Health Connect will soon track your steps without needing another app

If you want to improve your health, there’s no shortage of services you can use to track your health, fitness, and wellness metrics. Some options are better than others at tracking certain metrics, so many people mix and match to find the best solution. To simplify this for users, Google created Health Connect in 2022 to serve as a central hub for all this data. Currently, the service only facilitates data sharing between different health and fitness apps and doesn’t track any data on its own. That’s set to change, though, as Google is working on adding native step tracking support to Health Connect.

Health Connect is both an app and a framework for storing health data. Using the framework, apps can write data like steps, heart rate, and sleep to Health Connect, which stores that data in a secure, on-device database. Other apps can then use the same framework to read that data from Health Connect, either to add it to their own database or to perform analysis on it. Through the Health Connect app, users can manage which apps have permission to read or write this data.

This approach has some key benefits. Health and fitness apps only have to share data with a single other app — Health Connect — rather than dozens of others, saving developers significant time and effort. It also makes it easier for consumers to migrate between or use multiple services.

Health Connect was integrated into the OS starting with Android 14, so all users have to do is download the health or fitness app of their choice and enable data sharing with Health Connect. Once connected, the Health Connect app will display the data these apps contribute, whether it’s from the phone’s sensors or from a connected device like a smartwatch.

Currently, Health Connect doesn’t collect any data of its own, but I’ve spotted evidence that Google is adding native step tracking support to the app. While digging through the latest 2508 Android Canary release, I found a new “Devices” page in Health Connect settings. Tapping it opened a page with a list of connected devices, including an “unknown device” labeled as the current phone. Selecting this “unknown device” opened a “device info” page showing that it’s only allowed to write step data to Health Connect, which other apps can then access via the framework.

In my testing, my device’s steps weren’t being counted, regardless of whether the screen was on or off or the app was visible. Step tracking is a simple feature that uses accelerometer data — a sensor nearly all smartphones have — so my Pixel phone is certainly capable. Digging deeper, I discovered that the native step tracking feature is only partially implemented in the 2508 Android Canary release, which explains why it isn’t working yet. Still, the fact that Google is adding native tracking capabilities is a big deal. It could signal the start of the company transforming Health Connect into an all-in-one health and fitness hub, something that could help it better compete as an Apple Health alternative.

The only question I have is what this means for Fitbit, which is Google’s primary health and fitness tracking platform for Pixel devices. Fitbit isn’t available out of the box on all Android devices, so perhaps Google is enhancing Health Connect to become a better baseline platform while Fitbit remains the preferred option for tracking more advanced metrics.