After a flood of complaints about the Google Health app that just replaced Fitbit, Google has responded with a list of changes that will roll out starting this week.
Google Health has a slew of updates on the way, with tweaks for its AI coach and the new UI.
Google Health has a slew of updates on the way, with tweaks for its AI coach and the new UI.
Google is addressing some of the biggest complaints users had, like the Today dashboard that can only show users’ chosen health metrics in the top half of the screen. Soon, Google says it will “make it easier to customize your Today and Health dashboards so you can more easily re-arrange metrics within them or add or remove metrics.”
Google Health is also adding some missing features and quality-of-life improvements, like custom food viewing, creation, and logging, so you can add custom food items to your logs. The Today and Health tabs are getting charts for hourly step goals, as well, and a new 24-hour total sleep overview will show both main sleep and naps.
Google’s AI coach is one of the most divisive new features. One person asked why they “now have to scroll through paragraphs of AI slop” to see their health data, but others, like The Verge’s David Pierce, say they are already getting useful advice and insights.
Google says these adjustments for its AI-generated messages in the Today tab are coming soon:
- Make messages more concise without sacrificing helpful detail and try to find the right balance between positivity and objectivity.
- Include more visuals like charts, maps, and glanceable stats in messages.
- Tune which of your activities warrant a message from the Coach, so you should expect less commentary on brief walks.
A few of the other listed improvements also stuck out:
- Correctly label runs that were incorrectly labeled as general workouts for some users (rolling out this week).
- Add splits to run summaries (rolling out this week).
- Ask for your intent more frequently before responding when the Coach would benefit for more detail.
- Heads of families cannot migrate their personal account without also migrating or deleting kids’ accounts. We recognize the current account migration process doesn’t make it easy to delete a child account if you don’t want to migrate or graduate the child. In June, you’ll be able to delete child accounts and unblock your account migration.
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