I write about fitness, health and wearable tech
You can now ask Google Assistant to reel off stats from your Fitbit account, and your Google Fit profile, as spotted by 9to5Google.
This is one of the few signs of Google-Fitbit integration seen since Fitbit was acquired by Google in January 2021.
It lets you ask Google Assistant from your phone, or a Nest smart speaker, for your resting heart rate or the number of steps you took, say, last week or yesterday.
To get this to work, head into the Settings menu on your Google account, select Google Assistant, then Wellness and finally Activity. In the next window you should see options to connect Assistant to Google Fit or Fitbit accounts.
Only one of these can be selected at a time, but this gives Fitbit a clear advantage over rivals like Garmin for those with Nest-equipped houses.
This feature began rolling-out last week but now appears to be widely available.
It is a reminder, though, that the wider integration of Fitbit and Google is proving slower to develop than some predicted.
Fitbit is yet to release a watch with Google’s WearOS software, leaving Samsung to claim the spotlight with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. Fitbit CEO James Park has confirmed the company’s intention to release such a watch, as far back as a year ago, but the next high-profile WearOS watch on the cards is Google’s own Pixel Watch rather than a follow-up to the Fitbit Versa 3 or Fitbit Sense.
The Fitbit Charge 5 is the most important Fitbit tracker released since the acquisition. It arrived in September 2021, and largely continued in a familiar trajectory by bringing some Fitbit Sense features to a smaller band.