At Google I/O we announced Google Fit: an open platform for developers to more easily build
fitness apps. Today we’re making a preview
SDK available to developers so that you can start to build.
Google Fit provides a single set of APIs for apps and device manufacturers to store and access
activity data from fitness apps and sensors on Android and other devices (like wearables,
heart rate monitors or connected scales). This means that with the user’s permission, you can
get access to the user’s fitness history -- enabling you to provide more interesting features
in your app like personalized coaching, better insights, fitness recommendations and more.
There are three sets of APIs designed to meet specific developer needs:
Sensors API provides high-level access to sensors from
the device and wearables—so with one API your app can talk to sensors, whether on an Android
device or a wearable. So if you’re making a running app, you could register it to receive
updates from a connected heart rate monitor every 5 seconds during a user’s run and give
immediate feedback to the runner on the display.
Recording API allows apps to register for
battery-efficient, cloud-synced background collection of fitness data. For example, a running
app could ask to store user’s location so it can map the run later. Once it registers for
these data types, collection is done by Fit in the background with no further work needed by
the app.
History API allows operations on the data like read,
insert and delete. When the exerciser finishes her run, the running app can query the History
API for all locations during the run and show a map.
To get started, download the updated version of Google Play services containing the Google Fit
APIs for Android in the Android
L Developer Preview Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 system images. Use the Android SDK
Manager to download the Google Play services client labeled "Google Play services
for Fit Preview". You can start developing today using local fitness history on the device —
the cloud backend will be available soon. Join the Google Fit developer
community on Google+ to discuss the Preview and ask questions. For additional
resources and more information about Google Fit, check out the Google Fit developers site.
The preview SDK gives you the tools to start building your app. You’ll be able to launch your
app later this year when we launch the full Google Fit SDK as part of Google Play services for
handsets, Android Wear and also for the web. We’re excited to see what you can come up with to
make fitness in a connected world better.
