Android's Health Connect: A Central Hub for Your Well-being

Android is full of apps that help you keep track of your fitness, which gives you a lot of ways to get healthier. But handling all the info these apps gather can be a pain. That's why Google made Health Connect - it's like one safe spot to keep all your health and fitness data. It also makes it easier for apps to share info, so the people who make these apps don't have to create their own ways to move data around.

When Health Connect started back in 2022, it could handle a bit more than 40 types of data in six areas. However, with Android 16, Google made it better by adding support for yoga and meditation, as well as things like allergies, vaccines, and lab results. And just recently, the Android 16 QPR2 update brought the ability to track your steps right into Health Connect.

Google is serious about making Health Connect more helpful and giving Apple's Health app a run for its money. For example, they're working on some new stuff for it.

I've seen that Google is changing the main settings page of Health Connect to highlight the health apps you've connected. Also, instead of showing the apps that have recently used your data, Health Connect will now list all the apps you've linked up right at the top.

The "App permissions" menu is gone, but you can still get to it through the "See more health apps" button. If you want to see what data has been accessed recently, there's a new "Recent access" option under the "Your health data" section. The "Browse health records" page is also gone, but you can still find your records in the "Data and access" page. It seems like Google is trying to make things a bit easier to find and use.

The "App access" screen has been updated too. Now, different types of data are grouped into categories. So, instead of changing permissions for each thing one by one, you can quickly allow or block access to whole groups of data. I think it's more organized and easier to navigate because you don't see all the specific data types until you tap the dropdown arrow to expand the category.

It seems like Health Connect will soon be able to keep track of things like abdominal pain, back pain, and even insomnia. Because it now supports medical records too, it seems Google wants Health Connect to be the place where you can see all your health info, from how much you exercise to your doctor's appointments and any symptoms you might have.

But here's the catch: Health Connect doesn't actually track most of this data itself. It needs the apps you use for health, fitness, and medical stuff to share the info. The good news is that because Health Connect is modular, Google can add these features quickly through Play System Updates. However, we don't know when Google plans to release them, so it might be a while before they're available.