A month with Fitbit's new AI-driven health coach and how the reimagined app for 2026 is inching closer to becoming my go-to fitness app

Fitbit is undergoing a major overhaul, and I’ve spent a month with the preview of the newly redesigned app and personal health coach.

The app is very AI-centric, which is to be expected in 2025 when every company under the sun is looking for ways to leverage AI in their services. And while that may not appeal to consumers who are a bit wary of AI, the new app redesign brings the Fitbit app into the modern Android era while making it feel more like a comprehensive fitness guide than the standard version.

At the moment, there still isn’t feature parity with the standard Fitbit app. But what’s new is rather interesting and makes me excited for the full version of the new app, which is expected to roll out sometime in early 2026.

For now, this is what it’s been like to use Fitbit’s new personal health coach preview.

Meet me in the middle

After switching to the new preview for the first time, setting up the new health coach preview was a bit more involved than I expected. After a quick introduction and tapping through some notices regarding data use, I was invited to have a chat with the AI health coach. Where the previous app simply had you input your goals, such as daily steps and sleep, the health coach turns the process into a conversation.

During this process, I talked to it about what I hoped to achieve and what I think works or doesn’t work for me. The coach was about as responsive as I expected from a Gemini-powered AI, and it seemed to be making a genuine effort to get to know me and understand my goals. I told it that I was looking to gain muscle and lose body fat while also hoping to build enough endurance to run my first 5K.

I was then directed to have a separate chat to set up a workout plan, though this is optional. The AI drew on what it knew about me from our previous conversation and came up with a plan to help me achieve it, while keeping certain details in mind, such as my asthma (it suggested lighter runs as a result).

I didn’t like the first suggestion it gave me, since I wanted to incorporate some of what I already do, such as a daily morning run and instructor-led yoga, Pilates, and HIIT on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, respectively. The AI pushed back by essentially telling me I was overdoing it (which, admittedly, I was).

It made a fairly convincing argument that I may be hindering my growth by working too hard and instead tried to compromise with me, allowing me to continue in my instructor-led classes while asking which days I preferred to run.

After a few minutes, a workout plan was generated, which felt roughly in line with what I wanted, with a nice mix of my instructor-led classes, running, and lifting.

Your coach at your fingertips

The redesigned Fitbit app follows Google's Material 3 Expressive design, with vibrant icons and large cards throughout the Today, Fitness, and Sleep sections for accessible, easy-to-understand data.

The top of the Today tab features customizable focus metrics for a glanceable view of your progress and new Weekly cardio load. Scrolling through the Today section reveals cards that provide a quick look at important metrics, such as sleep, readiness, previous activities, and more, each with AI-generated insights.

The new Sleep and Fitness tabs make the data very easy to understand, allowing you to view trends and dive into each metric, such as the improved sleep tracking and targets. The Health tab is where all that data comes together to help you get a more comprehensive view of long-term trends.

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AI insights are found in nearly every part of the app, which may seem overwhelming to some, but I actually find it quite helpful that it's provided to me instead of having to ask for it. And if you have questions about your metrics, tap "Say more about my x" at the bottom of each card to start a conversation with the coach.

It's an approach that reminds me a lot of Oura's AI advisor, which is available throughout the app and ready to talk to you about your stats. Google is clearly flexing its AI chops by leveraging it to help you better understand your body. That said, I do feel like bombarding users with text-filled cards could be off-putting, and it may be beneficial to present them as expandable cards, giving users the option to view the insights if they want.

There's also a floating Ask Coach button that's always accessible within the app, so you can also initiate conversations that way. I do appreciate how the AI feels genuinely helpful and accommodating. For example, I was going out of town for a vacation and knew I wouldn't be able to follow that week's plan, so I told the Coach about it, and it essentially cancelled that week's plan and had me start back up once I got back from vacation.

And if I miss a day, the coach will suggest consolidating workouts to help keep me on track "without overdoing it," showing just how flexible it can be.

But beyond that, you can just talk to the coach if you have general questions about your fitness, like ways to improve your sleep or even building a nutrition plan for yourself. Basically, you can treat it more or less like an actual coach, asking it many of the same questions you would if you had an in-person coach. The coach will also "check in" with somewhat frequent notifications throughout the day.

As someone who can't afford a personal coach, I find a lot of value in this.

Lastly, I should note that your Fitbit data stays within Fitbit, so you can't go into the Gemini app and ask it about your recent workouts. I can see the merit in keeping the data separate, though I would like the option to talk to Gemini about my Fitbit data if I want.

Work in progress

So far, there's a lot to like about the new Fitbit personal health coach preview, from the new design to the insights and conversational AI. But as this is a preview, I've found a handful of things that could (and should) improve when the full experience rolls out to everyone.

There are plenty of features you can get in the standard app experience, which Fitbit has already highlighted. I'm not too bothered by this, as you can easily switch to the standard experience at any time to get those features, then switch back to the preview.

I think what bothers me most right now is how the fitness plan feels more like a suggestion than an actual plan. When I select a session, there's no option to start a workout from the app. Instead, I have to go into my watch and start my own workout manually. From there, I have to manually mark in the app that I've finished each set/session, enter my reps, and input my total weight.

This differs from Garmin, where I can set up a plan, access it on the watch, and follow each exercise from my wrist, which can also save my reps and weight without me needing to touch my phone.

There's just too much manual input, including having to link my tracked workout to the scheduled one. Fortunately, I can still send some recommended runs to my Pixel Watch 3, which is much more helpful for monitoring my run and staying within the suggested time/heart rate zone.

There are auto-tracked workouts available, and the Fitbit app will confirm the activity on the watch or phone app, which is useful.

That said, the way fitness tracking works in the Fitbit app highlights a broader disconnect with the Pixel Watch that I hope Fitbit can address with an update to the Wear OS app. For instance, when I get my Morning Brief, it would make sense to show my suggested workout for that day, but it just shows me how many days I've worked out.

Part of this likely has to do with how Pixel Watches track workouts, which are not as granular as those on a Garmin watch, for example. On Garmin, reps are automatically counted, sets automatically start and stop, and the watch can fairly accurately determine which exercises you're doing just by how you're moving. For now, the Pixel Watch cannot do any of this.

An exciting evolution

Despite its shortcomings, I think Google is on the right track with this new Fitbit experience. It looks fantastic, feels more organized, and does a great job of showcasing just how far its AI has come as a tool we can take advantage of. Even with its missing features, the preview feels quite solid, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves, hopefully into the fitness app of my dreams.