Fitbit continues to be an incredibly well-known brand with many popular fitness trackers and smartwatches available, even since the company was acquired by Google in 2021. From the affordable Inspire 3 tracker right up to the high-end Sense 2 stress-tracking watch, many people still love counting steps, tracking runs and being motivated to move by the Fitbit on their wrists.
But Google has changed several things about the Fitbit experience in recent years. Most recently Google implied it will never release a new Fitbit branded smartwatch, while fans have also been irked by the removal of long standing favourite features from the app such as the ability to see step count leaderboards to challenge your friends and family.
Google also hides several fitness metrics behind a paywall in the Fitbit app. You have to pay £7.99 per month to access Fitbit Premium, which unlocks workouts led by Fitbit trainers, gives you deeper sleep insights if you wear your device to bed, more details in stress management and personalised wellness reports based on your activity.
Thankfully, one feature that was once only available to Fitbit Premium subscribers is finally being made free. With the recent launch of the Google Pixel Watch 3, which connects to the Fitbit app, Google made Fitbit’s daily readiness score free to see for everyone. This score takes into account your stats and lets you see if you should exercise that day or prioritise recovery.
As spotted by 9to5Google, Google is now rolling out the daily readiness score to all Fitbit users, making this once-Premium feature free to all. Once you get the update for iPhone or Android for the Fitbit app version 4.23, the daily readiness score will appear for you.
It also seems Fitbit has tweaked the daily readiness score, which is a number from 0-100. The firm has changed the “way your readiness score is calculated to make it more tailored to your body’s recovery signals” and is now based on your heart rate variability (HRV), sleep, and resting heart rate (RHR).
We hope this will make the score more accurate as it is now based on your body’s response to exercise and activity, rather than just the activities themselves. It should make the score more personal to you, as we all react differently to exercise and take different times to recover. You have to wear your Fitbit to sleep to get the score.
Most modern Fitbit devices including the excellent Fitbit Charge 6 can also display the readiness score, so you can see it on your wrist and not just in the Fitbit app.