How to quit Fitbit Connect?

[Topanlego]

Anybody know of a better way to quit Fitbit Connect app on a computer? Currently the only way is to quit the process using task manager (on PC) or activity monitor (on Mac).

[PureEvil]

@Topanlego,

Welcome to the community!

If you shut down Fitbit Connect on the computer, your Fitbit will stop syncing.  Is there any particular reason why you want to shut it down?

[Topanlego]

Why do you need to know why I want to shut it down?

I just want to shut it down when I want to without having to jump through hoops.

[LanuzaFitbit]

A warm welcome to the Forums @Topanlego! Hey @PureEvil.

@Topanlego I'm sure that @PureEvil is only asking in case you have any sort of issue that would make you want to close it. If that was the case, perhaps we could help you get that issue resolved. 

As for closing the software, have you tried to remove the dongle from the USB port of your computer? At the moment I do not have a dongle connected and my task manager doesn't show Fitbit Connect as open.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

[Topanlego]

I guess there's no way to do this from within the application. Why not have a Quit option? All applications in my menu bar that are not system applications have a quit option.

There is no particular issue other than I want to quit the application without having to manually stopping the process through the activity monitor on my Mac. It's one more icon in my menu bar that takes up space which I am short on already:

Full Menu Bar

As for the dongle, I don't have one as I sync through Bluetooth.

Most of the time I sync through my phone but will occasionally use the Fitbit Connect app for trouble shooting or if my phone is not available.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @Topanlego! Thanks for the clarification.

At this moment we do not have a quit option, like you said. I could absolutely see how it could be useful. I did see that you created a Suggestion to implement this. Thanks for your participation.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[Topanlego · Accepted solution]

For anybody who is using MacOS and looking for a solution here is a workaround.

First you need to open up the Automator app.

Next create a New Application.

In the application you want to add the Action 'Run Apple Script".

Enter the following script:

on run {input, parameters}

     tell application "Fitbit Connect Menubar Helper" to quit

     return input

end run

Save the new app you created and add it to the Dock for easy access.

Whenever you want to quit Fitbit Connect just launch the app and it will kill the Fitbit Connect Process.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hey @Topanlego!

That is a very good post, thanks for that. I'll be sure to spread it around to other users that have the same question. Great contribution!

If you have the time, you should visit our Discussion boards. You can find lots of different topics to talk about there.

Hope to see you around! 

[SmallGreyHippo]

If you have Alfred app, then you can set up a workflow for this. (I'm not 100% sure whether you need the Alfred power pack for this.)

Simply use the Keyword to AppleScript to Notification template within workflows (you could just use Keyword to AppleScript😞

As you can see, I have set a keyword of qfb. Pick your own, obviously.

The text within the AppleScript prompt at step 2 is:

on alfred_script(q) 
     tell application "Fitbit Connect Menubar Helper" to quit
     return input
end alfred_script

Hope this helps someone!

[LanuzaFitbit]

Welcome to the Community @SmallGreyHippo.

Thank you very much for sharing that. Very interesting and I'm sure it will be useful! If you do not mind, can I reference your post in case someone asks about it in the future?

If you have any further questions, please let me know.

[samandtheband]

I've installed FitBit Connect exactly for this reason: I don't want my bluetooth phone always connected and there is no option to turn off the device bluetooth, so I tough "ok I will install this so I can chose when to sync". Guess what, I cannot chose when to sync! 

This is clearly done on purpose.

[PureEvil]

@samandtheband,

I know many folks are under the misconception that turning off Bluetooth on their phone is going to improve battery life, so I can understand why you may want to turn off syncing on your phone.

That said, for most folks with syncing problems they're struggling to sync consistently...  Is there a particular reason you'd want to put off syncing, I mean other than to deceive other folks in a challenge?

[samandtheband]

"I know many folks are under the misconception that turning off Bluetooth on their phone is going to improve battery life, so I can understand why you may want to turn off syncing on your phone."

