Fogbreaker
Google Fit is on its way out. On 7 May 2026 Google announced that the Fitbit app was becoming the Google Health app, rolling out from 19 May, and added one sentence for everyone else: "We'll invite Google Fit users to migrate their data into Google Health app later this year." The developer side has a firmer date. Google's own documentation says the Fit APIs "will be supported until the end of 2026", and they have been closed to new apps since May 2024.
What Google has not published is a shutdown date for the Fit app itself, or what exactly the migration will carry across. So if Fit has been your step counter for years, or the invisible pipe feeding your walking app, this is the moment to understand where your steps actually live on an Android phone, because the answer is not "in Google Fit", and it has not been for a while.
One disclosure before the practical part: we make Fogbreaker, a walking app that reads steps from Health Connect. It is affected by none of this, which we explain below, and it is not a replacement for everything Fit did, which we also explain below.
Three things are shutting down, and people mix them up
The Fit app. The thing with the rings on your home screen. Google says it will be retired in favour of Google Health, date not yet announced, with an invitation to migrate your history.
The Fit APIs. The plumbing other apps used to read and write your steps through Google's cloud. Supported until the end of 2026, then gone. Any app still connected to "Google Fit" in its settings loses that connection when the API does, whatever happens to the app itself.
Fit as the thing that counted your steps. On a lot of phones, Fit was the app quietly turning accelerometer bounces into a daily number that everything else borrowed. When it goes, something else has to do that job.
The thing that is not shutting down is Health Connect, and that is where the story moves.
Where your steps live now
Since Android 14, Health Connect is built into the phone (on Android 13 and earlier it is a separate download from the Play Store). It is the shared drawer every health app on the phone reads from and writes to. Samsung Health writes steps into it, Google Health writes into it, your watch's app writes into it, and any app you allow can read the combined number back out.
Two facts about that drawer decide everything else in this article.
First, on Android 14 and up, Health Connect counts steps itself. Google's
developer documentation is precise about the condition: "The on-device step
counting mechanism is active only when at least one application on the device
has been granted the READ_STEPS permission within Health Connect." The
user-facing help says the same thing in plain words: "Step collection begins as
soon as an app gets permission to read steps through Health Connect." So once
any app you trust has step access, the phone's own low-power sensor feeds
Health Connect directly, written in batches no more than about once a minute.
You do not need Fit for that, and on a phone this recent you never did.
Second, Health Connect is a hub, not an archive. Google's help page says it plainly: "Once access is granted, the connected app can access data from the last 30 days and any new data written after that." A newly connected app can see back one month and no further. Health Connect has no interest in being your ten-year record. Fit's cloud was that record, which is exactly why the migration matters, and why the next section is in the order it is.
What to do, in this order
1. Export your Fit history now, before anything else. Go to Google Takeout, deselect everything, tick Fit, and choose whether you want daily summaries, activities or both. You get spreadsheet-friendly CSV files for the daily numbers and TCX files for recorded activities. Do this today rather than when the migration invitation arrives: Google has not said what the migration tool will and will not carry, and a file on your own disk does not depend on the answer.
2. Accept the Google Health migration when it comes. If you want Google to keep being your long-term archive, Google Health is the designated home and the invitation is the only supported way to move a decade of Fit data into it. If you would rather not, the Takeout export from step 1 is your archive and you can skip this step.
3. Make sure something is writing steps after Fit stops. On Android 14 and later this is automatic the moment any app holds step-read permission, per the quote above. On older Android, Health Connect cannot count on its own, so you need an app that writes steps into it: Samsung Health on a Samsung phone, Google Health, or a pedometer app that supports Health Connect. Skip this step and every app that reads from Health Connect shows zero steps from the day Fit goes quiet, and it will look like their bug.
4. Reconnect your apps to Health Connect, not to Fit. Open each walking, running or challenge app you use and look at its connections screen. If it says "Google Fit", switch it to Health Connect where the app offers it. If it does not offer it, assume it stops syncing by the end of 2026 and pick something that does.
