Pixel Watch 1 - Tracking & Sync still broken

[Ray519]

basically starting with the 15.08. the Watch stopped tracking & syncing most stuff. Since then there have been like 2 updates for the Fitbit Wear and Health Services apps, but its still broken.

What is broken:

The Fitbit App can access the current heart rate and it shows this in the Wear App, the tile and the complications in real time. The tile even shows the history as usual.

But in the Wear app, the Heart Rate page shows no history & details (normally the diagram shows more details about the current day and the heart rate range. both remain empty as if the watch has not been worn). Which is exactly how it shows up in the synced phone app.

Hitting sync on the Watch or in the Phone App seems to complete as normal, but nothing changes.

So my understanding of this is:

The Wear Watch has access to the data and stores it locally. Then there should be some post processing which the app should be doing to display all the data and count zone- and activity minutes that just does not happen / fails silently. And as a result, the post processed data that would be synced to the phone and uploaded is just missing.

The only thing still syncing to the phone is steps and trainings started manually on the watch. But the trainings remain completely empty, only showing time. On the watch, with an ongoing training, it shows the current heart rate, but the zone minutes just permanently remain at 0 as well. A feature that I also believe should be working even with the watch offline.

=> the Wear App is severely broken and fails to show error messages for where it fails.

I have now factory reset the watch twice and it did not change anything. Tried rolling back app versions and try different combinations.

I managed to fix it myself once by rolling back both Fitbit Wear and Health Services to the factory versions (factory as of BW1A.250605.004 the current firmware). Worked for 10min. But when I tried to update to current versions it broke again.

(a few days later) Then last Thursday (21st), the Health Services app got an update that fixed it and it worked up until sleep tracking (in the morning nothing worked again without me changing anything. Also it seemed not to have tracked stories walked up in the meantime).

For reference, why I even tried rolling back Health Services and the Fitbit Wear app: I have seen this (live heart rate but no actual storing, analyzing and syncing of it) once before. A while back when I was stupid enough to manually install a Health Services update while a had a training manually running. The tracking broke when the update installed. That was able to be fixed by simply killing the app, restarting and deleting caches. I lost all the between the update install and reset, but it worked again for anything else. With the exact same behavior, just without me triggering it, I thought the chances are high that the issue would be between the same 2 apps as before.

Any further suggestions for troubleshooting and investigating the reason for this failure to get it actually fixed?

[Gr4ndp4]

Hi, @Ray519 , welcome to the community. Can you please let us know which cellphone you are using and its OS? Fitbit setup requirements - Help explain some of the issues. It sounds as if you have a syncing problem. You may find these articles of interest Why won't my Fitbit device sync? - Android - Fitbit Help Center & How do Fitbit devices sync their data? - Fitbit Help Center . 

Please let us know how you get on by posting here again.

Cheers

[Ray519]

Aaand, after the watch was off for the night, it fixed itself this morning. Again. Lets see how long this lasts now...

[Ray519]

It was a Pixel 6 on Android 16, now its a Pixel 10 Pro on Android 16. Same issue after moving and reenabling sync with the new phone.

And the issues seemingly were never with the sync with the phone, but already on the Android Wear Fitbit app running on the watch.

Here an example to illustrate:

The watch app can see the heartrate, it knows how many minutes the heartrate has been in that zone, but it fails to accrue any "zone-minutes", which normally works in realtime (should just be the sum of all times in zones multiplied by some factor based on the each zone). And that specific function should be working even if the watch is offline and no phone is available, should it not?

Also here: the Wear Tile (home screen widget) shows the heartrate just fine and the history throughout the day.

But clicking that opens up the full app and its heartrate page, which remains empty except for the current live heart rate. The empty space should show a bar graph of the heart rate throughout the day based on the same data as shown in the tile, which the app obviously has access to. It also should show the range of heart rate (min. max.) of the day. Also not showing this.

Whatever does not sync over to the phone also was never shown in the Wear app to begin with. And whatever error happens, it should be happening on the watch, as it at the same time has all the data, but only shows it in some places...

It has now fixed itself without any visible app update (after being shut off for a few hours, which I have done lots of times before in trying to troubleshoot this). Lets hope this time it continues to work and does not break again all by itself within the day.

