The redesigned Android Fitbit app is rolling out!

[LizzyFitbit]

Hello everyone!

I would like to announce that the redesigned Fitbit app starts rolling out today! This new app will help you reach your goals, and bring the health and wellness information right on hand.

Check out our latest blog for how to get the most out of the new app. 

Note: Please be patient if you don't see the update right away, as it will take some time to roll out completely.

Happy stepping!

[DMM71]

That’s the plan. We will be looking elsewhere. No more Fitbit for us. 

[JacquieC1]

I’ve gotta say this new update has virtually made the Fitbit a toy and a waste of time. Why take a perfectly adequate app and make a complete balls up of it???? The heart rate monitor is farcical - light, moderate, vigorous and peak mean nothing and the colours chosen blend very nicely together making it pointless to even try to work out where you need to change what you’re doing. If you do more than one exercise in a day, I’ve yet to work out how to get back to any of the previous exercises on that day and don’t get me started on looking at the gps maps. This WAS a great app, now it’s just a gimmick, extremely disappointing. When the watch dies I will be moving away from Fitbit because as it stands it has become a toy.

[Minitat]

I have a Sense 2. I turned off auto detect exercise as it doesn’t start for 10 minutes and so doesn’t accurately track my exercise. However even with it switched off it still auto detects exercise and now I have 2 logs for every exercise, the manual start version with a map and correct start / end points and the auto start version. I can’t seem to get rid of the auto version. Since yesterday (presuming another app update) the map no longer shows for exercise even when manually tracked and I can’t seem to access GPS settings in the app or on my phone to see whether they are set up incorrectly. I think when I bought it didn’t switch it to automatically use GPS because of the battery run down but as I can’t any longer find the GPS setting I can’t tell! The new app is much less user friendly then the old one and even when I have gone into the settings I am less able to specify the items I want to see (some can’t be switched on / off and I can only keep the whole cluster). I have used Fitbit since 2015 but since the Google takeover I am less and less happy (I don’t want to move to a Google account), with this latest update I think it may be the final push to move away from Fitbit!

[waynecz]

@Minitat  - I had a Sense and now using a Sense 2 since the original update.  The maps originally appeared but now had no street names and were thick and childlike drawings of maps and the route you took was even worse it looked like a child with a big red marker marked where you went.  Basically the new map feature was useless compared to the maps prior to the update.  Prior when I walked thru my neighborhood it literally had enough precision and detail that it tracked which side of the street I walked on.  The new map was a joke.  The second update about a week later removed the map feature completely and I have the GPS set correctly etc.  The update removed about 20 features I identified in a previous post and Fitbit is supposedly going to give back 4 or 5 of them.  They are like a dictator who withholds food from its people then gives them a few morsels every now and then to keep them alive.  Go ogle is doing the same with Fitbit users.  I have used multiple Fitbit devices for ten plus years (2013), as had my wife, and I have bought ones for friends and family.  No more.  Their app is no longer worth the purchase price of any Fitbit.  New users that don't know any better might think the app is useful, but those of us who have been with Fitbit, know since Goo gle purchased them, we have continually seen the app be degraded and features removed.  The only thing Goog le  cares about is selling the Premium feature or getting you to move to a Pix el watch.  I have voted with my Black Friday purchases and my wife will be getting a G device for Christmas as am I, and they are already purchased.  I have looked at their app, and except for the food logging which has to be done by an outside app, it is a better app than Fitbit's is now.  And Fitbit actually screwed up the calorie counting as one of their downgrades also.  As a customer who touted Fitbit as being affordable with the best app for years to friends and family, I can no longer support them with my hard earned dollars.  Off to a new world where the maker has been doing GPS devices for years so I am hoping their maps are better.  

[TedMittelstaedt]

It'a an awful app.  But I back-reved to the earlier app and turned off the auto update on it and I've been using the earlier app for the last couple of months.  Instructions to back-rev and side-load the old app have been posted to this thread as well as links to download the old app.  You can be sure that Google's servers are monitoring this closely.  Google COULD be filing takedown notices right and left but they aren't.  If you REALLY want the old app back my suggestion is uninstall the new app, sideload the old app, and disable updates.  Every time Google's servers see a request coming in they know if it's from the old app or the new app and the more old app requests they see the more they are going to believe they have no choice but to abandon the new app.

However I am using it with a Charge 5 and unfortunately the GPS in the Charge 5 is weak.  When I start on a run I always get the watch showing "connected" to GPS before I tap the run button and even then MANY times the watch will not actually get accurate GPS coordinates for several blocks.  And I have also found that sometimes when I do runs out at diffferent locations (a couple times a month I'll run out at the coast, etc.) the watch won't even get coordinates at all.  Then the app can't draw a map.  The problem gets a lot worse if the battery is down lower than 80%.

And I have also found if I do a very complex run with a lot of direction changes, zigzagging, etc. that the watch GPS will lose sync.  Then the map that is drawn is terrible.  NOT accurate at all.

I realize the Charge 5 is a "cost reduced" version of their other watches.  But if you are going to make a cheaper version of your product you subtract features but the features you leave in must still be reliable.

I didn't buy the Charge 5.  I merely expressed to my wife it might be cool to have a fitness tracker when I started running.  The Charge 5 was a present from her.  After getting it I began to realize how motivating the health tracking data really is.  The fact is that when you start an exercise regemin you really DON'T see a lot of changes by just looking in the mirror it takes months for changes to be obvious.  But the changes show up in the trackers a lot quicker.