5. Watch for double counting. Health Connect labels every step record with the app or device that wrote it. A well-behaved app reading that drawer does not add the sources together, because your phone and your watch measured the same walk. It picks one, either by the priority order you set in Health Connect or by taking the largest single source. If your new app shows roughly double your old number on the first day, it is summing, and the fix is to trust one source in its settings.
The 30-day rule is the part that bites
Here is the failure that no announcement warns you about. Say you keep using Fit until it finally closes in, hypothetically, December. You install a replacement that week. The replacement asks Health Connect for your history and gets November. October is gone from its point of view, and so is every year before that. Not deleted, just somewhere the new app cannot reach: in Fit's cloud until Fit closes, in Google Health if you migrated, in your Takeout file if you exported.
Two things follow. Connect the app you intend to keep before Fit closes, so its own record starts overlapping with Fit's. And prefer apps that keep their own day-by-day record over apps that re-ask Health Connect every time, because the second kind can only ever show you the last month.
Where Fogbreaker fits, and where it does not
Ours, so here is the exact position rather than a sales paragraph.
Fogbreaker has never used the Fit APIs. On Android it asks Health Connect for read access to steps, and only that: it never writes anything back. On iPhone it reads Apple Health the same way, and Apple Health is not involved in any of this. So nothing about Fogbreaker changes at the end of 2026, and on Android 14 and up, granting it step access is one of the things that switches on Health Connect's own step counting.
It also keeps its own record. Every day's total is stored against your account on servers in the EU, which is what draws the weekly chart, the best-day and average figures, and the friends leaderboard. That record does not expire after a month, and days you did not open the app are filled in from Health Connect afterwards, within the window Health Connect allows. When two sources have written the same walk, it keeps the highest single one and never the sum. If Health Connect is not installed at all, it falls back to the phone's built-in step counter rather than showing nothing.
What it is not: a fitness dashboard. There is no heart rate, no sleep, no weight, no workout log. If those are what you used Fit for, Google Health or Samsung Health is the honest answer and Fogbreaker is not a substitute. What it does with your steps is turn them into XP, levels and a leaderboard with friends, and separately clear a fog-of-war map of your city as you walk. Steps count wherever you take them; the map only clears from GPS movement outdoors. It is free on iOS and Android, with optional in-app purchases that are never required, and you can delete your account and everything in it yourself.
If you are on an iPhone
Nothing changes. Apple Health has always been the record on iOS, Fit on iPhone was a guest there rather than the landlord, and every app worth having reads Apple Health directly. If Fit was on your iPhone, your steps were in Apple Health all along. Delete Fit whenever you like.
Apps that read Health Connect, and what each is for
Kept short on purpose, because we compared the step-challenge apps separately and the tracking apps here. The useful distinction is which role an app plays.
| App | Role in Health Connect | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Google Health | Writes and reads | Google's designated successor, and the archive after migration |
| Samsung Health | Writes and reads | The step source on Samsung phones; works as a plain tracker |
| Fogbreaker | Reads only | Steps become XP and a friends leaderboard; walks clear a fog map |
| StepUp | Reads | Step challenges with friends or a workplace, from any tracker that writes to Health Connect |
| Health Connect itself | Counts on Android 14+ | The unified number, once any app has step permission |
The short version
- Fit app: closing, date unannounced, migration to Google Health "later this year".
- Fit APIs: supported until the end of 2026, closed to new apps since May 2024.
- Health Connect: staying, built into Android 14 and up, counts steps itself there once an app has step permission, and only shows a connected app the last 30 days.
- Do now: Takeout export, then connect the app you intend to keep, then accept the migration.
Your steps never belonged to Fit. They belong to the sensor in your phone, and every app is just a different way of reading it. If you want the reading itself explained, we wrote that up separately, and if you would rather the number did something on the way past, that is the whole point of ours.
