Google's Health Connect could support multiple user profiles on your device

Google Health Connect is a built-in Android tool that lets supported fitness and health apps read, write, and share data, while keeping it secure and on-device. Due to current limitations, Health Connect doesn’t support multiple user profiles, meaning its features aren’t available on other profiles. Thankfully, a future Android release could change that.

Poring over the recently released Android 17 QPR3 Beta 2, we’ve found early hints that Health Connect could let multiple user profiles access its features. We don’t have any visuals yet, but a code string indicates that support is in the works.

User profiles on Android let you share your device with people around you while keeping your personal data private. Because storage, apps, and accounts are sandboxed, each profile’s data remains inaccessible to the other. Since they already provide this secure environment, enabling Health Connect access for user profiles makes a great deal of sense.

Let’s say you share your Android smartphone or tablet with people in your household. If Health Connect support is officially implemented, each family member could control permissions for individual apps and manage, view, or delete their stored health data, all from one device.

Given that this feature would involve critical health data from multiple apps, Google will need to ensure adequate privacy protections are in place before enabling Health Connect support for user profiles. For now, we can categorize this feature addition as work in progress, which also means it may be some distance away from being implemented.

It’s also too early to say whether Google will actually go ahead with this plan, as all we’re seeing right now is code that references Health Connect adding support for multiple user profiles. But considering the utility of a feature like this, we hope it sees the light of day sooner rather than later.