Samsung Health 2026 update hands-on: 5 biggest changes

I’ve used various health tracking apps from Garmin Connect, Fitbit, Google Health, and Xiaomi in the past, but I’ve always felt right at home with Samsung Health. The core of operations for the company’s Galaxy Watch and fitness tracker bouquet has undergone several massive user interface changes over the years, but this week the company announced a brilliant new software ahead Galaxy Watch 9 debut and launch of One UI 9. And boy, is it different.

Although the initial impression was filled with disgust and disappointment, after using the app for several hours, I can confirm that my feelings are more complex than that. There’s good and bad, and I’ve experienced both.

Here are the biggest changes I noted, including those hits and misses.

I usually do a pacifier Color splash in my Android apps. There is nothing more pleasing to my eyes than high contrasts and bright shades. There is a limit, however, and Samsung Health’s redesign has greatly extended it.

The new UI makes heavy use of color, from the dark ombre background and tooth-achingly bright widget cards to the graphics and graphics displayed within them. It’s so far from the previous utilitarian version that my eyes are used to.

While I don’t outright hate this colorful revision, I do have a problem with its inconsistency.

Back in the Galaxy S8 days, the Samsung Health app used a single color that corresponded to a specific metric — green for activity and blue for sleep, for example. The colors used in this redesign have nothing to do with the information they represent. Purples are used for calorie and sleep metrics, blues for exercise and body composition, and stress and nutrition use orange as their default shade. The relationships between these colors and these indicators do not match.

This is color for color’s sake. Again, while I have no problem with colorful apps, apps that present relevant information to the user should ensure that their forms complement their functions.

Not all aesthetic changes are negative. The latest version of Samsung Health introduces a top shortcut bar that allows me to switch between key aspects of health and well-being: Activity, Sleep, Life, Mindfulness and Nutrition.

The sixth option at the top of the list takes me back to the dashboard – a section of the Health app that I can tweak as I see fit. Moving health widgets around the dashboard, expanding and collapsing them is a UI feature reminiscent of smartly designed weather apps, and it makes perfect sense in a health app with a large number of dimensions.

Return to the shortcuts bar. These silos keep all relevant functions and data in their own compartments, reducing time spent hunting for each metric across the application. No need to guess if I pinned the body composition widget to my dashboard; I can portal directly to Nutrition to find it. I’ll find Running Coach in Activity and heart rate in Vitals. It just makes sense.

Finding this ever-growing list of health indicators was a problem with the previous UI, and it’s nice to see Samsung address it. Granted, a search engine would make this experience even better, but I won’t fault this obvious improvement.

The graphs are important for presenting the data collected by the various health sensors of the smartwatch. Samsung Health’s redesign is focused on improving this important visual aid, but the changes to the graphics are perhaps the most hit-or-miss changes to the app.

Some graphs can now be compressed or expanded to narrow or expand the X-axis, but this only applies to a few graphs, not all of them. The sleep chart, for example, shows various little lines when I’m restless throughout the night. This was also a fixture in previous versions of the app, but I’d like to zoom in on specific hours to explore these sections, perhaps tying them to the noise I hear throughout the night. However, this particular graphic does not support tweaking.

What’s particularly confusing is that the same limitation applies to sleep heart rate and sleep blood oxygen, at least through the Sleep widget. However, while awake, the heart rate graph and blood oxygen graphs support tweaking. Again, why the discrepancy? Why doesn’t every graphic support pinching?

Samsung Health is still missing a feature I really wanted: a comprehensive chart page that supports multiple metrics stacking. This would allow me to better understand how the data changes over time, across indicators and contexts during the day or night.

Samsung believes this is partly a good idea. There are many indicators Compare the data option at the bottom of the page. It’s easy to miss, but tapping this option allows me to add one more metric to the image. This is useful but remains limited.

I can’t compare total steps to sleep time, exercise, and skeletal muscle index of body composition. This will allow me to see if I’m sleeping soundly after long afternoon walks, or if my current exercise routine is building muscle, even if my overall weight is up. The relationship between various health indicators could be better emphasized.

Unfortunately, only data points within specific dimensions can be compared. For example, sleep time versus sleep score.

The main reason for the Samsung Health upgrade is to pave the way for new health features in One UI 9, most of which will be compatible with future wearable devices. Of course, as a Galaxy Watch 4 user, many of these features and those released with the Galaxy Watch 7 are not supported by my watch. However, Samsung makes sure I’m well aware of this by including all of these unsupported feature widgets in the dashboard by default.

Ideally, the app should meet the capabilities of my device and hide features not supported by my watch. Instead, Hearing, Fitness Index, Daily heart rate, Heart Health, Vitals, and Vascular load are available in Samsung Health’s default setup, none of which work on my Galaxy Watch 4. I either accept the waste of space or have to manually hide them from the dashboard instead. What’s worse is that these widgets are immovable within the specific silos I mentioned earlier.

Even more annoying is that certain widgets that I’ve removed from my home screen keep reappearing. Vascular Load continues to appear, especially on the scoreboard. At this point I’m not sure if this is just a bug or an intended feature.

This is a minor issue for me, but one that will confuse Galaxy Watch novices and less tech-savvy users.

Samsung Health’s redesign is a promising step in an interesting direction. It’s certainly colorful, hints at usability improvements, and teases Galaxy Watch fans with plenty of new features. There’s still a list of obvious misses and potential gains, though.

I expect that Samsung Health will continue to receive updates after the release of One UI 9 and the Galaxy Watch 9 series, and I hope that these improvements will benefit newer watch owners and those stuck with older hardware.

For now, you might want to enjoy the old Samsung Health product while it’s still available.