Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
It’s been more than two months since Google launched the Fitbit Air. While the $99 fitness tracker grabbed most of the attention, one of the biggest changes that arrived alongside it was Google replacing the Fitbit app with Google Health.
At the time, Google said Health would become a unified platform for all of its health devices, including Fitbit trackers and Pixel Watches. AI was a major focus with features like the Health Coach, and the company also promised support for data syncing with multiple health platforms, including Apple Health.
The initial reception wasn’t particularly positive. In fact, our former editor, Rita, wrote at the time that she “hated” the Google Health app. Since then, though, Google has rolled out several updates for both the Fitbit Air and Google Health to improve the experience and squash bugs.
But after all these updates, has Google actually fixed the biggest problems with Google Health? I’ve been using Google Health (almost) since its rebrand, and here’s where I’ve landed.
What’s more important in a health app?
94 votes
Accurate insights
68%
Privacy controls
9%
AI coaching
3%
Clean interface
20%
Google Health finally solved my biggest problem with health tracking
Sanuj Bhatia / Android Authority
Homescreen of WHOOP app (left) vs Google Health (right)
I’ve never been the type of person who checks their health/fitness app first thing in the morning and spends 10 minutes analyzing graphs, numbers, and recovery scores. Sure, I like wearing screenless trackers like the Fitbit Air and WHOOP MG while I sleep, but manually digging through all that data every day just isn’t something for me.
One of my biggest complaints with traditional health apps is that they throw numbers at you the moment you open them. Google Health takes a different approach. Instead of expecting me to interpret every metric myself, it gives me AI-generated summaries that explain what actually happened and whether I should care. And that, for me, is far more useful than trying to analyze the numbers myself.
Sanuj Bhatia / Android Authority
Google has also fixed some issues since the launch of the Health app. For example, one of the most common criticisms early on was that you couldn’t customize the home screen layout. Thankfully, recent updates have addressed that, bringing the ability to change the order of pinned tiles.
Unpopular opinion, but I also really like the little AI summaries and notifications Google sends throughout the day. They’re quick enough to glance at in a few seconds and tell me everything I need to know without forcing me to actively keep track of my health metrics.
But where I have found Google Health AI genuinely useful, though, is when asking questions about my own data. For example, I recently asked it to compare my sleep over the past month on days when I exercised versus days when I didn’t.
Sanuj Bhatia / Android Authority
The Health Coach noted that my sleep quality was slightly better on days I skipped a workout (even though the difference was very minor). It’s an interesting stat, and it’s not the kind of stat I would’ve noticed on my own.
That’s precisely why I like Google’s approach. I know plenty of other smartwatches and fitness trackers can do much the same, especially if you wear them long enough, and most now have some form of built-in AI. But since Google offers this at no extra cost if you’re already subscribed to Google AI Pro (which I’m already paying for), it’s a great value-add in my opinion.
That said, the AI is far from perfect.
Google’s AI remembers things a little too well
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
Overreliance on AI is where Google Health starts to fall apart for me. From what I’ve seen, Google Health remembers everything you tell it. Not “everything” in a loose sense — I mean everything. Furthermore, it seems to assume that anything you mention once is now a permanent part of your routine.
A while back, I asked Health Coach whether it was fine to take magnesium and liposomal glutathione together before bed. It was just a simple, one-off question. Now, almost every evening, it asks whether I’m sticking to that routine and strikes up conversations as if those supplements have become a permanent fixture in my nightly schedule.
What’s interesting is that this doesn’t seem to be an isolated issue. I confirmed the same behavior with our Managing Editor, Joe Maring, and found several Reddit users complaining about the exact same thing. The AI appears to remember almost everything you tell it, even when it probably shouldn’t.
You can’t audit it, you can’t correct it. You just have to live with whatever it decides to remember.
As a result, I now think twice before asking health-related questions. I don’t know whether the AI Health Coach will treat a casual question as a long-term habit, which is counterintuitive to the feature’s intended purpose. Quite ironically, I’ve started asking those questions to Gemini instead, even though Google Health is supposed to be the more specialized tool.
What makes matters worse is that there’s no real way to audit what Google Health actually knows about you. There’s no dashboard showing what information it remembers. There’s basically no way to tell Google Health to forget something.
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
I believe health data is some of the most personal information we have. If Google wants AI to build long-term context around my routines or supplements, I think it should also give me much more control over that information. At the very least, there should be a simple option to tell the AI to forget something or stop asking about it.
Apart from these issues, there’s also reliability. The Health Coach, in the end, is an AI, and it does hallucinate every once in a while. I’ve had a few instances where a notification showed me incorrect health data, only for it to correct itself after I opened the app and it force-refreshed. I’ve also seen plenty of similar reports on Reddit, so it doesn’t seem like an isolated bug.
For me, these are some of the drawbacks that Google still needs to fix. The AI summaries seem quite useful, but if I’m expected to trust an AI with my health data, it also needs to be transparent about what it remembers and consistently accurate about what it tells me.
I’m still not sure who Google Health is for
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
I keep coming back to the same feeling with Google Health: it’s good. In fact, it’s genuinely good in a lot of places. And then it does something that completely undercuts all of that goodwill. The best way I can describe it is like a meal you really enjoyed, only for the aftertaste to sour the whole experience afterward.
There are plenty of things the app gets right. But a product that remembers everything you say, hallucinates here and there, and gives you no way to see or manage what it’s remembering doesn’t feel like a finished product.
So, two months later, I’d definitely say Google Health has improved, but I’m still not convinced Google has figured out exactly what it wants the app to be. It’s caught somewhere between a traditional health dashboard and an AI health companion, and I think it’s high time Google fully committed to one direction.
Google Fitbit AirGoogle Fitbit Air
Screen-free fitness tracker • Affordable price • Excellent sleep tracking
The Google Fitbit Air is the company’s first screenless fitness band.
The Google Fitbit Air combines Fitbit’s trusted health tracking with Google’s smarter insights in one app. It works with both Android and iPhone and brings fitness, sleep, medical records, meals, and hydration tracking into a single, easy-to-use health hub.
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