Android offers a wealth of health and fitness apps to assist with counting calories, tracking workouts, or collecting vital signs – but managing multiple services can be confusing due to each having its own UI, privacy control settings, and way of presenting data. Health Connect by Android was introduced at Google I/O alongside Samsung in order to address this problem by acting as a hub where data from multiple fitness and health apps comes together – this app is currently in open beta on Play Store devices preloaded with Pixel phones; plans call for its inclusion into Project Mainline modules with Android 14 stable release!
At its core, Health Connect provides fitness and health apps with a standardized SDK to understand each other’s data more easily. This eliminates the need for developers to create separate API connections with every app – which can be both expensive and labor intensive for them – as well as allow users to track which apps are accessing data at any given time. It should also be noted that any information contributed through Health Connect does not get shared with any external platforms; rather it stays on device storage which only can be accessed by its owner.
If you want a list of which apps are accessing your data, head to the Settings app and Health Connect. From here, you can check permissions for each category of data — like sleep and exercise — or delete specific categories completely. Furthermore, Health Connect shows how long data has been in its history.
Integration with Health Connect for developers is simple – all that is required is adding a manifest entry with all necessary fields:
Google offers an online simulator to test Health Connect integration within an application, using Pixel or Nexus phones running Android 9 with the latest stable emulator version and the most up-to-date SDK (version 28). To use it effectively, however, requires specific hardware. To make use of it for Health Connect testing purposes you will require one Pixel phone or Nexus running Android 9 running the latest stable version of emulator and SDK (Version 28).
Health Connect is now available as an open beta on the Play Store, and will come preloaded onto all Pixel devices beginning with their 2023 launch. Android 14 will include Project Mainline components like Pixel Connect. As part of this effort, Pixel Connect may become preinstalled on non-Pixel devices as well, though first passing Play Store beta status in order to become system app status. You can see more documentation at its project’s site. Developers interested in Health Connect may want to read up on how to integrate their apps with it and get going immediately, while for more information on its privacy policies visit its FAQ page or go directly to its full app, which should be available later this fall. Furthermore, all supported data types can be found within its official documentation.
