Google Health’s new tiles finally make the Today tab worth using
Google Health is a health tracking app that combines fitness, sleep, and wellness metrics into a single health data dashboard designed to give users a quick, customizable overview of their daily health trends. That dashboard is finally catching up with the promise of the recent Fitbit-to-Google Health rebrand, thanks to version 5.03 and its expansion of metric tiles on the Today tab. A new update to Google Health adds 13 additional metric tile options for the Today tab, turning what was a sparse home screen into a dense snapshot of your body’s signals. In practical terms, this means your most important wellness metrics monitoring can move from buried sub-menus to the first screen you open. Google Health 5.03 is rolling out starting today and is available on both Android and iOS, so this health tracking app update reaches almost everyone using the platform.
From basic fitness log to real health data dashboard
When Google rebranded the Fitbit app as Google Health, it shipped a redesigned interface with plenty of AI flourishes—but the Today tab felt underpowered from day one. Version 5.03 is Google’s admission that a health data dashboard is only useful if it puts real depth up front. This release brings 13 new Google Health metric tiles to the Today tab: blood glucose, breathing rate, carbohydrate intake, fat intake, friend leaderboard, heart rate variability, mindful days, mindful minutes, oxygen saturation (SpO2), protein intake, resilience, resting heart rate, and skin temperature variation. According to one announcement, “a new update to Google Health adds 13 additional metric tile options for the Today tab”. That shift matters because it extends the app beyond step counts and workouts into nutrition, stress, recovery, and social accountability—categories that look more like whole-person wellness than a simple fitness log.
Customization: the Today tab becomes your health homepage
The most important change is not the sheer number of tiles but what they represent: control. Users are now able to add tiles for many health metrics to the Today tab that previously lived only in the Health tab. That means you can effectively build your own wellness metrics monitoring layout instead of accepting a one-size-fits-all view. If blood glucose and oxygen saturation matter more to you than calories burned, those tiles can sit at the top. If mindful minutes and resilience are your focus, you can pin them front and center. This health tracking app update moves Google Health closer to a true dashboard, where the Today tab reflects your priorities rather than Google’s defaults. It’s a quiet but strong statement that the app should adapt to chronic conditions, recovery journeys, or mental health rituals—not only to fitness trends.
Naps, sleep, and why context matters as much as data
Alongside metric tiles, Google Health 5.03 finally takes naps seriously. Recorded naps longer than 20 minutes now contribute to your 24-hour sleep duration in the Sleep tab. Your main overnight sleep and your naps are displayed separately in the Sleep Score, so you can see patterns without losing the distinction between a core sleep session and afternoon dozing. This aligns the app with growing evidence that short naps can restore brain and muscle functions, though the app still uses a duration-based threshold rather than trying to judge nap quality. Crucially, naps still do not count toward the overnight total on the Today tab sleep tile, which keeps your nightly trends cleaner even as your full-day total becomes more honest. In the context of the expanded Google Health metric tiles, this makes sleep feel less like a single number and more like a nuanced part of your daily wellness story.
A smarter direction, with room to grow
Version 5.03 shows Google learning a simple lesson: health apps win when they reduce friction between insight and action. By letting users add many previously hidden metrics to the Today tab and expanding into nutrition, mindfulness, and advanced cardiovascular markers, Google Health shifts from exercise companion to everyday wellness hub. The new tiles—and the refreshed treatment of naps—signal a broader commitment to whole-day, whole-person tracking rather than a narrow focus on workouts or nightly sleep summaries. Bugs related to swimming and elevation tracking have also been addressed, which suggests Google is cleaning up the foundation while layering on new features. The result is a health data dashboard that finally feels worthy of its AI-heavy redesign. If Google keeps pushing in this direction, the Today tab could become the closest thing many people have to a real-time wellness briefing, built around their own priorities instead of generic averages.
