Oura Ring sickness detection now rolling out with Symptom Radar
Now, you can use one of the most popular smart rings ever to know when you're getting sick
💍 Oura is updating its smart ring with sickness detection
🤧 Called Symptom Radar, your Oura Ring can tell you when you’re showing signs of illness
💗 It monitors things like heart rate and skin temperature to determine when you might be sick
📅 The update is rolling out to all Oura Ring 4 and Gen 3 users
Oura is updating its Oura Ring with the ability to detect when you might be getting sick. The new feature has been in testing through the company’s Labs program in the Oura Ring companion app, and now, it’s being rolled out to all users of the ring.
The feature, called Symptom Radar, uses data like your heart rate, breathing rate, skin temperature, and heart rate variability to detect when your body is showing signs that you caught something. According to Oura, your body displays these behaviors about a day or two before you experience symptoms. While it’s not designed to diagnose your illness, Symptom Radar can help you become more proactive in treating yourself with more rest before you start feeling sick.
If your ring detects that you’re sick, it’ll notify you and prompt you to turn on Rest Mode to help you recover quicker from whatever it is you caught.
Oura has been working on this feature for a while. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, many health and fitness tracker companies rushed to figure out if their trackers could detect whether someone had COVID. Obviously, those efforts didn’t result in much at the time, but years later, we’re starting to see some of that work pay off for more use cases than detecting COVID. For example, Google ships a thermometer on the back of the Pixel 9 Pro to help take your temperature, which it’s been working on for years.
Of course, the Oura Ring isn’t the only fitness tracker that can proactively warn you when you might be getting sick. Whoop has offered the ability to identify signs of illness with the Whoop 4.0 for a while. This is, however, the first time we’re seeing it in a smart ring.
Symptom Radar on Oura Ring won’t be 100% accurate every time, but we’ll know more about how accurate it can be once users get their hands (or fingers) on it.
The feature is rolling out now to all Oura Ring 4 and Oura Ring Gen 3 users.
Max Buondonno is a writer at The Shortcut. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop.