Google has officially released their Health and Fitness app to rival Apple’s Healthbook app. It’s called Google Fit and it’s Google’s take on fitness.
So when you boot up the app, you’ll have to go through a few prompts. The first prompt will let you know that the app works across Android Wear and wearable devices like the Moto 360 and LG G Watch, which is pretty cool. The other prompt informs you that the activity and body sensor info can be managed in Google Fit and will be accessible to apps that have your permission. Location history and reporting will be enabled.
Google will need to periodically store your location in your account to use Google Fit and other Google services. So basically if you live indoors with your blinds closed and are constantly paranoid that you are being watched and tracked, this app probably isn’t for you. But if you get through that, you’ll see that it’s a simplistic fitness app that is Google Fit.
There is a little 360 circle that lets you know how much exercise you’ve actually accomplished today to reach your goal. You can switch between minutes and steps. And in the upper right hand corner, you have a little settings icon where you can add activities, add your weight, go to the settings, send some feedback and receive some help if you’re stuck, and also there’s a link to upload your info to the online database.
If you click on Add Activity, you can select the date and time along with the type of activity you have completed. The most common ones are walking, running or biking. But if it’s something more awesome like rock climbing or dragon boat racing or something awesome like that, you can just tap on Other.
Below that though, you can add the duration of your workout in hours and in minutes. And that’s basically it. Hit OK and you can see that at the bottom of the home screen, your activity will be displayed down below. But since I really didn’t do anything because I’m a YouTuber, it says I don’t really have that many steps as you can see. If I were to actually do something, you can view the details and it’ll give you a Step per Hour ratio, which is pretty darn nifty.
Now you’ll notice above that activity, there’s a card that says “Every minute counts towards fitness.” This is where you can change your fitness goals. Tap on that and you’ll see your lovely face where you can change the active amount of time you want to set along with some basic information, like gender and height and weight. It also allows you to change the unit of measurement so all you foreigners out there rejoice and rest assured that your units of measurement will be there.
But all your Google Fit data will be associated with a specific Google account. So if you switch phones, your data will still be there assuming you’re logged in with your Google account. And lastly, notifications allows you to enable sound and remind your notifications to give you updated.
But really, that is it. It’s a very simple app as you can see. It definitely has the new Material Design in mind but it also has a lot of room to grow. I feel like right now it was sort of released to compete with the new Apple Healthbook app and to be available when the new Nexus devices are launched and the new Android Lollipop 5.0 operating system becomes more widely available. Google has the ability to make this a killer app with more features like Detailed or Route Tracking and Calorie Tracking, which I can see it adding in the near future. But yeah, as you can see it’s very simple.