Tag Archives: Google Fit

How Google can help keep your resolutions going through 2019

Get active. Get some extra sleep. Find inner peace. They’re excellent New Year’s resolutions, and they’re also achievable with help from Google. More than 325,000 people with fitness goals for 2019 joined the #GetFitWithGoogle challenge during January to earn as many Heart Points as they could with Google Fit.

After looking at the statistics, Google Fit challengers were a seriously impressive bunch.

Get Fit With Google infographic

In Russia, people went cross-country skiing. In India, people loved their badminton. Brits hit up rowing machines while Americans got into weightlifting. Edinburgh, London and Kawasaki took top prizes for the most active cities around the world—while in the U.S. New York, Boston, and Washington braved the cold and topped the charts.

About four in ten of the people who joined the challenge earned at least 150 Heart Points on average per week and met American Heart Association’s weekly physical activity recommendations.  And seven percent of people achieved all the milestones, earning more than 1500 Heart Points during the New Year Challenge.

Just because the #GetFitWithGoogle challenge is over doesn’t mean the fun needs to stop. Google is still here to help you stick to stay fit, sleep better, practice digital wellbeing and live mindfully throughout all of 2019. Here are a few final tools and tricks to make sure your resolutions last all year long.

1. Set reminders in Google Calendar.

Reminders in Google Calendar

Keep up with the goals you set in early January by creating recurring weekly reminders in your Google Calendar. Reminders don’t go away until you actually do the activity, which can be a helpful self-imposed guilt-trip to push you out the door for that weekly run you promised yourself you’d do.

2. Embrace the selfie. 

Whether you’re looking to eat healthier or get more active, actually seeing your progress is a great way to keep focused on your resolution. Take weekly selfies and keep them in a Google Photos album, so you can scroll down memory lane when you need a pick-me-up. If you’re feeling proud about your progress or just enjoy compliment-fishing, share them with a friend so they can help keep you motivated, too.

3. Set up routines to turn your aspirations into habits.

Routines on Google Assistant

Do you find it hard to get out of bed in the morning? Or perhaps it takes you ages to unwind after work? Routines with Google Assistant help build healthy habits by doing multiple things for you with a single voice command. You can personalize them to suit your lifestyle and they’re a great way to set the mood for setting aside “me time.”

4. See how you stacked up with the 2019 #GetFitWithGoogle challenge.

For the last four weeks, six teams of influencers from around the world have been competing against each other to earn the most Heart Points during January.

After overtaking Switzerland in Week 2, Colombia just managed to hold on and take out the inaugural #GetFitWithGoogle challenge with a collective total of 17,465 Heart Points. Switzerland had a strong final week, finishing just 530 points being Colombia in second place—the equivalent of just 15 minutes more exercise per team member per week.

Get Fit With Google leaderboard

Team Belgium had a strong last few weeks to take out third place ahead of the U.S. in fourth.

Check out the top five individual influencers' performances from around the world. Congrats to Melissa Peláez for absolutely killing it, with 6602 Heart Points during January.

Get Fit With Google winners

We hope you all enjoyed taking part in the #GetFitWithGoogle Challenge. And hey, if you lose your way a bit here and there during 2019, worry not. We’ll be right here cheering you along next January, too.

Want to get fit in 2019? Here’s how Google can help

It's been more than a week since we entered 2019. And for most of us, that means we're still working on our New Year's resolutions—or forgot what they were in the first place.

Every January, our searches for resolutions spike around the world. We proclaim our best intentions for the new year, but it’s tough to keep promises to ourselves. By the end of the year, most of us are 20 percent less interested in picking up the weights, 30 percent more likely to hit snooze on getting proper sleep and 50% less interested in sticking to a diet.

We all feel it. The struggle is real. Let’s make 2019 different.

Google is here to give your resolutions a boost, with tools and tricks that will help you form good habits to get fit, sleep better, practice digital well-being and live mindfully. Let’s start with some of the most popular resolutions every year: getting fit and eating better.

