Fitbit Data Can Finally Write to Apple Health, Twelve Years Late

If you wear a Fitbit and carry an iPhone, you've spent the last twelve years running a small, annoying errand. Your steps and sleep lived in one app. Everything else your phone tracked lived in Apple Health. Getting them into the same place meant paying for a third-party bridge and hoping it didn't break. That errand is finally over.

Google Health version 5.05 landed on iOS this week, and buried in the release notes is the thing people have been asking for since 2014: you can now share your exercise records, sleep, vitals, steps, and more from Google Health into Apple Health. It works for Fitbit trackers and the Pixel Watch, since Google Health replaced the old Fitbit app back in May.

Why this took so long

Apple launched HealthKit alongside iOS 8 in September 2014 and invited the major fitness platforms to plug in. Most did. Fitbit said it had no plans to. That decision calcified into a wall, and it survived Google buying Fitbit, survived the Fitbit app becoming Google Health, and survived every complaint thread on the subject.

Google Health did eventually get a one-way connection: it could read from Apple Health, pulling in Apple Watch data and anything else HealthKit-connected apps had recorded. It just couldn't write back. So iPhone owners could feed Google, but Google wouldn't feed Apple. This update adds the missing direction.

How to turn it on

Update Google Health to 5.05 from the App Store (it needs iOS 16.4 or later). Open the app, tap your profile icon, choose Partner apps, then Apple Health, and follow the prompts. If you've connected before, tap Review permissions to grant the new write access. Some people report the new permissions don't appear until the app has fully updated and been restarted, so if it still looks one-way, force quit it and try again.

Once it's on, your Fitbit data becomes available to every other HealthKit-compatible app on your phone, subject to the permissions you granted. That's the part that actually matters. It isn't just about seeing your steps in a different app. It's about your training app, your sleep app, and your doctor's portal all finally reading from the same pile.

The honest ledger

Not everything crosses over. Early users report heart rate variability isn't included in the sync, which is a real gap if HRV is the number you actually watch for recovery. Google hasn't published a full list of supported categories, so exactly what makes it through may depend on your device and your permissions.

There's also a privacy asymmetry worth understanding before you flip every switch. Fitbit data you write into Apple Health picks up Apple's on-device protections. Apple Health data that Google Health reads goes into Google's cloud infrastructure. Same feature, two very different data journeys, and only you can decide whether that trade is fine.

Version 5.05 also adds Smart Health Links, which turn your stored medical records into a shareable link or QR code for a doctor or family member.

Twelve years is a long time to make people buy a workaround. The fix is welcome anyway, and if you've been keeping a Fitbit in a drawer because it wouldn't talk to your phone, this is a decent reason to charge it back up.