Arc imports Apple Health data for the all recorded timeline items, but doesn’t import data back from before Arc was installed or recording.

There isn’t enough information in Apple Health to be able to build timelines, so the Health data is only used to augment existing timeline items (eg step counts, calories burned).

Are you seeing some of your timeline items not having Health data imported into them? If so, it’s probably worth waiting a minute or two and checking again. Sometimes the data doesn’t come across immediately.

Oh I see! I didn’t realize that was the case. Yes, it goes all the way back! In checking that, though, I noticed that data imported from Moves has it seems driving is also considered walking. Is this a limitation or should is it a bug (and should I contact you separately about it if so)?

Arc will import Moves trips as the type assigned in the Moves data, unless that type doesn’t exist in Arc.

Moves was only able to automatically detect walking, running, cycling, and airplane. For everything else it would simply label the trips as “transport”, which essentially meant “no type assigned”.

So when those trips are imported into Arc, they are imported with no type assigned, and Arc’s activity types classifier attempts to determine an appropriate type for them.

But given that Moves data was very limited (it only included latitude and longitude, not even altitude, and certainly no accelerometer data) it is difficult for Arc’s classifier to determine appropriate types for it, unless it’s along a route that Arc has already seen you travel and that you have previously confirmed the type for.

So yeah, what ends up happening is often Arc’s classifier will classify those “transport” trips as something not very appropriate, because it’s got very little information to go on.

If you go back through your Moves imported data and clean up some of those old trips, then Arc’s classifier will reassess its decisions on other Moves imported data, and hopefully come up with better answers over time. So doing some cleanup of those old “transport” trips will help Arc to automatically clean up the rest itself.

Hope that helps to explain! 😄

Thank you, that is helpful! This suggestion/line of questioning can be marked as resolved or completed; I’m not sure if I can do that myself. Once data can be imported from other services (eg GPX), will Arc automatically pull data from those days as well?