Google Forces Last Fitbit App Holdouts Onto Google Health

Users who open the Fitbit app are now shown a prompt reading "A newer Fitbit app is available. Updating is recommended," the report said. The only button offered is labeled "Update," and the notification cannot be tapped away or dismissed, which makes the change compulsory for people who are still using the older, deprecated app.

The move quickly drew complaints on social media. "I hate the new Google Health app," one user wrote, adding that they used to swipe back to review workout and sleep data from previous days and that the ability is now gone. The same user, who described themselves as a Premium member, said they were "paying for this new garbage." Another wrote, "Google health app is so baaad. I also want my Fitbit app back."

Asked what had made the Fitbit app better, a third user pointed to food tracking, HRV-based illness detection and sleep tracking. "It was elite. The food tracking was next level. It always detected when I was getting sick with my HRV and all that. Tracked my sleep to a tee," the user said, adding, "I fear I'll never have this kind of tracking again."

Part of the reluctance reflects the Google Health app's reputation, which TechRadar reported is not particularly strong, in part because of an unreliable AI assistant. Users have documented the assistant hallucinating workouts that never happened and inventing food-tracking metrics, among other errors. The problems became serious enough that Google added a way for users to disable the app's AI assistant altogether.

Several users also said tools they relied on are missing from Google Health, including an estimate of health for your age and a simple, intuitive layout. "None of the features I liked from Fitbit's app are left," one person said.

TechRadar reported that users who do not want to move to Google Health can turn to alternatives, though it noted that none are quite like the discontinued Fitbit offering. The report did not include a response from Google.

Editor's Summary

Google has made the long-encouraged migration from the Fitbit app to Google Health mandatory, presenting remaining users with a prompt that offers only an update button and cannot be dismissed. Users have complained publicly about lost features such as historical workout and sleep review, food tracking and HRV-based illness detection, as well as the Google Health app's unreliable AI assistant. The change ends the Fitbit app for its remaining holdouts, who must now use Google Health or find an alternative.