How would that be a misconception? Turning off bluetooth on my phone improves the battery life on my phone! Probably you were talking about the fitbit battery 

Anyway I want to limit the amount of radiation my wrist is absorbing constantly whenever there is a sync, and given that I cannot turn off the bluetooth on my fitbit and I don't want to turn on and off the bluetooh of my phone anytime I want to sync I though that installing Fitbit connect would be the only way to perform an "on-demand" sync.

Apparently there isn't any way to do this and fitbit doesn't seems so bothered by this, actually it's doing everything it can to avoid such things and force all the users to be always connected.

I'm sure you are gonna tell me the amount of radiation is very small and safe, but this is not the point of the discussion here. 

If I want to quit an application or turn off a device or its bluetooth I MUST feel free to do so whenever I want and for whatever reason I want to. 

At this moment I can't do any of the mentioned choices and I feel very frustrated

[samandtheband]

Btw, I did write 2 messages in this thread and one magically disappeared. 

I did not received any notification if it did get flagged or any other reason, it's just gone.

Anybody know what might have happened?

[BruceBu]

@samandtheband, it is @PureEvil that suffers under a misconception (having Bluetooth on does decreases battery life in both your phone and Fitbit device). I would recommend uninstalling Fitbit connect and using either the Win10 or phone Apps. In both, you can go to settings for your particular device and there is a 'switch' for 'all day sync', simply switch it to 'off' and all background (~every 15 minutes) syncing will not take place..Immediately below that is an option for 'sync now' where you can to force a one time sync.  Of course, turning off syncing will not stop 'live data' which gives real time updates in the Apps, but does not have the large data bursts that occur during syncing with the mothership. However, there is also a switch for 'live data' on the same device settings page. If you turn it off, Bluetooth on your device will go into receive only mode (so it can be 'woken up' again) without significant emitted RF radiation or power consumption.   

I think the obviously false implication that Bluetooth does not consume power and suggesting that some people are under a 'misconception' (haha) that it does consume power (totally ridiculous), the lack of any suggested solutions to you problem, and  suggesting that the only reason for having control of your syncing is to somehow cheat in challenges; well, that pretty much tells us all we need to know about PureEvil..   

[PureEvil]

@samandtheband,

Let's do the math...

A Fitbit Zip uses a conventional CR2025 battery and it lasts up to 6 months on a single battery.  The battery capacity of a CR2025 battery is 160 mAh, so typical capacity drain per day is... maybe 1 mAh (160 / 180 days).  The battery capacity on a Samsung Galaxy S8 is 3000 mAh… Over 18x that of a Zip battery...  So assuming that the Bluetooth communication has similar battery consumption on your phone, then it's also under 1 mAh per day…  1/3000 of the consumption rate of your phone (assuming you charge everyday), or 0.03% of the consumption rate of your phone.

Do I think Bluetooth LE communication takes up that much power?  No, I don't.  How do you explain a Fitbit Zip lasting for months on a single 160 mAh battery?  Proportionally, I don't think Bluetooth LE emits that much radiation (conservation of energy).

Obviously, Bluetooth uses some (non-zero) amount of charge...  but really, putting off syncing your Fitbit to conserve 1/3000th of your phone's daily charge?  You're better off turning down the brightness of your screen or turning off some apps from running in the background.  They're more effective ways to preserve battery. 

So while I on some level can understand the reasoning behind being mindful of a device that I carry on my person emitting radiation, I'd worry about the device that is consuming 3000 mAh per day (your mobile phone) about 3000 times more than the device that consumes under 1 mAh per day.  How much radiation is absorbed during five minutes of smartphone use (your fingers literally on a screen that is emitting light)?

Incidentally, if one of your neighbors (either work or home), is running Fitbit Connect, you can't avoid syncing.  Fitbit connect syncs all nearby Fitbits; it's the way it was designed to work.

