HealthKit Deprecated and Beta Types

Four of the 241 HealthKit type identifiers in this dataset are deprecated, as of this site's 2026-10-02 read of Apple's documentation: the workout activity constants dance (deprecated in iOS 14.0), danceInspiredTraining (iOS 10.0) and mixedMetabolicCardioTraining (iOS 11.0), and the category type audioExposureEvent (iOS 14.0). None has been removed. All 241, the four included, still carry an availability entry for each of the six platforms Apple documents: iOS, iPadOS, Mac Catalyst, macOS, visionOS and watchOS. There is no watchOS-only type and no iOS-only type in the set.

Where Apple records it. Apple's documentation JSON marks a deprecation by giving a platform entry a deprecatedAt version. The deprecated flag beside it was false on every platform entry of every identifier in the 2026-10-02 read, the four deprecated ones included. Until 2026-10-02 this site's generator read only that flag, and this page reported that nothing in HealthKit was deprecated. That was wrong, and the corrections log records it.

Each deprecated type comes with a note saying what to use instead. Apple's note on dance reads "Use HKWorkoutActivityType.cardioDance or HKWorkoutActivityType.socialDance instead." The note on danceInspiredTraining points to dance, barre or pilates, and dance was itself deprecated in iOS 14.0, so following the older note lands you on a second deprecated constant. mixedMetabolicCardioTraining points to mixedCardio or highIntensityIntervalTraining. audioExposureEvent is the one Apple records as a rename: its availability data names HKCategoryTypeIdentifier.environmentalAudioExposureEvent as the new name, and its note says to use that instead.

Apple's group name only catches three of them. Apple files dance, danceInspiredTraining and mixedMetabolicCardioTraining under a topic group named "Deprecated activity types", so a check for that group finds them. audioExposureEvent sits in Apple's Hearing group, next to environmentalAudioExposureEvent, the type Apple names as its replacement, and only the availability data marks it. Check deprecatedAt, not the group name.

The platforms do not all agree. None of the four carries a deprecatedAt on its macOS entry. On visionOS all four show 1.0, the same version Apple gives for their introduction there, and on watchOS the versions run from 3.0 to 7.0. The table below lists every platform Apple gives a version for.

No identifier is marked beta in the 2026-10-02 read. The two that were marked beta on 2026-08-28 are bleedingAfterMenopause and menopausalState, both category types introduced in iOS 27.0; the flag was the only thing that changed in their rows. menopausalState resolves to its own value enum, HKCategoryValueMenopausalState. bleedingAfterMenopause does not resolve to one at all in this dataset — it is one of only two category types without a resolved value enum.

Five identifiers are listed with no abstract at all as of 2026-10-02: appleSleepingBreathingDisturbances, estimatedWorkoutEffortScore, workoutEffortScore, heartRateVariabilityRMSSD and hypertensionEvent. The first four are quantity types that also have no stated aggregation style and no unit family, which means there is no documented answer to what they measure, in what, or whether you may add them together. hypertensionEvent is a category type from iOS 26.2 with no abstract, no discussion and no resolved value enum.

59 identifiers carry zero words of discussion prose as of 2026-10-02, and the median discussion length across the whole set is 15 words. Silence is not a lifecycle status, but it has the same practical effect: an undocumented type is one you cannot verify your assumptions against, and assumptions about health data tend to be wrong in ways that never throw.

So the honest four-part answer to "is X safe to build on" is: four identifiers are deprecated in Apple's availability data, three of them in the group Apple named for it and audioExposureEvent outside it; none is beta as of 2026-10-02; and a much larger population is simply underdocumented. The counts come from this site's HealthKit identifier dataset, read from Apple's developer documentation on 2026-10-02. Which release each identifier arrived in is on HealthKit types by iOS version. For what the silent ones cost you in practice, see the silent types, and for how these judgements are made, how we verify. If a type you depend on does go away, migrating off a deprecated API covers the mechanics.