Google confirms huge Fitbit update as app changes | Tech News

If you might be a longtime consumer of the Fitbit app, you should have – or are about to – see some very huge changes come to your telephone. The app, which is used to run all Fitbits as properly as Google Pixel Watch units is having its largest overhaul ever and turning into Google Health.

Google, which acquired Fitbit in 2021, has been slowly altering the Fitbit app, however with this newest update, it’s waving goodbye to the fitbit model. Whether you’re on iPhone or Android, your acquainted inexperienced and white Fitbit emblem will probably be disappearing to get replaced by a coronary heart within the acquainted blue, crimson, inexperienced and yellow of a Google app.

But it’s not simply the identify that’s altering. Google Health has a utterly overhauled look, one which was obtainable prematurely when you joined up within the UK from February this yr. Now it’s right here for everybody, with a completely new dashboard to view all of your health information in.

If you pay for Fitbit Premium – which is now referred to as Google Health Premium – you’ll additionally get entry to an AI chatbot referred to as Google Health Coach. There’s a continually updating AI-generated abstract of your day and previous few hours on the prime of the app if you open it, plus you may faucet Ask Coach to present it some more details about your life and habits, which makes issues more correct.

All that is stay now, however Google additionally simply introduced even more updates and changes coming to Google Health that it hopes will improve the expertise.

Some of these changes appear to be a direct consequence of suggestions from people utilizing the Public Preview, which have been introduced in a weblog post by Google Community Manager Stefanie Frederick.

They listed “planned fixes and improvements you can expect from us as soon as this week, and on an ongoing basis into the summer.”

These embody a repair to a bug I discovered once I examined the new Fitbit Air tracker, which incorrectly labels exercises as runs. The app may also gain splits for run abstract cut up instances, which it most likely ought to have already got, plus an enchancment to load time and discoverability for maps within your train summaries.

It additionally guarantees to improve the stay monitoring of Fitbit Air when utilizing linked GPS. This is as a result of the Air has no built-in GPS, so wants to connect with your smartphone to precisely monitor run, cycle or stroll routes. Google additionally says it can “improve the number of exercises that Fitbit Air automatically detects”, which will probably be fascinating to see, as the machine may be very primary and lacks the sensors of more superior options.

Elsewhere, there are a number of different bug fixes and enhancements coming that addresses correct integration of third-party apps such as MyFitnessPal, Pixel Watch inaccuracies, the addition of customized food logging, and higher goal-setting progress monitoring.

Thankfully, Google can be including charts for hourly step objectives within the Today and Health tabs, giving a granular view of exercise that the Google Health update bafflingly took away from the outdated Fitbit model.

Cast an eye over the complete listing of upcoming changes, and it seems as although Google is doing a lot of firefighting with bugs within the Google Health app. But for every thing it’s fixing, that gained’t convey back the outdated Fitbit app. That is useless and buried, together with options such as badges and sleep animals, issues ruthlessly deleted for each consumer by Google after its app overhaul.