How to log a headache or migraine in Apple Health

Add a headache entry, step by step

1. Open the Health app on your iPhone and tap Browse.
2. Tap Symptoms, then Headache.
3. Tap Add Data in the upper corner.
4. Choose a severity, set the date and time the headache started and ended, then save the entry.

Apple describes the same pattern for every category you fill in by hand: Browse, a category, a subcategory, then Add Data, where you enter the date, time and value (Apple Support: Manage Health data). Health itself says you can enter symptoms manually (Apple Support: Intro to Health data).

There is no separate "migraine" type. Apple's list of symptom types includes headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and fatigue, but nothing for aura or sensitivity to light (Apple Developer: symptom type identifiers). A migraine attack is therefore recorded as a headache.

What the severity levels mean

Each headache entry carries one severity value. Apple's HealthKit framework defines five: not present, present without a grade, mild, moderate and severe (Apple Developer: severity values). The exact labels on screen depend on your iOS version and language.

Health doesn't define what mild or severe means for you, so pick a rule and keep it. A common convention in headache diaries:

• Mild — you can carry on with your normal activities.
• Moderate — you can carry on, but slower or with effort.
• Severe — you have to stop or lie down.

Rate the worst point of the attack, not how you feel when you finally log it. If your clinician asks for a 0–10 score, our migraine pain scale helps keep ratings consistent from month to month.

What Health stores — and what it leaves out

A headache entry in Health holds a start and end time, the severity, and the source: the app or device that wrote it. Apps you allow can read and write these entries, and the data stays encrypted on your iPhone when it's locked (Apple Support).

What the entry does not hold:

• aura, which side hurt, or other migraine features;
• possible triggers, weather or barometric pressure;
• medicine taken for this attack and whether it helped (Health has a separate Medications feature where you can log as-needed medicines, but the dose isn't linked to the headache entry — Apple Support: medications);
• headache days per month, medication days or any summary your doctor would read.

Check, edit or delete entries

To review what's there, open Headache and tap Show All Data. Tap Edit to delete a wrong entry. Under Data Sources & Access you can see which apps and devices write headache data and change their order (Apple Support).

If several apps write the same attack, you can end up with duplicates. Let one app be the source of truth, and turn off writing for the others.

Let an app do the logging

Opening Health and working through a form is hard in the middle of an attack. Any app you allow to write to Health creates the same Headache entries for you.

Disclosure: Dim is our app. It logs an attack in one tap from the Apple Watch, the Lock Screen, Siri, the Action button or Control Center, and writes the start, end and severity to Apple Health. With read access, headache entries you made earlier in Health show up in your Dim diary too. Our Apple Health guide explains what syncs and what doesn't.

When a log entry isn't enough

A diary is for patterns over weeks. A headache that is sudden and severe, comes with weakness, confusion, trouble speaking, fever or a stiff neck, or is new or different from your usual attacks needs prompt medical assessment, not just an entry in Health.