Health questions

Health questions are treated differently from everything else.

On your device by default

A question about your health is answered on your device, by the model you chose for health - even when the AI's mode otherwise allows online. Nothing about your health leaves your machine unless you choose it, question by question.

This is the one rule the rest of routing never bends: no position of the dial sends a health question online, and what routing learns from your feedback never applies to health questions.

How a question is recognized

Two stages: plain health words first, then a check by meaning that needs the small memory model from the helper. When that second stage cannot run, routing keeps ordinary and hard questions on your device rather than send an unchecked one online, and the reply says so.

Choosing the model

Settings → Routing → Health questions picks which of your downloaded models answers them. It starts as the first model you downloaded. When you download a medical specialist (MedGemma, Google's open medical model - also the Health questions pick on the models page's "Best for this computer"), the app offers once to make it your health model. MedGemma reads lab results and scans entirely on device; it helps you understand and prepare questions for your doctor - it never diagnoses.

Online, by choice, asked every time

If you'd rather a frontier online model take your health questions, choose one in the same setting. From then on every health question shows a card before anything leaves your device - send online once, always send health questions online (shown honestly in Settings, one tap to go back to asking), or answer on my device. A pinned offline AI stays offline regardless. Health images never go online.