1. Set your goals in Google Calendar.

Goals in Google Calendar

First up, set some realistic goals for yourself and make yourself accountable by blocking time in your calendar. Goals in Google Calendar automatically finds time in your busy schedule to go for a run, or prep some healthy meals for the week. If an important clash comes up, no worries: Google Calendar will suggest a better time for you.

2. Track your workouts and earn points with Google Fit.

From swimming to gym workouts, Google Fit works with many of your favorite apps and health devices to give you credit for all your moves. Use Google Fit on your Android phone to earn Heart Points and track how your progressing towards meeting your goals.

3. Blaze new trails on your bike with Google Maps.

Bike lanes and trails in Google Maps

Check out the bike paths in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

For the two-wheel enthusiasts out there, you can find biking routes near you by turning on the cycling layer in Google Maps. Dark green lines on the map show dedicated bike trails and paths without cars, green lines show streets with dedicated bike lanes, and dashed green lines show other streets recommended for cycling.

4. Stick to your diet goals with Google and YouTube.

If your resolution is to count calories as part of your diet, Google makes it easy. If you’re in the mood for French fries at lunch, just search “how many calories in French fries” and you’ll get your answer — 312 calories, plus 23 percent of your daily recommended daily intake of fat. You can also turn to YouTube to learn how to make healthy recipes. Thanks to YouTube creators like Veggie Recipe House, The Serious Fitness, and Health Nut Nutrition, you can create nutritious and delicious dishes all year long.

5. Follow along with the #GetFitWithGoogle challenge.

To get you motivated, we’ve invited people from around the globe to show us how it’s done in the #GetFitWithGoogle global challenge. From January 1-28, teams of four influencers per country are competing against each other to earn as many Heart Points as possible during the month with Google Fit.

Here’s the global leaderboard after Week 1.

KEYWORD WEEK 1 RESULTS.png

Get to know the teams!

  • KEYWORD WEEK 1 SWITZERLAND.png
  • KEYWORD WEEK 1 COLOMBIA.png
  • KEYWORD WEEK 1 USA.png
  • KEYWORD WEEK 1 BELGIUM.png
  • KEYWORD WEEK 1 ITALY.png
  • KEYWORD WEEK 1 INDIA.png

Follow their progress with the #GetFitWithGoogle hashtag on Instagram, and see who’s taking part in the challenge around the world. Don’t forget to share your fitness progress using the hashtag and let others know how you #GetFitWithGoogle, too.

Kick-start your New Year’s resolutions with Google Fit

January is fast approaching—and that means it’s almost time for New Year's resolutions, even though most people seem to abandon them about a week into the new year. But if 2019 is the year you want to stick to your goals, you may want to get a head start. In fact, our New Year's resolution is to make it easier for you to get healthy, and have fun doing it. Here's how you can put health and wellness first in 2019, with a little help from Google.

Step 1: Get in the game.

Go to the Google Fit app to join a 30-day challenge designed to kick-start your journey to a healthier, more active life. The challenge begins on January 1, but you can sign up starting today (running shoes optional). You’ll earn Heart Points from activities that you log or actively track with Google Fit. Better yet, Google Fit will automatically detect and log walks, runs or bike rides for you. Your goal is to get as many points as possible—and we’ll be cheering you on along the way.

Step 2: Learn the ground rules.

You’ll score Heart Points for any activity that gets your heart pumping. Get one point for each minute of moderate activity, like picking up the pace while walking your dog, and double points for more intense activities like running or kickboxing. Hit 150 Heart Points per week to meet the American Heart Association (AHA) and the World Health Organization (WHO)’s physical activity recommendations shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, improve sleep and increase overall mental well-being.

Step 3: Get moving.

