Android 9.0 (Pie) not able to sync

[AlessFitbit]

Fitbit Update: 3/6/19

Hello everyone! 

We have some updated troubleshooting suggestions we'd like for all of you on Android Pie (9.0) to try. 

First, turn off Background Restrictions/Limitations: Phone settings > Apps & Notifications > Fitbit app > Background restrictions or Background limits.

Then, disable battery limitations:

1. Go to Settings > Apps > Fitbit app > Advanced > Battery > Battery optimization
2. Change view to All apps
3. Search for Fitbit app
4. Choose Not optimized

Please give the steps above a try to improve syncing with your Fitbit device and Android 9.0 OS. We're still researching and testing out long-term solutions to this ongoing syncing issue. We thank you for all your patience while we continue to work on this effort.

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Fitbit Update: 2/14/19

Hi everyone!

Thanks for all your reports and patience with these Android 9.0 syncing difficulties. We’re aware of this ongoing issue and have been working to identify a resolution as quickly as possible. 

We're sorry for any trouble. We appreciate your patience and look forward to getting you back on track as soon as possible. 

I'll let you know if I receive any additional information on this matter. 

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Fitbit Update: 10/3/18 

Hey Everyone!

Our team is still working on implementing a longterm fix for syncing with Android devices on Pie (9.0). 

For the background syncing issue, I have posted an update in the other floated thread which you can find here. 

We released Fitbit for Android version 2.80 today which contains improvements for that syncing issue. 

I'll make sure to keep you all updated with more information, as soon as I have it available. We're still working on this and I really appreciate everyone's patience. 

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Fitbit Update: 9/26/18

Hey everyone! 

Thanks so much for your patience and cooperation. We are aware of the issue and working with Google on a solution.

I will continue to provide updates here, so keep an eye on this thread. 

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Fitbit Update: 9/10/18 

Hi, everybody! 

Thanks for your patience while our team continues to work on improving syncing for those on Android Pie (9.0). They are actively working on this and for the time being, I recommend you keep the Fitbit app updated on the latest version for best syncing results. Right now that is version 2.78, so if you're not on this version please update! Also, another troubleshoot we recommend is performing a restart on your phone. 

When there are more improvements made in the future I'll announce them here. Stay tuned and subscribed to this thread. 

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Fitbit Update: 8/19/18

We have escalated these syncing issues for those who are now using Android Pie (9.0) to our team for investigation. There aren't any updates at the moment, but rest assured we will keep you informed in this thread when more information is available.

Thanks for your patience! 

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Fitbit Update: 8/11/18 

Hi, everyone! Thanks for stopping by the Community Forums. 

Seems like many of you who updated to Android Pie (9.0) are now having trouble syncing your Fitbit trackers. I'm going to escalate this to our team so they can look into it.

In the meantime, please update the Fitbit app to version 2.76.1 if you haven't yet. Let me know if that changes the syncing behavior. Please follow this thread for updates. I'll keep you all posted here! 

[whgrubb]

Thanks.  Restarting my Android phone worked and now my old Fitbit One is syncing again.

[Dood1971]

Try syncing again in 2 hours manually and let us know if it worked. I can get mine too sync only (and only sometimes) if I pull the Fitbit Zip battery. Thanks!

[SunsetRunner]

I have a Fitbit One.  I have Google Pixel 2 running stock Android Pie.  I have a Google Nexus 5X running Android Oreo.  Recently I noticed that I could not sync with the Pixel, so I tried my 5X.  The 5X worked.  Next I tried my Pixel and it synced, so I figured I fixed the problem.  A couple days later the Pixel would not sync, so I tried the 5X, it synced.  Next I again tried the Pixel and it worked.

So the patter I have is once the Pixel stops syncing, I start up the old 5X do one sync and then the Pixel is good for a while.  It seems that going back and syncing with Oreo fixes the Fitbit One for a while.

What a pain.

[VickieGonz]

Mine now seems to sync randomly on the pixel after it syncs on the laptop...

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

[Byckie]

How do you revert back?

