What’s Best (and Worst) About the New Fitbit App Preview

I’m using the updated Fitbit app, which is currently in “public preview” for adult Android users in the US. While I like its simplified design, its functionality seems to be centered around questionable artificial intelligence, which has been giving me so many incorrect and confusing answers . Let me tell you what the new app has improved, what it lacks, and what it still needs.

Better: Cardio load and key metrics are easy to read

The top metrics on the main screen have always been customizable, but I think the new version is even easier to read than the old one. Three “target metrics” are displayed on the right, along with a large circle showing your progress toward your cardio goal .

Measuring your cardio load as you reach your weekly goal is a welcome change . Previously, cardio load was measured daily and was often inaccurate. However, the new view has a drawback: in the old version of the app, recommendations could be disabled or hidden. In this version, I couldn’t find a way to remove this metric from the top of the screen.

Better: Separate tabs for fitness, sleep, and health

Finding specific data in the old Fitbit app always meant scrolling through a long list of things, the size of a CVS receipt, that you weren’t looking for. Items were usually grouped, which helped a little, but ultimately, some things needed more space than the small card they were on. Recent workouts were impossible to find without guessing which tile to tap—it turned out to be “Training Days” ( not “Cardio Workout” or “Minutes in Activity Zone”).

But now, just tap the “Fitness” icon at the bottom, and you’re all set! It displays my workout days and weekly cardio, then a list of upcoming workouts, and then my most recent workouts. I can manually log my activity right from this screen. Perfect. (The button doesn’t seem to work right now, but it’s a beta. I appreciate the idea .)

The same goes for the Sleep tab. Right at the top, there’s a trend analysis (“Your steps are linked to improved sleep quality”), followed by a sleep phase graph and a list of “key metrics,” such as when I went to bed and how long I was awake in bed.

The “Health” tab displays my key metrics, such as my resting heart rate and heart rate variability. Scrolling down, I can set up alerts, update my profile, and view the “coach notes” the AI ​​has recorded about me. For example, I see “I want low-rep, heavy weight training” and “I hate lunges.”

Worse yet: a bunch of glitches

I know this is a beta, but it seems like everything is very rough around the edges. My workout from two days ago is marked as “upcoming,” and the app crashes when I try to mark it as complete. In the old Fitbit app, high and low heart rate notifications are “enabled and can be checked,” but in the new app, I’m told they still need to be configured.

Some AI dialogues don’t load at all. When this happens, the bot often reports that it doesn’t have access to the information I’m asking for, or that “internally” it sees something different than what I see on the app’s main screens. The team has a lot of work to do before these features are widely available.

Worse yet, structured data representations are being replaced by AI-powered dialogues.

People invented graphs, charts, and other ways to present data because they’re easy to scan and interpret at a glance. Fitbit’s new app can generate charts (great!), but it typically presents them as small cards illustrating the AI ​​bot’s findings.

It would seem that to see more data, I could click on a button or card for a recent run to see lap times, running dynamics, and other information. But that doesn’t seem to be possible. Instead, I see a “Continue Conversation” button, which seems to send a screenshot of the AI ​​output back to the AI ​​bot.

I’ve already written about some of the problems I encountered when interacting with the AI ​​bot, so I won’t rehash them here. (It experiences hallucinations that are sometimes funny and often irritating.) But even if the AI ​​were as intelligent as it’s claimed to be, this would still be a serious problem. The AI’s responses are slow, and I can’t always get the bot to give direct answers to my questions.

In short, it seems the app’s developers were saying, “We’ll let the AI ​​handle this,” whenever they weren’t sure how to implement a particular feature. This makes the app feel like a simple wrapper for a bot, and the bot is completely inadequate for all these tasks.

Missing: nutrition, menstrual health and more.

Google states that not all Fitbit app features have been carried over to the new preview. When I inquired about these limitations via email, they replied, “The preview version of the service isn’t yet fully functional and is missing several features to focus on testing the basic AI workout experience.”

A full list of missing features is available in this Fitbit forum post . These include:

• Nutrition tracking

• Hydration tracking

• Menstrual health

• Community Opportunities

• Badges

• Share on social media

• Heart rate zone analysis for training

• Launching analytics for Pixel Watch 3 and 4 users (other devices don’t provide this data)

• Syncing data with the Aria Air smart scale

The report also notes that the AI ​​coach currently considers certain topics off-limits, including those related to weight, body fat percentage, distance traveled, and heart health indicators such as ECG and irregular rhythm notifications.

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