The Charge 5 served it's purpose as an inexpensive introduction to Fitbit's products.  But, it's clear that Google bought Fitbit to both kill a competitor and raid that competitor's customer base.  I know one of these days I'm going to get sick enough of the Charge 5's GPS limitations that I'll buy another watch.  It sure won't be Fitbit even if Google still maintaines that name as a brand, the way GM maintains Chevrolet as a brand.  But would it be the Pixel watch???  It might have been - but I'm going to be watching how Google treats it's Fitbit customers.  If they do a mea-culpa and apologize then release an app update that fixes all the problems and puts the features they stole from you folks back, I'll consider it.  But for now I've basically emotionally divorced myself from future Google fitness products.   I've been in and out of software development for years and I've seen the symptoms before.  I can assure you that all of the best Fitbit app developers quit Fitbit when Google took over.  They didn't like the Google culture, or they didn't get raises they were promised, or they didn't feel included into the main Google body, or maybe the Google manager who is in charge of the product is just a jerk.  Whatever it is, the key people left and Google hired a bunch of newbies who didn't understand how the old app worked, even though they had the source code to it right there in front of them - and are busy reengineering the app from ground up.  As the old saying goes, the Big Boys left the playground and the people now don't understand how the toys worked and aren't competent to work on them.  The "new app" you see is THEIR efforts and reflects their lower level of understanding and competence.

[Yinkus]

I deleted the Fitbit app on my iPhone, restarted the phone, and reinstalled the new app. There’s so much difference: I can see my battery percentage and many other parameters I couldn’t see before. It synced perfectly with my Fitbit Inspire 3. Please, everyone do the same and enjoy the difference. It’s much better, great improvement!

[Daggermtb]

Links??Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE device

[KBWEagle275]

Amen on that It's crazy what they've done 

[TobiasF]

@biwicki22231k tracking attempts! Never forgot that Google main business is advertising, not fitness, not search nor email simply advertising

[SunsetRunner]

Google I have left. I cannot even send this message because of the strange error code and when I try to correct it you falsely accuse me of flooding the forum. Apparently I cannot divide the date using a minus sign, such as "number minus number minus number". Hello Google I am not doing maths, it's a date format.

Let's see if this is different enough to get past the bot (another reason to leave Google).

Today 27/11/2023 (that's dd-mm-yyyy Google are you listening?) at 08:00 GMT (that's a UK timezone Google are you listening?) I took off my Charge 5 and put it away. That's it! Bye-bye Fitbit. I have had enough. I have a new device from another manufacturer and I have been running it alongside the Charge 5 for a week until I got used to it. Guess what, it's better than the Charge 5 and the app is better than the Fitbit app. 

I am a little sad about this considering how long I had had a Fitbit. It was once good. It was once enjoyable. 

[AlanBFit]

Does it surprise you?

[DMM71]

@TedMittelstaedt Sorry. I am not very good with technology. Could you please explain how I sideload the old app?  

[RCFriday]

Sadly in this forum you are not replying directly to fitbit or their
administrators. You are instead replying to another fitbit user who is sick
of the whole thing. I tried this forum as there was no direct way to
complain and ever since then everyone is being made to reply to me if they
want to say anything. As you can imagine my phone goes at all hour of the
day and night with others trying to make the same complaints.
I totally agree with all posts and I am so disgusted at their avoidance of
dealing with their complaints. Can I suggest you use the Google play app to
give your rating and comments.
Hope you have more success than me!

Hi, sorry I don't know but someone else has given this information on the
chat. I am just another person with a fitbit who put a complaint on this
chat to find that everyone is replying to me. I am not linked in any way to
google/fitbit other than having a fitbit watch. Sadly google/fitbit has
nowhere for people to vent their frustration/complain other than to someone
who has exactlythe same problem...

[acidtest]

@DMM71

Go to main community page, section: platform, subsection: F-tb-t dot com Dashboard, topic: Has anyone found a way to reinstall the old version of the app? currently at the end of page 4 (last topic).

Moderator Edit: Formatting

[waynecz]

@TobiasF @biwicki222 On 11/25/23 I loaded the DuckDuckGo app tracking blocking and made it my default search engine, and Fitbit alone, since that date, has sent out 143,000+ tracking attempts via Optimizely.  So it's averaging about 35,750 tracking attempts per day.  What's amazing though is some other apps are even higher than that.  Anyone using a Fitbit should switch their default search engine to DuckDuckGo and use the app tracking blocking software they have as an add-on.  It is absolutely scary how many app tracking messages are being sent and how many companies are tracking us in some apps.  I am hoping this will improve phone battery life but haven't been able to verify that yet, and in about a month I will most likely be off the platform anyway with the new G devices I have purchased for me and my wife.  

[SunsetRunner]

I agree with @waynecz  , I also have the DuckDuckGo app and have seen the same issues with Optimizely. I have also blocked that site on my Pihole DNS & DHCP server based on a Raspberry Pi.

[elliebanellie]

Came to give feedback on the update - the heart rate graph is practically useless. I see y’all tried to make the graph interactive but it doesn’t really work, so now I can’t see what my peak heart rate is anymore which is a huge bummer. Adding dark mode is essential too. Thanks 🙏

[PamelaJS]

Hi Google, 

You keep telling me my fitbit battery is low.

Guess what? I know!

Despite using fitbit loyally since major surgery in 2014 I have now switched to a competitor,  who I love just as much as I loved you AND gives me the extras for free.

You can't treat your loyal customers as something you stood in without consequence. 

Moderator Edit: Word choice

[SunsetRunner]

It's become painful using the app a snail moves quicker. Still can't log a searched for food it becomes blank with a continuous searching icon. Have to keep refreshing to synch Fitbit to app. Graphics are dull im so not inspired anymore. 

[Brian9969]

Horrible. The app was what I liked. Will be changing to something else!!!