[whgrubb]

Did you try turning off your phon e and restarting it?  Apparently this works just like computers do.  After an update has been added, it doesn't take effect until you restart.

[SunsetRunner]

Well, here's an interesting thing that happened this morning.

Last night, as I always do, I put my Pixel 2 XL on the nightstand beside my bed, plugged it in, and dropped the stuff in my pockets (change, keys, pens, etc.) in the nightstand's drawer. And, as I always do, I put my Fitbit One in there, too.

This morning, as usually happens, I woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off, and grabbed my phone to see what was going on in the world.

In so doing, I pulled down my notification shade, and there was the Fitbit app's keep-alive widget telling me that...

My Fitbit One had synced about twenty minutes ago.

I have 2.79 installed, by the way.

This sync *had* to have been done by the app on my phone. The Macs in the house were either sleeping, or over 30 feet, a nightstand, and several walls away. Literally the only thing that was within radio range of the One was my phone--at most, a foot of air and a chunk of Ikea particle board above it.

Of course, all the app's automatically-initiated syncs have since failed, as have the 2-3 that I initiated manually.

Just for grins I put the phone into airplane mode for a few minutes to see if that changed anything; so far, there's no evidence that it has.

I got to thinking about this some more, and I wonder if there's a race aspect to the failures we're all seeing. "Race" here is a software engineering term. If you've not heard of it before, here's an example:

Take two pieces of code called A, and B. Each piece of code must run in this exact order (A, and then B). If A runs, and then B: Success! If B runs, and then A: Failure.

Now, if you think that all you have to do to make this always work is to have A do everything it's supposed to do, and then force B to run, you'd be exactly right--things would never fail if the code were structured this way. And this is sort of thing is done a lot in software development; "chaining" is a term that's often used to describe this arrangement.

But, there are also circumstances under which A and B need to be run independently. There are often legitimate reasons for code to be structured this way, and it can work just as well as an approach that chains A and B together. However, either the code that determines when to run A and B is written in some way to always start B after A has finished, or the code for A and B is written defensively (e.g., B is written to check to be sure A has finished before it continues doing whatever it needs to do).

However (and this is where the "race" part comes in) what happens if A and B find themselves running at the same time? Well, if you consider the completion of A and the completion of B to be a kind of "finish line", both pieces of code are now in a race to the finish. Who will finish first? Well, as with all races, it depends.

Maybe the work that B needs to do just takes a much longer time to complete than the work A needs to do. So it's no big deal if they end up running at the same time--B *always* loses the race, and finishes doing its thing well after A has finished. In fact, maybe the difference in time required for A and B to finish is so vast, there's *no way* B could finish first. And so code is never added to ensure that A and B always finish in the correct order.

But then something changes.

Maybe A and B are now running on a new device that is much more powerful than anything else it's been run on before. Now, B positively screams past the finish line before A is even partially done. BZZZZT! A failure; and possibly one that will impact users of this device more than users of older devices.

Maybe the device A and B are now running on has a bunch of other apps being actively used. A is doing its thing, grinding along when suddenly another app has some very high priority stuff to run. Both A and B are held up for a bit until that other app's pressing need is satisfied. The app containing A and B starts running again, and B just happens to start running before A. but it's a very close race; B ends up finishing mere microseconds before A. BZZZZT. Another failure; this one might happen at seemingly random intervals, depending on which apps are active when.

Or Maybe A and B are now running on the latest version of an operating system. Although it's meant to be compatible with the operating system's previous version--and in the vast majority of cases it is--there are always areas where things are maybe a little different. A and B were written with the assumption that the operating system will always behave a certain way, but now that assumption is no longer true. Some change to the operating tilts the odds in B's favor (maybe always, maybe less than always), B finishes before A. BZZZZT! Another failure; this is another one that might happen at seemingly random intervals, depending on who knows what.

So.

Does the Fitbit app have "racy" code? It might. It would certainly explain why syncing under Android has long been a "sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't" kind of thing; whatever kind of environment the app is running in dictates the odds of a successful sync.

