Google Health 5.0 is rolling out with its best feature up front and its worst problems buried

Google Health 5.0 is rolling out now as a mandatory update for the Fitbit app users, and the timing is deliberate. 

The new Fitbit Air, Google’s most direct competitor to the Whoop fitness tracking band, launches next week, and, if you haven’t already guessed it, Health 5.0 is required to set it up. 

What is the new Google Health widget?

Until now, the Fitbit home screen widget was a single, circular steps counter. The new Quick Access widget replaces it with something that could prove more useful. At its largest, the widget expands to a 5×3 grid, letting you check up to six fitness metrics at the same time. 

You can set the grid to showcase the most important stats: steps, distance, sleep, hydration, weight, readiness, or whichever stats you’ve configured. At its smallest, the widget collapses to show just one stat. 

To access full stats, you can simply tap on a tile. Then there’s a heart icon in the top-left that opens Google Health, a refresh button on the right, and the last update time sits in the centre, so you always know how fresh or stale the data is. 

The Quick Access widget mirrors exactly what you’ve set in the Today tab, which means the widget and the app stay in sync. 

What the update doesn’t tell you

According to Lifehacker’s hands-on review, the Gemini-powered Health Coach, the feature Google is promoting aggressively, has a hallucination problem.

While the Health Coach congratulated a tester for achieving a sleep score of 99, the actual score was 85. The coach also referenced irrelevant Reddit threads as sources, at least one of which had an answer copied from ChatGPT. 

Beyond the AI hallucination issues, several popular Fitbit features aren’t a part of the update, including sleep animals, the Community Feed, Groups, direct messaging between users, food plans with calorie targets, and stress-check graphs.

Finally, features that were available for free during the Public Preview, including chat with the Health Coach and personalized fitness plans now require a Google Health Premium membership, which costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. 

The Google Health 5.0 rollout began May 19 and should reach full availability by May 26, 2026.