How to Use Google Health Connect

Almost every major health and fitness category is covered, including activity, sleep, nutrition, body measurements, and key stats like blood pressure and heart rate. Users are given full control over which categories of data are and are not pooled, and everything is stored locally on their devices (rather than in the cloud) and encrypted for added security.

Use of Google Health Connect

Install the Beta Health Connect app on your Android phone, open it and you can decide which of your fitness and wellness apps can connect to it. Not an app in the traditional sense, Health Connect doesn’t appear in the Android app drawer: you can open it from the Play Store page applications in Settings or in the Quick Settings pane.

On the Health Connect main screen, you can see the apps that have recently used the service. Beat App Permissions to select which apps can and cannot use Health Connect – the content of the displayed list depends on the apps installed on your phone. If you want an app to provide some data (e.g. steps) but no other data (e.g. heart rate), you can configure that here too.

A list of all apps that currently work with Health Connect can be found here. At the time of writing, the list includes MyFitnessPal, Peloton, Oura (maker of the Oura Smart Ring), and WeightWatchers, as well as the aforementioned Google Fit, Samsung Health, and Fitbit. It’s not the most comprehensive list, but Health Connect is still in its early stages and the service is still in beta. There are also some apps, like Sleep for Android, that have added Health Connect support but aren’t on the official list.

From the Health Connect main screen, select data and access to manage your data. You will see the categories for which data is being collected and there is an option to delete collected data or delete it automatically on a schedule (e.g. if it is more than six months old). Dive into a specific category to clear specific batches of data; You can also review which apps have access to this category and select an app to treat as a priority when multiple apps are recording a type of data (e.g. steps) at the same time.

As we’ve said before, you can’t actually see your data in Health Connect – it just connects the dots. However, once you’ve set up your fitness feeds as needed, you should be able to open up your favorite apps (like Google Fit or Fitbit) and see everything in one place. Keep track of which apps can read and write what types of data (from App Permissions) to make sure there is one app that everything is going into.