We hear you: It’s tough to get motivated when it’s cold outside. Here are some ways you can earn Heart Points while you’re going about your winter routine:

  • Want to involve the whole family? Go sledding with your kids and earn double Heart Points.  
  • Skip the snowblower and grab a shovel. Extra points if you do your neighbor’s yard, too.
  • You’ll probably make a hot cocoa run at some point. Park at the farther end of the lot and squeeze in a brisk walk.
  • If you find yourself on the mountain this winter, skiing and snowboarding are all intense activities that can earn you double Heart Points.
  • If the hot cocoa didn’t warm you up, catch a spin class and earn a Heart Point for every minute you’re on the bike.

Step 4: Find a buddy.

For more inspiration, we’ve teamed up with 36 influencers from nine countries around the globe to show us how they’re earning their Heart Points. Follow #GetFitWithGoogle on Instagram and YouTube to see how others are tackling the challenge, or share your own tips and tricks on how you #GetFitwithGoogle with your favorite Heart Points workout.

Are you up for the challenge? Sign-up today in the Google Fit app. If you’re new to Google Fit, try it here to start the year right with Fit.

Source: Android


Fitness Apps on Android Wear

Posted by Joshua Gordon, Developer Advocate

Go for a run, improve your game, and explore the great outdoors with Android Wear! Developers are creating a diverse array of fitness apps that provide everything from pace and heart rate while running, to golf tips on your favorite course, to trail maps for hiking. Let’s take a look features of the open and flexible Wear platform they use to create great user experiences.

Always-on stats

If your app supports always-on, you’ll never have to touch or twist your watch to activate the display. Running and want to see your pace? Glance at your wrist and it’s there! Runtastic, Endomondo, and MapMyRun use always-on to keep your stats visible, even in ambient mode. When it’s time for golf, I use Golfshot. Likewise, Golfshot uses always-on to continuously show yardage to the hole, so I never have to drop my club. Check out the doc, DevByte, and code sample to learn more.

Runtastic automatically transitions to ambient mode to conserve battery. There, it reduces the frequency at which stats are updated to about once per 10 seconds.

Maps, routes, and markers

It's encouraging to see how much ground I’ve covered when I go for a run or ride! Using the Maps API, you can show users their route, position, and place markers on the map they can tap to see more info you provide. All of this functionality is available to you using the same Maps API you’ve already worked with on Android. Check out the doc, DevByte, code sample, and blog post to learn more.

Endomondo tracks your route while your run. You can pan and zoom the map.

Google Fit

Google Fit is an open platform designed to make it easier to write fitness apps. It provides APIs to help with many common tasks. For example, you can use the Recording API to estimate how many steps the user has taken and how many calories they've burned. You can make that data to your app via the History API, and even access it over the web via REST, without having to write your own backend. Now, Google Fit can store data from a wide variety of exercises, from running to weightlifting. Check out the DevByte and code samples to learn more.

Bluetooth Low Energy: pair with your watch

With the latest release of Android Wear, developers can now pair BLE devices directly with the Wearable. This is a great opportunity for all fitness apps -- and especially for running -- where carrying both a phone and the Wearable can be problematic. Imagine if your users could pair their heart rate straps or bicycle cadence sensors directly to their Wear device, and leave their phones at home. BLE is now supported by all Wear devices, and is supported by Google Fit. To learn more about it, check out this guide and DevByte.

Pack light with onboard GPS

When I’m running, carrying both a phone and a wearable can be a bit much. If you’re using an Android Wear device that supports onboard GPS, you can leave your phone at home! Since not all Wear devices have an onboard GPS sensor, you can use the FusedLocationProviderApi to seamlessly retrieve GPS coordinates from the phone if not available on the wearable. Check out this handy guide for more about detecting location on Wear.

RunKeeper supports onboard GPS if it’s available on your Wearable.

Sync data transparently

When I’m back home and ready for more details on my activity, I can see them by opening the app on my phone. My favorite fitness apps transparently sync data between my Wearable and phone. To learn more about syncing data between devices, watch this DevByte on the DataLayer API.

