While Google has been working on its smartwatch operating system for several years now, the company launched its first smartwatch only in October 2022. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about thePixel Watch, including the lack of certain health features that are available in older offerings, such as 2020’sFitbit Versa 3. One of these attributes is SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) monitoring. However, Google may have finally flicked the switch on this particular functionality, at least for one lucky user.
Reddit usertriforce28discovered a dedicatedOxygen saturationcard on their Pixel Watch, reportedly found while scrolling to the bottom of the feed inside the Fitbit Today app. Here, users will see a brief overview, including the oxygen saturation percentage of theirLast sleep session. Meanwhile, tapping this card takes you to another page, offering additional details on the tracked data, plus more context about SpO2 monitoring.
Source:triforce28 - Reddit
The Pixel Watch comes with the necessary hardware to support SpO2 measurements, though it wasn’t enabled. But we’re glad that’s changing based on this new revelation, finally offering wearers a more novel way of measuring sleep quality on Google’s premier smartwatch.
There are still some unknowns, however. Google hasn’t officially revealed plans for the rollout of this functionality, though its appearance, even on a limited number of wearables, is a strong indicator of its wider rollout. We presume detailed stats would also be available under theHealth Metricstab on the Fitbit app for smartphones, though9to5Googlecouldn’t find support for blood oxygen saturation tracking there just yet.
Google sent out theJune Pixel Watch update recently, but the SpO2 monitoring feature doesn’t appear to be a part of it. Instead, the update mostly contained the usual suite of “bug fixes and improvements.” So it’s likely the addition of SpO2 monitoring is a server-side change that the company is currently testing in a limited capacity.
Google Pixel Watch
The Google Pixel Watch was finally available after a prolonged wait in October last year. Although it lacked features like SpO2 monitoring at launch, that’s positioned to change in a future update, making this one of the best smartwatches you can get today.