[Ray519]

Aand, it stopped processing again. Sometime around when I woke up this morning is when the heart rate is no longer being processes and recorded in the app. I changed nothing, I woke up (it tracked some sleep) and charged the watch for a bit and it no heart rate after.

Very annoying problem. Makes the watch pretty much useless for any tracking if you never know when it will actually track sth. and when not.

[Gr4ndp4]

Hi, @Ray519 have you checked that the Fitbit app on your watch is up to date? It will not update automatically. I have a PW2 and the process on the watch is to squeeze the button on the side of the watch>swipe up to the Play Store app> swipe up again to the bottom>manage apps> and outstanding updates will be displayed and can be installed.

I hope this helps.

Cheers 

[Ray519]

Yes I checked daily.

And it stopped working in the first place without an update to the Fitbit wear app, then worked after I had uninstalled all updates, failed again on updating to the then current version and has started and stopped working again multiple times on the current version without user-visible updates to anything related to fitbit or sensors or OS.

So I don't think the Fitbit App version plays much into the underlying issue and no update of it has yet solved the problem. It must either be a server-side thing or Fitbit switching features around server-side (like google likes to do in many Apps and like the Fitbit wear app does for its new design) or it must be some other intermittent issue with some underlying system.

Sadest part is that it just looks like the Fitbit app is completely unreliable and broken. Fitbit support will not acknowledge this as a known issue they are trying to solve, nor will they try to investigate the issue. So I am thinking that my switching to a newer Pixel Watch, like I had already planned might be a bad move, since its tied to Fitbit software that will very possibly be just as unreliable and broken on new hardware as it is on my current one.

If there were at least error messages from the app about the hardware or OS parts of the Pixel Watch, I would not have to doubt that replacing the hardware would solve the issue...

[Ray519]

And magically, without a further update to any app related to fitbit it has been working again for the last 2 days and even stair tracking has started working again all by itself...

[Rachel_F]

I have this same exact issue. 

PW1, Pixel 8 pro 

My heart rate information stopped tracking at about 1pm on Sunday 8/31. As far as I know, nothing was changed or updated at that time. 

I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting the watch, I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling Fitbit on the watch and phone, of course power cycling both devices several times, and finally a factory reset of the watch. 

As Ray519 mentioned, the issue seems to be something to do with the software in the watch itself. The heat rate sensor is working and shows pulse live, but the daily info isn't logging, heart rate zone information isn't populating per workout, and caloric burn isn't adjusting for heart rate during exercise. 

Has anyone been able to look at this? Hopefully we are not left hanging. 

Open to suggestions! 

Thank you

[Ray519]

If its still broken for you, not entirely sure, but I think what correlated most with it to start working again (even just for a while as at the start) was leaving the watch off for a few hours (which I usually did after letting the watch charge fully, which should have given it time to download whatever silent updates and maintenance there may be).

Because I assume that whatever they did to fix it for me, which still seems to hold (for now),whether that was a server-side change or some silent Play System / Services update that does not show up in the play store, I would assume its available for all.

[RiekoC]

Hello @Rachel_F 

We're not sure why some Pixel Watch users are having issues with seeing their heart rate data in the Fitbit app.

For now, would you please submit this issue using the Feedback option in the Fitbit app:

• Tap your picture in the upper right of the Today page in the Fitbit app
• Tap Feedback in the menu that opens
• Complete the prompts & submit

The Feedback reports are received by the team for review. 

[Rachel_F]

Thanks! After first reading your posts the other day, I did try this, but there has been no change. 

I'll keep trying it. There doesn't seem to be any other course of action as far as I can tell. 

I'll report back if I find a fix.

---

Hi RiekoC, thanks for chiming in. I've submitted the issue as feedback, as you suggested. 

Do you know if there is any way to connect directly with support services to help troubleshoot and find a fix? The whole point of the watch being a Fitbit device is to track fitness, which obvious I can't do if the fitness tracking features on the watch are not functioning. I was planning to get a new pw once this one hits end of life, but now I'm contemplating switching platforms, since it seems like a software issue. 

Is there anyone else I to can reach out to for help? 

Thanks

[RiekoC]

Hello @Rachel_F 

Here's the link for Support (<-- click). Complete the prompt in Step 1. Tap Continue in Step 2 (ignore Resources) to get to Step 3 which has the contact options, including calling. 

I hope that Support will be able to help you.