15 July 2026 came and went. If you followed the coverage, you know it as the day Google began deleting data for Fitbit accounts that were never migrated to a Google account. What most of that coverage merged together is that two separate things happened on the same date, and they hit two very different groups. Here is who actually lost data, who didn't, what a saved export is still worth, and the honest answer on recovery.
Google's help pages used a specific phrase for months: it would "begin data deletion processing" on 15 July 2026. This applied to one group only: accounts still tied to an old Fitbit username and password that were never linked to a Google account. Sign-in for those accounts had already ended on 19 May, the same day the Fitbit app was rebranded as Google Health. The 57 days in between were the download window. That window is now closed.
The same date ended support for Fitbit app versions older than 5.0. A quiet workaround had been circulating since May: sideload an old 4.x version of the app on Android, switch off auto-updates, and keep the classic Fitbit interface. That door closed on 15 July too. If your app suddenly became Google Health this week, or refused to sync until you updated, this is why. Your data was never at risk here. Only the old interface was.
The overlap between these two groups is close to zero, which is exactly why the aftermath has been confusing. One group lost data. The other lost an app version. Plenty of people in the second group spent this week worried they were in the first.
A Google Takeout export is a complete, self-contained archive. It never expires, it doesn't phone home, and it works offline. Whether you downloaded it in 2024 or at 11pm on 14 July, everything in it is yours permanently: steps, distance, calories, floors, active minutes, weight, body fat, sleep, heart rate, workouts, badges.
Wearable Converter runs on the ZIP, not on your account, so conversion works exactly the same after the deadline as it did before it. What lands in Garmin Connect is governed by Garmin's importer, not by the deadline: daily steps, distance, calories, floors climbed, active minutes, weight, BMI and body fat percentage all transfer. Heart rate history, sleep stages and individual workouts have no Garmin import path, but they are still sitting safely in your archive.
There is no recovery path. Google published none, announced no extension, and once data is deleted from their servers no third party can retrieve it. Not us, not anyone. If you see a service claiming it can recover deleted Fitbit data for a fee, treat it as a scam.
Two things are worth checking before you close the book, though. First, search your downloads folder and any old drives for a Takeout ZIP. They're named like takeout-20240312T014523Z-001.zip, and plenty of people exported years ago during earlier deadline scares and forgot. Second, check whether your account actually migrated without you paying much attention. If the app on your phone says Google Health and you're signed in, you were never in the deletion group at all.
Two months after the rebrand, almost nobody says Google Health out loud. People say Fitbit. Searches say Fitbit. The Takeout export category is literally still labelled Fitbit. So if you're on Google Health and thinking about moving to Garmin, don't let the naming confuse you: the Fitbit to Garmin path and the Google Health to Garmin path are the same path. Export from Takeout, convert, import.
As for the app itself, Google has been shipping fixes against its public roadmap since the May backlash: hourly activity tracking and naps came back in the 5.02 update, and the recent 5.0.30 release made the Today view customisable again. The AI Coach is still USD $9.99 a month, and the badges, Sleep Profile and social features are still gone. A proper two-months-on review is coming in a few weeks.
The deadline era isn't quite over. Google has said Google Fit users will be invited to migrate into Google Health later this year, with the Google Fit APIs being shut down in the same window. If you're a Google Fit user, the pattern will look familiar: migration prompts first, a cutoff date second. When dates firm up, they'll be covered here.