But here's the thing, though: bugs involving race condition can be *really* hard to track down. The app may be so sensitive to its environment that the simple act of a developer trying to observe the bug happening may eliminate the race condition! A place I used to work at would call these kinds of problems, "HeisenBugs" after physicist Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, though if you want to be completely pedantic about it, his uncertainty principle isn't really at play here. But the HeisenBug name was too good to pass up...

If the problem with the app is a HeisenBug of some kind, that could explain why the dev team responsible for the Android app is taking so long--anything they do to try to figure out how to fix the bug makes the bug disappear.

If this is the case, I feel for the dev team; these things are a royal pain to track down and fix.

That said, I just want the dang thing to work.

[SheWatt]

Well i have android 7 not 9 and i am having thw same stning issue as everone. My ion is showing synced but it isn't syncing and i am getting really tired if my watch being 20 minutes behind all thw time.

[Flutterby4x]

You're a good teacher ... and you just demonstrated why I could never be a techy!!!  I bow to those of you that can deal with these things.  Maybe you can help the team solve our shared bug!  

[Crazy-Fritter]

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@jsicurelly wrote:

I'd been having issues with my One tracker, and I figured it was the tracker dying since it's pretty old. I bought a Versa today, and was so disappointed to find that I still couldn't regularly sync! I have to restart my phone every time I want to sync. I contacted Fitbit (unaware of this apparently ongoing issue with Android 9). They said my Versa must be defective, and they sent one out under warranty. I kept troubleshooting and I logged into my Fitbit account on multiple other phones running older versions of Android, and it worked. So I contacted them and said I do not want the replacement tracker, because this one isn't broken. This time the represenatitve seemed to be aware of this issue and told me it was the Android version, and he didn't know when it would be fixed. 

ow I find this thread and to my disappointment, this has been going on since the beginning of August and Fitbit hasn't bothered to fix it?? I really like the Versa (if it would sync). It fits my ridiculously small wrists much better than most other smartwatches. If it's not compatible with my phone, then it's pretty useless. I may return it to Target and shop for a Garmin. 😞 

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Return it.

[Crazy-Fritter]

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@Ultratech wrote:

@AirdraWhich Fitbit device did this work with? I'm currently investigating to see which one I should get next based upon what Android users are saying about them.

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Don't get any fitbit's until they get the problem with Android 9 figured out.....unless you're on Android 7 or older. Fitbit still hasn't come to grips with Android 8/9 yet. I was successfully syncing my Fitbit for over a year on 7 flawlessly. I just picked up a pixel and upgraded to 9...... awesome os, but I'm still syncing my Fitbit to my old phone because I don't want any issues.

Once you sync a working tracker to a new device and app they often have issues, then they won't always even sync back to the old device. They work best if you stick to the same working device and app version when syncing.

[SunsetRunner]

Thanks @Flutterby4x; I also was a tech writer in a former life, so doing the "difficult concepts into words" thing ended up being the thing that paid the bills for a while. That part of me still likes to come out and play from time to time.

As for helping the Fitbit dev team, I've not done any serious Android development. I'm in that, "I know enough to know I don't know enough" kind of place...

[SheWatt]

Fyi. I am on android 7 and having the same issues.

[amyjco]

Can we have an update please as to how fixing this is going.  Having to use my laptop to sync as pixel 2 on Android P is not working and have tried various suggestions with no change.

[Keanen]

Agreed,I updated my OnePlus 6 last night to Pie. I don't seem to have a working solution as  I cannot even get my dongle to work with Windows 10.

[SunsetRunner]

Really? A month and half since Android 9.0 has been released and you still haven't been able to come up with a fix. Maybe its time to hire some new techies!

[Anitaweev]

They fixed it, then messed it up again with another app update.... I'm done 

[Anitaweev]

As of yesterday 9/22/18 my app and ionic are NOT syncing.  "AGAIN!!!" Seems like the app is totally disabled.  They need a new tech team. This is worst than what happened in August.  I'm so lost now. What keeps happening and why?

[Keanen]

Where can we get a copy of the previous version?

[Keanen]

Many had a working solution with the last build?