Ever since the Fitbit app became the Google Health app, the app’s AI features are impossible to avoid for Premium users—or at least it may seem that way. There is a way to turn off the AI coach and return a little peace to your Today screen, without waiting for your Premium trial (or subscription) to expire.
Why you may want to turn off the Google Health Coach
The AI-based Health Coach is the centerpiece of the Google Health app, at least if you have a premium subscription. You may have accepted a three-month free trial of Google Health Premium when you connected a new device, or you may pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra, which includes the Health Coach.
When the Coach is enabled, it updates the main screen of the app with a few paragraphs of text several times a day. (You’ll also get a notification with each of these updates). The Coach will tell you how well you slept, or congratulate you on a hard workout, or suggest workouts for the day given how recovered you seem to be.
But, as I wrote in my Fitbit Air review, the Coach hallucinates pretty often, misreporting your workout data or misunderstanding what you’ve told it are your goals. One user, returning to their normal routine after surgery, posted to Reddit that the Coach keeps trying to talk them out of doing workouts. They called it a “Demotivation Coach.” Others have pointed out that the Coach doesn’t seem to be reading its own data correctly.
On a more personal note, the Coach uses a tone that I find insufferable: arrogant and excessively positive, except when it’s being unnecessarily negative. I’d prefer neutral, factual feedback or none at all. Fortunately, there’s a way to turn it off.
What do you think so far?
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
This is a bit tricky, since it’s not in the app’s settings, but in your Google account settings. Here’s how to disable the Coach:
From the Google Health app, tap your profile picture in the upper right corner.
Tap Your data in Google Health
Tap Manage feature privacy controls
Tap the Google Health Coach, and you’ll see an option to turn it off.
When you return to the Google Health app, you’ll still see the paragraphs of text that the Health Coach previously wrote, but you won’t get any new ones. There will be a card inviting you to re-enable the Health Coach, but you can tap “not now.” You can re-enable the Coach at any time by hitting the “Ask Coach” button in the corner (it does not go away) and following the prompts to turn it back on.