Next Steps

Android Wear gives you the tools and training you need to create exceptional fitness apps. To get started on yours, visit developer.android.com/wear and join the discussion at g.co/androidweardev.

Exercise or Games? Why Not Both!

Posted by Alice Ching, Google Engineer

We are pleased to announce the release of Games in Motion, an open source game sample to demonstrate how developers can make fun games using Google Fit and Android Wear. Do you ever go on a jog and feel like there is a lack of incentive to help you run better? What if you were a secret agent and had to use your speed and your nifty gadget to complete missions?

With Games in Motion, you can enhance your exercise with missions and actions on your Android Wear device, while logging your jogs to the cloud.

Games in Motion is written in Java programming language using Android Studio. It demonstrates multiple Android technologies.

  • Android Wear bridges notifications from a phone or tablet to a paired Android Wear device. The notifications are stacked so we can show multiple stats at the same time.
  • Google Fit API collects and processes fitness data and sessions. This allows us to use the fitness data to show user progress. All exercise sessions done in Games in Motion will be recorded to Google Fit as well.
  • Google Play Games Services is used to create and unlock achievements.
  • Several different Android audio APIs are integrated.
  • JUnit tests are present for the data-driven parser, which demonstrates how unit testing can be done within Android Studio.

You can download the latest open source release from GitHub. We hope to inspire similar Android games, where multiple different form factors are combined for a fun experience.

There’s a lot to explore with Google Play services 7.3

Posted by Ian Lake, Developer Advocate

Today, we’re excited to give you new tools to build better apps with the rollout of Google Play services 7.3. With new Android Wear APIs, the addition of nutrition data to Google Fit, improvements to retrieving the user’s activity and location, and better support for optional APIs, there’s a lot to explore in this release.

Android Wear

Google Play services 7.3 extends the Android Wear network by enabling you to connect multiple Wear devices to a single mobile device.

While the DataApi will automatically sync DataItems across all nodes in the Wear network, the directed nature of the MessageApi is faced with new challenges. What node do you send a message to when the NodeApi starts showing multiple nodes from getConnectedNodes()? This is exactly the use case for the new CapabilityApi, which allows different nodes to advertise that they provide a specific functionality (say, the phone node being able to download images from the internet). This allows you to replace a generic NodeListener with a more specific CapabilityListener, getting only connection results and a list of nodes that have the specific functionality you need. We’ve updated the Sending and Receiving Messages training to explore this new functionality.

Another new addition for Android Wear is the ChannelApi, which provides a bidirectional data connection between two nodes. While assets are the best way to efficiently add binary data to the data layer for synchronization to all devices, this API focuses on sending larger binary data directly between specific nodes. This comes in two forms: sending full files via the sendFile() method (perfect for later offline access) or opening an OutputStream to stream real time binary data. We hope this offers a flexible, low level API to complement the DataApi and MessageApi.

We’ve updated our samples with these changes in mind so go check them out here!

Google Fit

Google Fit makes building fitness apps easier with fitness specific APIs on retrieving sensor data like current location and speed, collecting and storing activity data in Google Fit’s open platform, and automatically aggregating that data into a single view of the user’s fitness data.

To make it even easier to retrieve up-to-date information, Google Play Services 7.3 adds a new method to the HistoryApi: readDailyTotal(). This automatically aggregates data for a given DataType from midnight on the current day through now, giving you a single DataPoint. For TYPE_STEP_COUNT_DELTA, this method does not require any authentication, making it possible to retrieve the current number of steps for today from any application whether on mobile devices or on Android Wear - great for watch faces!

Google Fit is also augmenting its existing data types with granular nutrition information, including protein, fat, cholesterol, and more. By leveraging these details about the user’s diet, developers can help users stay more informed about their health and fitness.