And no, @BruceBu, the reason why I asked about putting off syncing is because I can certainly understand why you'd turn off Bluetooth on your phone to conserve battery due to syncing...  As stated above, I believe (before I get flamed or misquoted) that the battery conserved by putting off syncing is negligible compared to many other settings on your phone, but whatever makes you happy.

That said, @samandtheband also suggested putting off syncing from Fitbit connect (a computer), if you can explain how putting off syncing on a computer can conserve battery on a phone that already has Bluetooth off, I'd love to hear the reasoning behind that one.  Yeah, I didn't think so.

So from the first post, the issue is that: "Guess what, I cannot chose when to sync!"  I asked the question because ultimately I'd like to address not necessarily what he's trying to do (delay syncing), but instead what he is trying to accomplish by doing that (conserving battery no longer made sense once he mentioned Fitbit connect).

A great many of the posts here in the forums are structured around the inability to sync.  Occasionally, we'll see a post about someone wanting to avoid syncing and typically (I'm only going by correlations here, having read many posts) it's because they want to be incognito in a challenge so that they may blindside their opponents, hence my question.  One woman even suggested she may leave her Fitbit in the car because her neighbor or roommate was running Fitbit connect and it synced automatically.  I can probably find that thread if it means that much to you.

If anything, I had entered a feature request for an option to automatically boot people from challenges for not syncing.  Of course, now you'll probably claim that I somehow backdated that feature request by 2.5 years to shatter your characterization of...  "well, that pretty much tells us all that we need to know about PureEvil."

Lastly, turning off Bluetooth on your phone may also affect the reliability of your syncing.  I was helping a friend of mine over SMS who had many sync problems with her Charge 2, the thread started on 10/26, this is how it ended nearly two months later: 

[BruceBu]

@PureEvil Sorry, not interested.

[samandtheband]

@PureEvil thanks for taking the time to write your long reasoning.

This might make sense or maybe it might not.

You logic is right, unfortunately reality is not: I have an "old" phone (3 years old) and turning on bluetooth does haves my battery life.

Anyway that was not my point neither the point of the conversation.

I quote myself: "If I want to quit an application or turn off a device or its bluetooth I MUST feel free to do so whenever I want and for whatever reason I want to".  

I removed the desktop app immediately because an application that I can't quit is garbage.

I also do not care about challenges or social-thinghy, just track privately my own personal data. And preferably when I decide to do so.

[PureEvil]

@samandtheband,

That's fair.

There may be other things afoot when turning on Bluetooth and syncing.  I seem to remember that on recent versions of Android, in order to communicate through Bluetooth, you needed to turn on location services... that may also affect your battery life.  I don't personally use an Android phone, so I can't attest to that one way or the other; they're just posts that I've read here on the forum.

You're right that Fitbit connect was intended to run and continue running.  There's no straightforward way to shut it down.  That said, I found it to be pretty unobtrusive (doesn't seem to take up much space, processing power, etc.), and I rarely notice that it's running.

However, if you're willing to continue to run it, there's a more straightforward way to keep it from syncing (assuming that you're running Windows)...  Unplug the Fitbit dongle.  Fitbit connect requires the dongle to sync on Windows (the Mac version will sync through just Bluetooth, since there's no Fitbit App on the Mac).

If you're going to put off syncing, be mindful that Fitbit trackers keep detailed data for seven days (five days for some models) and summarized data for thirty days.  If you sync at least every five days, you won't lose any information.

Apologies to @BruceBu, somehow I seem to unintentionally push his buttons.  Really, I'm just trying to respond to posts here; he wasn't even on the thread on my initial response.

I hope this helps.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hey @PureEvil, @samandtheband and @BruceBu.

Thanks for sharing your feedback on the matter.

Perhaps you could look into posting about quitting the Fitbit Connect in our Feature Suggestions board. Other users could then comment and vote on your idea to show their support.

Let me know if you have any further questions.