Things are finally heating up for Google’s Pixel Thermometer app

There’s lots of stuff you rely on your Pixel phone for every day, from keeping track of your schedule, to navigating you to appointments, to even keeping you safe with a little help from satellites. But how often are you using your phone to measure temperatures? Last year’s Pixel 8 Pro introduced a weird new feature, as it picked up infrared thermometer hardware able to measure temperatures at a distance. Now some important new functionality for it is on its way to a lot more people, as Google gets ready to bring body temperature measurement to users in Europe.

When it first debuted on the Pixel 8 Pro, Google’s temperature sensor was a little underwhelming. Besides not delivering particularly accurate measurements, Google was still waiting for regulatory sign-off for it to be used to measure human body temperature — arguably one of its more important uses (especially with its development spinning up during the pandemic, when quickly assessing people for fever was a big deal). With the release of the January 2024 Pixel Feature Drop, that support finally arrived… for people in the US.

Since then, we’ve seen Google bring its temperature sensor back for the Pixel 9 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro XL, but being almost suspiciously quiet about it, not drawing any attention to the sensor’s presence. It was enough to make you think Google had forgotten about this project, but then just a few weeks ago the Pixel Thermometer app got a useful update with some smart UI tweaks. That newfound momentum continues now, as human body temperature reading gets ready to spread across Europe.

Google just updated its Thermometer support docs to reveal that, in addition to the US, body temperature measurements will be available in Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The team over at 9to5Google spotted the change, but observes that the feature wasn’t immediately available in Europe during their testing. Considering what we’re seeing on the support page, though, it seems clear that we’re just waiting for someone to flip the switch somewhere.

If you’re in Europe and get access to Pixel Thermometer body temperature measurements, give us a shout in the comments.