, every field named the same whatever the device: curl -s "$OHS_URL/v1/users/$OHS_USER/sleep?limit=1" -H "Authorization: Bearer $OHS_KEY" | jq

Share itCopy Anchor Link

Post your coverage line (or just "it works on a Raspberry Pi 5") in Show and tell.

Next: Project 2, Read your sleep.