{"id":267509,"date":"2025-11-02T20:17:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T20:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/267509\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T20:17:40","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T20:17:40","slug":"whats-better-and-worse-in-fitbits-new-app-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/267509\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Better (and Worse) in Fitbit’s New App Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been using Fitbit\u2019s revamped app, currently in \u201cpublic preview\u201d mode for adult Android users in the United States. While I like the simplified aesthetic, its functionality seems to center around the questionable AI that gave me so many wrong and confusing answers<\/a>. Let me take you on a tour of where the new app has improved, where it\u2019s falling short, and what\u2019s still missing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Better: cardio load and key metrics are easy to read<\/p>\n

The top few metrics on the home screen have always been configurable, but I find the new version is even more readable than the old one. You get three \u201cfocus metrics\u201d on the right hand side, and a big donut shape giving your progress toward your cardio load<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Fitbit's<\/p>\n

\n Fitbit’s current app is on the left; the updated preview version is on the right.
\n Credit: Beth Skwarecki\/Fitbit\n <\/p>\n

Measuring cardio load as progress toward a weekly goal is a welcome change<\/a>; previously, cardio load was a daily measure that often didn\u2019t correspond to reality. There\u2019s a downside to the new view, though: in the old version of the app, you could turn off the recommendations or hide them. In this version, there\u2019s no way I could find to remove that metric from the top of your screen.<\/p>\n

Better: separate tabs for fitness, sleep, and health<\/p>\n

\"Screenshots<\/p>\n

\n What you see on the Fitness, Sleep, and Health tabs.
\n Credit: Beth Skwarecki\/Fitbit\n <\/p>\n

Finding any specific data in the old Fitbit app always meant scrolling through a CVS receipt-length list of things you weren\u2019t looking for. Items tended to be grouped, which helped a little, but ultimately some things need more space than the little card they were stuffed into. You couldn\u2019t find your recent workouts without guessing on which tile to tap\u2014turns out it\u2019s Exercise Days (but not Cardio Load or Active Zone Minutes).<\/p>\n

But now, you just tap on the Fitness icon at the bottom, and there everything is! My exercise days and weekly cardio are there, then a listing of upcoming workouts, and then my recent activities. I can log a manual activity right from this screen. Perfect. (The button doesn\u2019t seem to be working right now, but hey, it\u2019s a beta. I can appreciate the idea.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Same goes for the Sleep tab. Right up top there\u2019s a trend insight (\u201cYour steps linked [sic] to better sleep quality\u201d) and then I get my graph of sleep stages, and a list of \u201ckey metrics\u201d like when I went to bed and how much time in bed was spent awake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Health tab gives my vitals, like my resting heart rate and HRV. If I scroll down, I can set up alerts, update my profile, and the \u201ccoach notes\u201d that the AI has written down about me. For example, I see \u201cwants low reps and heavy weights\u201d and \u201chates lunges.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Worse: glitches galore<\/p>\n

I know it\u2019s a beta, but things seem really rough. My workout from two days ago is listed as \u201cupcoming,\u201d and the app crashes when I try to mark it as completed. The old Fitbit app says that my high and low heart rate notifications are \u201con & checking\u201d but the new app says I still need to set them up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the AI conversations fail to load at all. When they do, often the bot tells me it doesn\u2019t have access to the information I\u2019m asking about, or it says that \u201cinternally\u201d it sees something different than what I\u2019m seeing in the main screens of the app. The team has a lot to fix before these features are ready for widespread use.<\/p>\n

Worse: structured data views are replaced with AI conversations<\/p>\n

Humans invented graphs, charts, and other means of data presentation because these are easy to scan and interpret at a glance. The new Fitbit app can generate some charts (great!) but tends to present these as little cards to illustrate insights from the AI bot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do you think so far?<\/p>\n

To see more data, you\u2019d think you could tap on a button or card about a recent run to get your lap times, running dynamics, and other information. But that doesn\u2019t seem to be an option. Instead, I get a \u201ccontinue conversation\u201d button that seems to want to feed a screenshot of the AI output back into the AI bot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already written about some of the problems I\u2019ve had<\/a> conversing with the AI bot, so I won\u2019t rehash those issues here. (It hallucinates in ways that are sometimes hilarious and often frustrating.) But even if the AI was as intelligent as it\u2019s supposed to be, this would still be a major issue. The AI responses are slow, and I can\u2019t always get the bot to give a straight answer to my questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In short, it seems like the app\u2019s designers said \u201cwe\u2019ll have the AI handle it\u201d anytime they weren\u2019t sure how to build a feature. So the app feels like a mere wrapper around the bot, and the bot is just not the right tool for all those jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Missing: nutrition, menstrual health, and more<\/p>\n

Google says that it hasn\u2019t ported all the Fitbit app\u2019s features to the new preview. When I asked about these limitations by email, the response I got was that \u201cAs a preview, the service is not yet feature-complete and lacks several functionalities to focus testing on the core AI coaching experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A full list of missing features is available from this Fitbit forum post<\/a>. They include:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nutrition tracking<\/p>\n

Hydration tracking<\/p>\n

Menstrual health<\/p>\n

Community features<\/p>\n

Badges<\/p>\n

Social media sharing<\/p>\n

Heart rate zone analysis for workouts<\/p>\n

Running analytics for Pixel Watch 3 and 4 users (other devices don\u2019t provide this data)<\/p>\n

Syncing data from Aria Air smart scales<\/p>\n

The post also notes that the AI coach treats certain subjects as off-limits for the moment, including those related to weight, body fat, running distance, and heart health measurements like ECG and irregular rhythm notifications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been using Fitbit\u2019s revamped app, currently in \u201cpublic preview\u201d mode for adult Android users in the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[337,97],"class_list":{"0":"post-267509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}