By Orion Voss

Updated 2026-09-11

Polar + Apple Health: Only Workout Heart Rate Syncs, and Here Is What That Means

70 BPM does not measure heart rate; it reads what Polar Flow has already written into Apple Health and lines it up with your calendar. So the useful question for Polar owners is not “is it compatible” but “what exactly does Polar Flow send, and how much of the day does it cover?” Everything below comes from Polar’s own support documentation, linked where quoted.

What Polar Flow writes to Apple Health

The heart-rate line on Polar’s official page reads, verbatim: “Heart rate: heart rate during workouts. Note! Continuous heart rate is not synced.” (Polar Support: Connecting Polar Flow with Apple Health).

The full export list on that page:

• Heart rate during workouts only (continuous heart rate is not synced)
• Workouts (type, duration, distance, start and end, total active energy, average heart rate)
• Active Energy and Resting Energy
• Sleep Analysis
• Steps
• Weight

The question that decides everything: does it cover the whole day?

Full-day heart rate: no — workouts only. Polar’s own words: “Continuous heart rate is not synced.” So in 70 BPM you will see your training sessions as traces on the day chart, and nothing in between them. If you use Polar for training and want a calendar overlay of your working day, Polar will not supply those samples — that gap is on the export side, not something 70 BPM can fill.

How to connect Polar Flow to Apple Health

From the Polar Flow app:

1. Open Polar Flow, tap More (bottom right) and go to General settings.
2. Tap the Apple Health toggle to enable the connection.
3. Select which categories to sync, or tap Turn All Categories On.
4. Tap Allow (top right) to finish.

Sync is one-way: Polar states that syncing data from the Health app back to Polar Flow is not possible.

Once connected, open 70 BPM, grant it Apple Health read access for heart rate, and the samples Polar Flow has written appear on the day chart against your calendar events. 70 BPM shows every heart-rate sample in Apple Health, whichever device wrote it — it never filters by brand.

If Polar data is not showing up

New data not appearing

Polar’s troubleshooting: open Polar Flow › More › General settings and tap Sync now under the Apple Health toggle, which re-syncs the last two weeks.

Another source may be outranking it

Polar recommends checking that Polar Flow is the first priority under Data Sources & Access for each metric it syncs.

Reinstall as a last resort

Polar’s last troubleshooting step is to uninstall, choose Keep when asked about Health data, reinstall, sign in, re-enable Apple Health and tap Sync now.

How to check what you are actually getting

Open Apple Health › Browse › Heart › Heart Rate and switch to the day view. Readings scattered across an ordinary day mean all-day samples are arriving; readings clustered only into workout blocks mean you are getting session data only. Under the same screen, Data Sources & Access shows which app is writing. This check reflects your actual device, firmware and settings, and beats any compatibility page — including this one.

For how Polar compares with other watches and rings, see Which smartwatches work with Apple Health.

This article reflects Polar’s published documentation as read in September 2026. Sync behaviour changes; check the linked support page before relying on it. 70 BPM is not a medical device and does not diagnose anything.

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