Your Fitbit data can now connect directly to Apple Health

A Two-Way Street Finally Opens

For years, the data pipeline between Fitbit and Apple Health was a frustrating one-way street. Users could pull information from Apple Health into Google Health, but the reverse direction required third-party bridges like Power Sync for Fitbit or Fitbit to Apple Health Sync. Google Health's 5.05 update, as first reported by 9to5Mac, finally flips that script. A new "Partner apps" menu lets users tap Apple Health and link their data directly, syncing workouts, steps, and vitals without a middleman. It is a small menu change in practice, but it ends a workaround era that had become a minor cottage industry on the App Store.

The move also reframes how Google positions the Fitbit ecosystem under the rebranded Google Health app. Rather than treating Apple Health as a competitor to be walled off, Google is treating it as a destination, which is a notable concession for a company that has spent the last decade trying to keep users inside its own services. For a fitness-wearables user with an iPhone and a Fitbit, the daily friction of choosing which dashboard to trust is now meaningfully reduced.

Smart Health Links Pushes Deeper Into Medical Records

The same update quietly expands a second capability: Smart Health Links. Rolling out to US users, the feature lets people generate a shareable URL or QR code for specific medical records stored in Google Health. According to the report, the shareable link lives under the Health tab's "Medical" section, where users pick exactly which records to include before sending them to a provider or family member. It is a controlled, opt-in model that avoids the spreadsheet-of-everything horror stories that have dogged earlier attempts at consumer medical-record portability.

This matters because the friction in sharing health data is not just technical, it is procedural. A feature like Smart Health Links assumes the user knows what they want to share and with whom, which is a much more realistic model than asking patients to hand over their entire chart. It also positions Google Health as a hub for the kind of pre-visit paperwork and caregiver coordination that today happens over fax machines, patient portals, and paper printouts.

Smoothing Over a Rocky Relaunch

It is worth remembering that the Google Health app itself only replaced the standalone Fitbit app in May, and that transition did not go smoothly. The Verge's earlier coverage noted complaints about the AI health coach, the user interface, and a general sense that longtime Fitbit users felt their familiar app had been swallowed. Google has reportedly addressed some of these complaints, and this update reads as part of that repair work, a concrete concession to people who had been holding out for the kind of cross-platform integration that Fitbit once promised.

The bigger strategic question is whether the new Google Health app can keep pace with what Apple Health offers on iOS. Apple has spent years building a dense ecosystem of partner integrations and clinician-facing tools around Health, and the more Google leans into interoperability, the more it has to compete on features, not lock-in. For now, a one-line toggle in a settings menu is a low-cost, high-goodwill move, and it is exactly the kind of thing users notice.