Google Fit updated with new home screen widget, Android Wear watch face

Google cares about your health and wants to help you stay in shape, which is why the company today released a set of updates and new features for the Google Fit platform across Android smartphones and Wear watches that make it easier to track your daily progress and fitness goals…

First off, Google Fit can now estimate distance traveled and calories burned based on new inputs to your profile including your gender, height, and weight information. The app will then let you know how far you’ve traveled and how many calories you’ve burned throughout your day.

To go along with this new addition, the app now presents more detailed and organized fitness history. The app’s fitness timeline can group activities  — distance traveled, calories burned, etc — by days, weeks, and months to give you an idea of how your daily activities are impacting your overall fitness.

Lastly, the company is releasing a new Google Fit widget for smartphones and a watch face for Android Wear, which will mean you won’t even have to open the Google Fit app to see whether you’ve physically exerted yourself enough throughout the day, or if you need to go for a walk to get some steps in.

Something we noticed pretty quickly upon seeing the new widget and watch face are that they have an uncanny resemblance to the Activity app for Apple Watch. Nonetheless, these are solid updates to the Google Fit platform and it’s hard to knock someone for using an admittedly good software UI implementation. Regardless of whether or not it looks like copying, standard UI across platforms serves to benefit all parties.