Can't sign in with Google with existing Google account new to fitbit

[Pineapple23495]

- Note that part of the problem is that my wife can't sign in to Fitbit with google on either the website, the android app, Fitbit support (live chat, to get help), or this forum, so I have to post these details here using my account, which is a legacy Fitbit account that was converted to a Google account previously. Whereas my wife can't login with her google account (which is new to Fitbit) to do anything.

 - Purchased Charge 6.

 - Installed Android fitbit app on Samsung Galaxy A54(5G) (Android 13) ( then later updated to Android 14, which also didn't fix anything)

 - Android app version 4.15.fitbit-mobile-110048703-[62424350] (now updated to 4.16.x, still won't work) (Note that the square brackets don't exist in the app version, but the forum won't let me post the version number without the square brackets presumably because part of it looks like a phone number)

 - Select Sign in with Google.

 - Note that at this point, the instruction from the documentation "Tap Continue as a new user." never appears.

 - Select a google account that is new to fitbit.

 - Get message "Something went wrong Please try again."

 - Tried this for hours, always get "Something went wrong Please try again."

This is for someone who has never had a fitbit account but has had a google account for a long time.

The google account we are trying to sign in with is not a supervised account.

If we try to sign in to fitbit.com on a web browser with their account, we get Error 500: "500. That’s an error. There was an error. Please try again later. That’s all we know."

We tried updating Google play services from Version 24.15.18 (190400-[627556096]) to Version 24.16.16 (190400-[629452829]), (ignore square brackets - false positive phone number detection again) but are still unable to sign in.

Tried installing the Fitbit android app on a Galaxy S6 lite and signing in to the same Google account, and the same thing happens. "Something went wrong Please try again."

It does not seem to be possible to create a new fitbit account that isn't a google account, so we can't try that.

What else have we tried? Attempted to sign in numerous times, tried switching from Wi-fi to Cellular, tried restarting the phone, emptying the app cache, re-installing the app, nothing seems to work. However if I sign in with my separate existing google account on their device, it does sign in, so it seems this issue affects people new to fitbit that attempt to sign in with an exiting google account.

This means we are unable to set up the Charge 6 for this person.

Thanks

[Pineapple23495]

Update: Still get "Something went wrong Please try again." Still unable to set up the Charge 6 on this person's personal Google account.

https://support.google.com/fitbit/answer/14236818#zippy=%2Cfitbit-devices-and-google-pixel-watch-ser...

The instructions on this page say

4. Open the Fitbit app and tap Sign in with Google.

5. Tap Continue as a new user.

6. Choose a Google Account. ....

But when we tap Sign in with Google, there is no option saying Continue as a new user. 

Is this why we can't complete the process? Is it not currently possible to create new users?

[Pineapple23495]

Update: New app update was available today, so updated to 4.16.x in the hope it would allow '5. Tap Continue as a new user.'

It does not. All we can do is select the google account and it always gives us "something went wrong", presumably because something is broken with the google account integration.

Are there any other people that do get "continue as a new user" when they first connect their google account to Fitbit? And does it actually work? Do we need to do something drastic like downgrade to a previous app version where the google account integration isn't seemingly broken?

Still get "Something went wrong Please try again." Still unable to set up the Charge 6 on this person's personal Google account.

[Rich_Laue]

@Pineapple23495 you have had a fitbit account for a year now. Do you want to create a new fitbit account, or move you current fitbit account to a google login? 

For instructions on migrating to a google login see https://support.google.com/fitbit/answer/14237024?hl=en&sjid=6774789172441594769-NA#zippy=%2Chow-lon...

[Pineapple23495]

@Rich_Laue, thanks for your reply.

I have already moved my previous Fitbit account to a Google login and it works. Our problem is that my wife's google sign in will not work on her phone, which is the same model as my phone. She never had a Fitbit account and we are simply trying to sign in with her personal google account.  The android app (or the google account integration it relies on) seems to have some sort of problem with Fitbit <-> Google integration with her google account. It doesn't give the 'Tap Continue as a new user.' option ... and when we select her google account to sign in with: we always get "Something went wrong Please try again." no matter how many times we try to sign in.

We know it is something to do with integration of google accounts that are new to Fitbit, because if I sign in with my google account on her phone, it works. But that is no use to us. We need her to be able to sign into the android app with her google account on her phone, so she can even set up her Fitbit device. It appears that some problem with the google account integration for Google accounts that are new to Fitbit is preventing us from doing this.

If she previously had a Fitbit account perhaps we could follow those instructions you suggest, but my understanding is it is no longer possible for the public to create these legacy Fitbit accounts on order to convert a new one of these accounts to a Google sign in.

[Pineapple23495]

Come to think of it. I wonder how many people with this problem can't even post on this forum for help, because my wife can't login to the Fitbit website or this forum website with her google account, it always displays '500 that's an error. That's all we know'. The only reason I can post here seems to be because I have my personal previous account that I previously converted to a Google account.

So how many other people with existing google accounts, but that are new to Fitbit ... are also reading this post that can't even reply, because they too can't sign in with Google to the forums ...

[Pineapple23495]

The process of failing to sign into the android app. We've tried this hundreds of times, always the same behavior:

It fails to sign in to the google account on:

a Samsung A54 phone

a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite

a Samsung A13 phone

[TheKum]

Hello everybody, if someone is interested :

I had the exact same problem for days with my Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel 7 pro, turns out that the problem was AdGuard!

Since I disabled  AdGuard for FitBit , Pixel Watch2 and all related services - login and syncing is working without a glitch!

So, try disabling (if any) VPN connection u might have on your phone.

Make an exception for FitBit and related apps in  AdGuard (or other adblocking app).

Hope this comes to help ,

cheers!

[Pineapple23495]

@TheKum Thank you for replying. The phone doesn't seem to have any VPN connection or AdGuard like software, but thanks for the suggestion, it was helpful, as it gave us more things to try.

[Pineapple23495 · Accepted solution]

Finally. Success. We got the "Continue as a new user" option as seen below.

How? Well, we were looking again at this page:

https://support.google.com/fitbit/answer/14236532#zippy=%2Cwhy-cant-i-log-in-to-the-fitbit-app-on-my...

And noticed that it said one reason people can't log in is if the time is not set correctly on Android phones. The time is set correctly and to Automatic date and time on her phone ... BUT because one of us could log in and the other person could not we started to think ... is it some setting on the google account itself that is causing this inability to sign in? What if something like the region or timezone is set wrong which is preventing login from the Google account side?

We looked up where to change "Language and Region" and you can do it here: https://calendar.google.com/ and then choose settings from the settings cog. It turns out my wife had set her Country to not our actual country (for privacy reasons). We changed that to our actual country, and made sure the timezone was correct (it already was).

Then we looked at her settings under the google account itself: https://myaccount.google.com/ and under Personal Info we noticed her language was set to something that wasn't our actual language, so we chose English for our country instead.

And then ... that's a bingo:

We don't know what setting fixed it, but we assume it was probably the country setting under Google Calendar settings.

Finally, we successfully set up the Charge 6.

Perhaps what Google / Fitbit can do is to give the user a more helpful message than "Something went wrong, please try again." Perhaps something like, "Region settings / Timezone incorrect, or something." It's probably quite common that people don't put their real information into their google account, for privacy reasons.