Strava to Apple Health Missing Elevation

When you sync Strava activities into Apple Health, only certain data fields get passed along. Here’s how it works:

What syncs:

• Distance, time, heart rate, GPS route (if you record with Strava and allow location) usually make it into Apple Health.
• Apple Health does store elevation gain/loss for workouts, but Strava does not always pass that data into HealthKit.

The limitation

Strava calculates elevation gain/loss based on its own maps and correction algorithms. When it writes workouts to Apple Health, it only sends a subset of fields. That means Apple Health often ends up with:

• Route map (if GPS recorded)

• Distance, speed, heart rate, calories, etc.

  …but not elevation gain/loss.

Workarounds

• Continue to use Strava, but manually add the elevation in Challenge Hound after the rest of the data syncs. You can edit activities in Challenge Hound with missing data and add elevation, as well as descriptions, photos, etc.
• If you record with Apple Watch Workout app (instead of Strava), elevation gain/loss will be included automatically in Apple Health.
• Some third-party apps (e.g., HealthFit, RunGap, FitnessSyncer) can sync Strava data into Health with elevation included. These apps pull the original .FIT file from Strava and then write richer data into HealthKit than Strava’s own sync does.

👉 So: Elevation data doesn’t come through from Strava → Apple Health directly. If elevation tracking in Health is important to you, you’d need to record with Apple Watch or use a sync app like HealthFit.