Autotrack swimming not working

[Ranas2]

Hi all,

I have a Fitbit Ionic. I want to autotrack swimming, as the manual swimming is not giving heart rate.

I only succeeded once to autotrack swimming. I have switched it off and on in the app that day. I hoped it would track the next day, but not... It's still on in the app (10 minutes), but not working 😐

I would like to see my heart rate, calories burned, number of laps and distance. That's why I would like the autotrack...

Can somebody help me?

I'm already thinking of tracking it as walking and then change it to swimming, but then I don't have the number of laps...

Why is it not working? Can somebody help me?

Thanks in advance!

[NellyG]

I dont know why it is not working. Mine has when I have tried it. BUT even if you track your heart rate using the Ionic for swimming it is definitely not accurate (which is why it turns off on the exercise app) Mine was way higher than it should have been, so the calories burnt and active minutesbare not accurate anyway. The lights dont travel through water as they do through air so there is no way to get an accurate heary rate using that type of sensor.

If you track it as walking you wont be able to edit the name afterwards. You can only edit the name on Workout. And as i said the calories wont be accurate.

Have you tried restarting your Ionic several times to see if that gets it auto recognising? Worth a try

Restart your tracker

[Ranas2]

@NellyG thanks for your reply. Restarting did not solve the problem.

I contacted Fitbit. They answered following:

"While you can choose to swim using any of the four most common strokes (freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly), we recommend swimming freestyle for the best results. 
We also recommend you to change the time of the auto recognition to 15 minutes."

I changed the autotrack to 15 minutes. I normally swim breaststroke, but tried now after about 100 meters breaststroke, 50 meters of freestyle, then again breaststroke, after about 15 minutes again 50 meters freestyle, then again breastroke and around the end again 50 meters freestyle.

And now it is indeed autotracking swimming! Hope this will stay like this!

[NellyG]

I hope it stays working too! I isually start my swims with about 15 minutes of breast stroke and then swap to about a half hour of freestyle. I have never had problems with either stroke.

[DavideFitbit]

Hi @Ranas2, it's good to see you around in the Community forums. 

Thanks for taking the time to share all the details and the information that was provided to you from the Customer Support team, as you mentioned, it is recommended to use freestyle for the best results. Also, at the moment, heart-rate tracking is disabled during your swim workout. 

It's good to know that you've changed the autotrack time to 15 minutes and that you're not getting better results. For more information about swim tracking, you can check this article. 

I hope this helps.