Google Fit is an app in managed decline, and anyone installing it today should know that first. Google has said its long-term fitness home is the Fitbit app, the developer APIs behind Fit have been deprecated in favour of Android's Health Connect, and new feature work has visibly slowed. The app still functions, still syncs steps from your phone and compatible watches, and still costs nothing.
What it does, it does simply. Fit counts steps and estimates Heart Points, a metric developed with the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association that rewards activity intense enough to raise your pulse rather than raw step totals. There are no subscriptions, no ads inside the app, and no locked screens. For a casual user who wants a free pedometer with sensible goals, it remains serviceable — just not something to build years of fitness history on.
Passive step counting
Install it, grant activity permission, and your phone's sensors do the rest. No wearable is required, and the home screen's two rings — steps and Heart Points — give a readable daily summary without any manual logging.
A hub for other fitness apps
Fit historically served as the place where running, cycling, and gym apps deposited their workouts. That role is passing to Health Connect, but many established apps still write to Fit, so existing setups keep working for now.
Gentle goals for inactive users
The Heart Points model was designed around public-health activity guidelines, so hitting the default weekly target roughly corresponds to recommended exercise minimums. For someone starting from sedentary, that framing is more encouraging than a 10,000-step cliff.
Heart Points
Rather than counting steps alone, Fit awards points for minutes of moderate activity and doubles them for vigorous effort. It is the app's best idea: a brisk ten-minute walk registers as progress even on a low-step day.
Phone-only tracking
Steps, distance, and rough calorie estimates come from the phone's own sensors, so the app is useful with no hardware purchase. Accuracy is adequate for trends, less so for precise distances.
Workout logging and journal
You can start tracked sessions for dozens of activity types or add past workouts manually. The journal view lines up workouts, sleep (from connected apps), and daily metrics in one scrollable history.
Wear OS integration
On compatible watches, Fit provides on-wrist goal rings and workout tracking that sync back to the phone. Newer Google watches, however, centre the Fitbit app instead, which tells you where investment is going.
