Five Dots on Screen Charge 5

[CurlsinCO]

I have 5 dots towards the top of the screen that will not go away. I cannot navigate or double tap to remove. I have had the watch for less than one day.

Moderator edit: subject updated for clarity

[Peedee67]

Plug it in to the charger then on the usb plug itself there’s a button I think you click this 2 or 3 times to reset it

Kind Regards


Peter Donovan

[Jack1952]

Using the charger did not work for me.  What did work was using your phone app, change the clock face.You can then go back to your original clock face if you prefer.

[psychjd]

This is EXACTLY what happened with me (and around the same time as this post).  I also was using Target for my clock face.  I first followed the reset instructions using the charger, but it didn't work.  Per the post on this forum as the "best answer," I then contacted customer service by phone, who essentially told me to do the same thing.  When I said it didn't work, they told me to update my app.  Customer service then said to send them a picture of my Fitbit (in response to an email they sent), and they'd get back to me.  They never responded, but I remembered some posts that talked about the clock face being the possible issue.  However, I was having a devil of a time syncing with the (now updated) app for almost 24 hours, so I couldn't change my clock face.  When it FINALLY synced, I immediately changed my clock face...and voila!  Problem solved (as you and others have noted).  I just don't understand why customer service never mentioned changing the clock face as an option, nor did they ever respond to the email they asked me to send! 

[Jack1952]

psychjd,

I'm happy to hear that changing the clock face worked for you.

As to why Fitbit Customer Service does not respond or know of this fix, I do not know.

It is frustrating that they are not more helpful. At least we can communicate with the Forum.

[DavideFitbit]

Hi everyone, thank you for sharing that many of you were able to resolve by changing the clock face. Just as a follow up, could you please confirm if there is a specific clock face that you were having this problem with? 

@Jmartin1965 Thank you for your response. In addition to changing the clock face option, you can also complete the restart procedure mentioned earlier by the pressing the button on the charging cable: 

I'll be around. 

[Souper76]

Changing the clock face worked for me.  The one I had to change it from was target.

[Dmdragun]

@DavideFitbit  -- the Target clock face was the issue for me.  Once I changed it, issue resolved.

[BoerumHill]

I have the same issue. My Charge 5 is about 7 months old. Suddenly, the screen went dark, just displaying the row of 5 dots. I can not do a reset on the device since the screen is not responsive, I have tried the restart method using the charging cable (pressing button 3 times) and nothing changes. Does support have a solution for this problem?

[Chellette]

Change your watch face in your phone app. I had the same problem and this
worked for me.

[BoerumHill]

Thanks - switched to a new clock face and then back to my old one, This did
the trick and my Fitbit is now working as expected, Thanks for the tip!

[DannyFB]

Just now happened on mine. Never seen this before. Blank except for five rotated squares (not diamonds). From left to right (the squares at top): First one is greyed in. Second one is not filled in. Third one is filled in with blue. Fourth and Fifth are greyed in. Clearly (to me) this is a specific pattern that actually means something to whomever coded it back at Google-land.

What does it mean, please?

Good guess is that it doesn't mean "just reset it and hope it doesn't happen again". But, of course, that is what I'll try to do because otherwise the unit is trash. Got almost 6 months of use out of it.

[DannyFB]

Interesting that "Best Answer" was the old "unplug it and plug it back in".

It worked.

But I suspect we would all be very much more satisfied to know what actually went wrong with the device in the first place. What does that pattern of squares mean? It must actually mean something. Why else would there be five of the squares with a pattern of 'greyed' or 'empty' or 'blue'.

My Charge 5 has crapped out two time now since that phantom-wear "irregular heartbeat" firmware update. Possibly coincidence. But having 30 years in the software/firmware field I am inclined to dismiss coincidence. Somebody messed something up in firmware. Somebody else had already coded some sort of fault indication with the five squares. Those "Somebody's" aren't communicating with each other.

[DannyFB]

Total agreement. A significant part of Customer Satisfaction comes from acknowledging a problem exists and that somebody is actually working on it.

The pattern of the five squares, some filled in grey, some empty, one blue (in my case) without a doubt actually means something to some developer at Google (or perhaps no longer there).

Don't just tell all of us to "turn it off and back on a few times and see if that works....."

[BoerumHill]

Interesting. I too also had just installed the irregular heartbeat feature
in the past couple of days. Coincidence, maybe, but worth getting someone
in QA to take a closer look.

[Jack1952]

I'm happy it worked for you.

[Pciafullo]

I also had the 5 dots appear over the weekend. Pressing the charger button did not work. Changing the Target watch face did work. Note... Looks like they need to add more classy watch faces to choose from. They are all rather bright and busy. Thanks for the helpful fix!

[Yogaiki]

I've owned a Alta HR, Inspire, Inspire 2, Luxe, and now a Charge 5. Since owning a Luxe and Charge 5, I have always noticed that wearing my fitbit in the shower would always make the screen go bat**ahem** crazy. I know we are probably supposed to not wear our trackers in the shower or maybe turn on the water lock, but my mind is always in a haze before getting into the shower after hot yoga and this never happened to me before when I had the older trackers.

So I got the five green dots at the top of my display. Nothing on the screen but the five dots. And I tried to reset the tracker, but it wouldn't let me. I didn't read the new info, about connecting the tracker to the charger and pressing it in some sequence. Sounds good... but I thought about something... if the firmware is stuck on the dots and you can't reset it from the tracker, what's another way to reset it? Through the app? Not directly. But indirectly you can! I changed my watch face! I selected a different watch face, let it download, ignored all the "Unable to detect tracker" messages, let it finish installing, and noticed that the fitbit restarted and now shows my new watch face. Cool. Okay, now I selected my old watch face again, downloaded it, it restarted, and voila! Back to how it all was before.

So you can reset the fitbit from the app, just not directly!

Love and Yoga,

Clare

[Yogaiki]

My reply has inspired me to post a YouTube video on it, so if you search on YouTube "clare din Fitbit Charge 5" you'll find it.

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Hey, wait... I just read about the irregular heartbeat firmware update... my heartrate is always irregular after hot yoga and when I enter the shower!

[Edmond]

So what does it mean then?

[lily_f]

This is happening to me too.