Location

LocationRequest is the heart of the FusedLocationProviderApi, encapsulating the type and frequency of location information you’d like to receive. An important, but small change to LocationRequest is the addition of a maximum wait time for location updates via setMaxWaitTime(). By using a value at least two times larger than the requested interval, the system can batch location updates together, reducing battery usage and, on some devices, actually improving location accuracy.

For any ongoing location requests, it is important to know that you will continue to get good location data back. The SettingsApi is still incredibly useful for confirming that user settings are optimal before you put in a LocationRequest, however, it isn’t the best approach for continual monitoring. For that, you can use the new LocationCallback class in place of your existing LocationListener to receive LocationAvailability updates in addition to location updates, giving you a simple callback whenever settings might have changed which will affect the current set of LocationRequests. You can also use FusedLocationProviderApi’s getLocationAvailability() to retrieve the current state on demand.

Connecting to Google Play services

One of the biggest benefits of GoogleApiClient is that it provides a single connection state, whether you are connecting to a single API or multiple APIs. However, this made it hard to work with APIs that might not be available on all devices, such as the Wearable API. This release makes it much easier to work with APIs that may not always be available with the addition of an addApiIfAvailable() method ensuring that unavailable APIs do not hold up the connection process. The current state for each API can then be retrieved via getConnectionResult(), giving you a way to check at runtime whether an API is available and connected.

While GoogleApiClient’s connection process already takes care of checking for Google Play services availability, if you are not using GoogleApiClient, you’ll find many of the static utility methods in GooglePlayServicesUtil such as isGooglePlayServicesAvailable() have now been moved to the singleton GoogleApiAvailability class. We hope the move away from static methods helps you when writing tests, ensuring your application can properly handle any error cases.

SDK is now available!

Google Play services 7.3 is now available: get started with updated SDK now!

To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit the Google Play services section on the Android Developer site.

Google Play services 7.0 – Places Everyone!

Posted by Ian Lake, Developer Advocate

Today, we’re bringing you new tools to build better apps with the rollout of Google Play services 7.0. With this release, we’re delivering improvements to location settings experiences, a brand new API for place information, new fitness data, automatic integration of AdMob and Google Analytics, Google Play Games, and more.

Location Settings Dialog

While the FusedLocationProviderApi combines multiple sensors to give you the optimal location, the accuracy of the location your app receives still depends greatly on what settings are enabled on the device (e.g. GPS, wifi, airplane mode, etc). In Google Play services 7.0, we’re introducing a standard mechanism to check that the necessary location settings are enabled for a given LocationRequest to succeed. If there are possible improvements, you can display a one touch control for the user to change their settings without leaving your app.

This API provides a great opportunity to make for a much better user experience, particularly if location information is critical to the user experience of your app such as was the case with Google Maps when they integrated the Location Settings dialog and saw a dramatic increase in the number of users in a good location state.

Places API

Location can be so much more than a latitude and longitude: the new Places API makes it easy to get details from Google’s database of places and businesses. The built-in place picker makes it easy for the user to pick their current place and provides all the relevant place details including name, address, phone number, website, and more.

If you prefer to provide your own UI, the getCurrentPlace() API returns places directly around the user’s current location. Autocomplete predictions are also provided to allow a low latency search experience directly within your app.

You can also manually add places with the addPlace() API and report that the user is at a particular place, ensuring that even the most explorative users can input and share their favorite new places.

The Places API will also be available cross-platform: in a few days, you’ll be able to apply for the Places API for iOS beta program to ensure a great and consistent user experience across mobile platforms.

Google Fit

Google Fit makes building fitness apps easier with fitness specific APIs on retrieving sensor data like current location and speed, collecting and storing activity data in Google Fit’s open platform, and automatically aggregating that data into a single view of the user’s fitness data.

