Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A Fitbit Air user has built an open-source, free app that provides features reserved for the $10/month Google Health Premium subscription.
- Coincidentally, another developer is building a similar product with the same name.
- Google Health Premium is currently available at no cost to subscribers of the Google AI Pro and AI Ultra plans.
Google launched the Fitbit Air around a month ago, and it’s among the top screenless fitness wearables you can get right now, alongside Whoop. Users can sign up for an optional $10/month Google Health Premium subscription to gain additional health insights on the Fitbit Air. But what if you want some of these bells and whistles for free?
Italy-based developer Flavio Adamo has built an open-source desktop app called OpenFit that does pretty much everything the Google Health Premium subscription does, but at no cost. For the uninitiated, Google’s monthly subscription provides deep analysis of your health data, with tools like Health Coach and other features.
Even with OpenFit installed, Google Health will still play a role, as it records the user’s health data. This is then transferred to the desktop app, which displays an extensive dashboard containing all collected stats. Adamo’s demo shows how ChatGPT Codex helps make sense of all the information sent over to OpenFit
As we pointed out in our review of the Fitbit Air, it’s not a wearable that mandates a subscription, unlike Whoop, meaning it can work and function straight out of the box. Still, for people who don’t want to spend on another subscription for extra insights, this open-source solution is worth checking out.
Coincidentally, Francesco Oddo, another developer from Italy, has also demoed an open-source app with the same name. Both have since acknowledged each other’s products and also hinted at building something together, which can only mean good news for the community.
These ideas are not new to the fitness wearables industry, as we’ve seen open-source apps for Whoop and the Oura Ring make the news before. It will be interesting to see whether Google will make it difficult for people to capture and use data from Google Health in the wake of this development.
If you’ve recently bought a Fitbit Air, you may be eligible for a three-month free trial of Google Health Premium. The subscription is also available at no cost to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, so there’s a chance you may not even need to pay the $10/ month fee.
But for everyone else, it’s worth keeping OpenFit in mind, even if the Fitbit Air does a pretty decent job of providing health insights without the subscription.
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