TL;DRGoogle is adding native step tracking to Health Connect, changing its function from just a data hub for other apps.This marks a significant shift, as Health Connect will now be able to collect its own data directly from the phone’s sensors.This could be the first step in turning Health Connect into a comprehensive health platform, though the feature isn’t fully working yet.If you want to improve your health, there’s no shortage of services you can use to track your health, fitness, and wellness metrics. Some options are better than others at tracking certain metrics, so many people mix and match to find the best solution. To simplify this for users, Google created Health Connect in 2022 to serve as a central hub for all this data. Currently, the service only facilitates data sharing between different health and fitness apps and doesn’t track any data on its own. That’s set to change, though, as Google is working on adding native step tracking support to Health Connect. Authority Insights You're reading an Authority Insights story. Subscribe to our new Authority Insights newsletter for more exclusive reports, app teardowns, leaks, and in-depth tech coverage you won't find anywhere else.sign up now By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Health Connect is both an app and a framework for storing health data. Using the framework, apps can write data like steps, heart rate, and sleep to Health Connect, which stores that data in a secure, on-device database. Other apps can then use the same framework to read that data from Health Connect, either to add it to their own database or to perform analysis on it. Through the Health Connect app, users can manage which apps have permission to read or write this data.