In Google Play services 7.0, the previous Fitness.API that you passed into your GoogleApiClient has now been replaced with a number of APIs, matching the high level set of Google Fit Android APIs:

  • SENSORS_API to access raw sensor data via SensorsApi
  • RECORDING_API to record data via RecordingApi
  • HISTORY_API for inserting, deleting, or reading data via HistoryApi
  • SESSIONS_API for managing sessions via SessionsApi
  • BLE_API to interact with Bluetooth Low Energy devices via BleApi
  • CONFIG_API to access custom data types and settings for Google Fit via ConfigApi

This change significantly reduces the memory requirement for Google Fit enabled apps running in the background. Like always, apps built on previous versions of Google Play services will continue to work, but we strongly suggest you rebuild your Google Fit enabled apps to take advantage of this change.

Having all the data can be an empowering part of making meaningful changes and Google Fit is augmenting their existing data types with the addition of body fat percentage and sleep data.

Google Mobile Ads

We’ve found integration of AdMob and Google Analytics a powerful combination for analyzing how your users really use your app since we launched Google Analytics in AdMob last year. This new release enables any Google Mobile Ads SDK implementation to automatically get Google Analytics integration giving you the number of users and sessions, session duration, operating systems, device models, geography, and automatic screen reporting without any additional development work.

In addition, we’ve made numerous improvements across the SDK including ad request prefetching (saving battery usage and improving apparent latency) and making the SDK MRAIDv2 compliant.

Google Play Games

Announced at Game Developers Conference (GDC), we’re offering new tools to supercharge your games on Google Play. Included in Google Play services 7.0 is the Nearby Connections API, allowing games to seamlessly connect smartphones and tablets as second-screen controls to the game running on your TV.

App Indexing

App Indexing lets Google index apps just like websites, enabling Google search results to deep-link directly into your native app. We've simplified the App Indexing API to make this integration even easier for you by combining the existing view()/viewEnd() and action()/end() flows into a single start() and end() API.

Changes to GoogleApiClient

GoogleApiClient serves as the common entry point for accessing Google APIs. For this release, we’ve made retrieval of Google OAuth 2.0 tokens part of GoogleApiClient, making it much easier to request server auth codes to access Google APIs.

SDK Coming Soon!

We will be rolling out Google Play services 7.0 over the next few days. Expect an update to this blog post, published documentation, and the availability of the SDK once the rollout is completed.

To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit the Google Services section on the Android Developer site.

Google Play Services 6.1

gps

Today, we’re excited to introduce the latest version of Google Play services to help you easily build on the newest features from Google and optimize your apps.

Google Play services 6.1 adds Enhanced Ecommerce analytics support from Google Tag Manager and offers new improvements to the Google Drive Android API. With the latest release, we’re also including a refresh of the Google Fit developer preview, so that you can test your fitness apps on any Android device.

Analytics

Launched in Google Play services 5.0, Enhanced Ecommerce is an analytics extension designed to provide richer insights into pre-purchase shopping behavior and into product performance. It’s a great way to gain visibility into the full customer journey, helping you understand how different user acquisition campaigns are performing at a granular level. By including support for Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Tag Manager with the latest release of Google Play services, we are supercharging your ability to regularly update and manage tags on mobile apps more easily, so that you can consistently measure product impressions, shopping funnel events, and more.

Drive

To make it easier to use Drive, we added enhancements to the Google Drive Android API. With the new Completion Events feature, you can see when actions are committed to the server and improve the response time to conflicts. Material design elements have been incorporated into the File Picker UI, along with the addition of Recent and Starred views. A new setParents() method enables you to organize files and folders, while the previous Contents class has been replaced with a simpler DriveContents class.

Google Fit

Initially introduced in August, the Google Fit Developer Preview has been refreshed to enable you to test your new fitness apps on any Android device. We expect to make additional changes to the APIs, so please check back with us on new developments.

Stay tuned!

We will be rolling out Google Play services 6.1 over the next few days, after which we will publish the documentation and make the SDK available.

To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit the Google Services section on the Android Developers site.