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iOS 9 – I Accidentally Discovered a Great Hidden Feature

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 9:01PM EST
iOS 9 Health App Landscape Mode

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iOS 9 beta 1 has revealed many hidden features that Apple didn’t even mention on stage including a slew of useful tricks that should further improve your iOS experience. In spite of extreme battery discharging, I have been using this first iOS 9 beta since Apple released it, believing until earlier today that I had pretty much figured out all the hidden tricks in this new software version.

But I just happened to have accidentally stumbled upon a great hidden feature that users with iOS 9 definitely have to check out.

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As some of you will guess when looking at the next image, the Health app has a brand new look when the iPhone is held in landscape mode, offering users a great overview of their health and fitness as tracked by the iPhone, other health gadgets including Apple Watch, and health apps.

The Health app can currently overlay the following information on my device, based on what devices and apps I use for tracking data: steps, walking and running distance, flights climbed, sleep analysis (blue), workouts, heart rate (grey) and active energy. Unfortunately, unless specified in brackets, all the parameters are shown with a red line that isn’t very helpful.

You can select which parameters you want to compare and reduce the metrics that appear on the screen. But keeping them all on the screen is much more fun. Just touch and hold your finger on that screen, and that’s when the magic happens. Precise data will start appearing on the display, as you can see in the images below, and you’ll be able to better analyze your fitness data and compare it to other recorded events. Swiping a finger on the screen will let you move through various health parameters recorded for that period.

The app can be used to access a history of your workouts, as recorded by Health app, and you can zoom in and out while in landscape mode, and even see fitness and health data for a certain hour in a certain day, as seen below.

Keep in mind this is just beta, and things should get even better in the final version of iOS 9’s Health app. For health and fitness buffs, this new Health app functionality will certainly be more than useful, as they’ll be able to correlate and analyze health data a lot better than using the iOS 8 version of the app.

Chris Smith Senior Writer

Chris Smith has been covering consumer electronics ever since the iPhone revolutionized the industry in 2008. When he’s not writing about the most recent tech news for BGR, he brings his entertainment expertise to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and other blockbuster franchises.

Outside of work, you’ll catch him streaming almost every new movie and TV show release as soon as it's available.