Google is overhauling the Fitbit smartphone app around a new AI-powered Personal Health Coach built with Gemini, arriving in October as an opt-in preview alongside the Pixel Watch 4. According to WIRED, the redesign rebuilds the app to center conversations that use a wearer’s 24/7 health data for personalized guidance.
AI coach preview and redesigned experience
The Personal Health Coach will be available to Fitbit Premium subscribers and launches in an open beta. During onboarding, the coach asks questions to learn preferences and equipment; the conversation evolves as it incorporates ongoing data like sleep scores and recent workouts. If a user reports feeling unwell or under-recovered, the coach can adjust weekly workout plans and follow up later.
Rishi Chandra, Google’s vice president for Health, says the team is balancing concise and lengthy replies. For now, users can only type to the coach, though the preview may expand to multimodal interactions, such as sending a video of hotel gym equipment for recommendations, and potentially integrating Gemini Live for more real-time exchanges.
Andy Abramson, director of product management at Google, says the redesign improves navigation, data visualization, wearable syncing, and adds a dark mode. Customization is central: the Focus Metric atop the home page can be set to preferred data, and weekly plans can be tweaked via chat. The coach looks at performance on a weekly basis and can draw on historical Fitbit data. A Coach’s Notes section logs everything shared with the assistant and can be deleted at any time.
Data, integrations, and sleep insights
Privacy commitments and broader data sources
Google reiterates data separation commitments from the Fitbit acquisition, with health data stored separately and not used for Google Ads. The company is working to pull more data from third-party apps through Health Connect so activity from services like Strava can count in the Fitbit app. The updated app will also add support for Apple’s HealthKit platform.
Sleep tracking gains new algorithms with more detail on duration and stages. The coach can spot weekly patterns and offer insights to improve sleep quality, and it may add extra sleep time to a schedule based on workout performance to aid recovery.
WIRED reports Google is developing the coach with “leading industry experts” and scientific research, citing a recent Nature paper on a personal health large language model for sleep and fitness coaching, plus a partnership with Stephen Curry and work with the Consumer Health Advisory Panel. Fitbit Premium users can sign up to be notified when the preview goes live.
