Transferring Personal Music to Ionic

[ErickFitbit]

Update 10/6/17 -- Thanks for sharing your experiences with attempting to transfer your playlists onto Ionic. After reading through the discussions in this thread, I noticed some users where successful and others not so much.

Users are running into various blockers that are preventing a successful transfer. I've compiled the complications into the following categories:

• Stuck on "Looking for Ionic" message on Fitbit connect even though Ionic/Fitbit App/Computer on same Network) 

Cannot connect unless a force manual IP address for Ionic is done(entering IP address manually)

• Frozen at "Determining Transfer Time" (check out @xTommyG's workaround here)
• Stuck on "Transfer in progress" (try restarting your Ionic and then reestablish Wi-Fi connection on Ionic)
• Ionic won't connect to Wi-Fi (see Why won't my Fitbit watch connect to Wi-Fi? for tips)

I've created a guide to help anyone that's having issues with this. So, without further ado, let's start transferring some music!  

Requirements

• Windows 10 (PC) or Mac computer 
• Wi-Fi capable computer: Must be able to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi (direct ethernet connections will not work)
• Must connect to a 2.4GHz frequency network (5 GHz frequency is not supported)
• Fitbit Connect Software (Win10/Mac) must be installed
• Ionic battery life must be above 40% to transfer music (Keeping Ionic charging during this process is recommended)
• Create at least 1 playlist of songs or podcasts in iTunes or Windows Media Player to download to your watch. You can also create playlists in the Fitbit Music app using the drag-and-drop feature to add individual tracks. 
• To download music files, they must fall under one of the following audio file types: 
  • Windows 10
    • MP3 files
    • MP4 files with AAC audio
    • WMA files
  • Mac
    • MP3 files
    • AIFF
    • MP4 files with AAC audio

• If you use iTunes, make sure you approve the app to share playlists with your watch: Open iTunes on your computer > Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Share iTunes Library XML with other applications > OK.

 

• For best results, perform this process as close to your router as possible to reduce any interference 

Transfer Music Checklist

1. Restart computer
2. Make sure your computer is connected to a strong Wi-Fi network (note: personal or work network that requires a password to connect is recommended - 2.4 GHz) 
3. Restart phone
4. Restart Ionic
5. In the Fitbit app go to Account/Media/Manage Wi-fi Networks and remove all saved networks
6. Connect back to your Wi-Fi network 
7. Plug-in your watch to charge
8. On your Ionic, tap Music app and then Transfer Music: 
9. Ionic will show this screen when connection is established: 
10. Open Fitbit Connect and click on Manage My Music 
11. When prompted, follow the on-screen instructions on your Mac/PC to choose the playlists you want to download to your watch. After you choose a playlist, the download starts automatically. Download/transfer times vary based on how large your playlist is (was able to download 1 hours worth of music in about 6-8 minutes).

Note: For faster download times, you might want to avoid large playlists. The more songs you transfer under one playlist the longer download times you will experience. Should you run into an issue please let us know where in the process you get stuck.

Thanks everyone for your continued insight and feedback in this thread. I hope all of you Ionic users get transferred, drop your phones on your dressers and start working out to the music you most enjoy, phone free!

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Update 9/28/17 -- The latest version of Fitbit Connect for Mac is now live! The update can now be found on the setup page. Please update if you haven't already so you can start transferring your favorite tunes to your Ionic!

• Download Fitbit Connect for Mac: www.fitbit.com/setup

• Download Fitbit Connect for PC: http://cache.fitbit.com/FitbitConnect/FitbitConnect-v2.0.2.6954-2017-09-28.exe 

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Everyone -- To transfer music with Fitbit Connect, please click the applicable link below to download and install the Fitbit Connect software:

• Download Fitbit Connect for Mac: www.fitbit.com/setup

• Download Fitbit Connect for PC: http://cache.fitbit.com/FitbitConnect/FitbitConnect-v2.0.2.6954-2017-09-28.exe

With the Music app on Fitbit Ionic, you can store and play several hours worth of your favorite songs and podcasts right on your wrist. After you download playlists to your watch, connect Bluetooth headphones or another audio device to listen to your tracks.

You need a Windows 10 PC or a Mac connected to Wi-Fi to download music and podcasts to your watch. Keep in mind you can only transfer files that you own or don’t require a license. 

If you live in the United States, you can also use the Pandora app to download stations to your watch. 

For full instructions, I recommend checking out "How do I listen to music and podcasts on my Fitbit watch?"

[MissUrka]

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@Misterbit wrote:

Make sure all Bluetooth is turned off within a country mile.

"Life is good" ⚽️

---

This made me laugh. So, thank you. The Ionic troubleshooting experience has been very frustrating for a lot of us so sometimes a little laugh helps take the edge off! 

[freezydk]

The Fitbit Ionic is the worst tracker ever. Software unstable, and I have given up long time ago transfering music to it....succeded with one song only....My worst investment ever.

[simonconran]

Ok try this:

1, use a Mac
2, Make sure the Mac and Ionic are on the same wifi disconnect the Ethernet
3, place on top of router / access point
4,transfer 1 play list at a time


Kind regards,

Simon J Conran

Moderator edit: personal info displayed

[GTPune]

It has been said in bits and pieces several times on this thread but summarizing it for one more time....

1. Music transfer is possible only from PC FitBit app and over wifi only. Although FB app allows transfer of some watch apps and clock faces over Bluetooth and even the new firmware transfer happens on BT (if wifi connectivity fails) but somehow for music transfer, wifi is the ONLY transfer option provided and that too 2.4Ghz only. Wifi 5Ghz is not supported!! To start the process, connect the Ionic to your PC FB app over BT and let is sync. Once sync is done, shut down BT on your PC (and ofcourse on your phone also) because as per FB's own admission, BT can interfere with wifi.

2. It seems the wifi receiver in the Ionic hardware is a tiny one so keep the Ionic very very very close to your router and in clear line of sight of it.

3. Keep the Ionic on charging because if battery level goes below a certain level, Ionic wifi shuts down.

4. If you are tech savvy and know how to do it, assign a static IP for Ionic on your router and configure the FB app to look for Ionic on that IP only.

5. When FB app gives the message "Looking for your watch", it may have found the watch but it may be doing other things with your music library. Many tech savvy users on this forum have determined that every time you try to transfer music, FB app does "God knows what" with your music library; indexing, re-indexing, reading playlists, looking for files etc. More work it has to do on your library, longer it will take. While it is doing all that, your watch will lose the connection to your wifi, because it has been programmed to disconnect from wifi when nothing is transferred for a certain amount of time. And you will be stuck in a vicious circle.

6. To reduce the load on FB app:
6.1 if you have re-organized your music files on our hard drive after creating the playlists that you have been using with your music player on your PC, delete all those playlists or move them out of folder that FB app is monitoring for music. Reason being, your PC music players are able to cope with movement of music files on your physical hard drives but when FB app encounters such playlists, it takes a long long time to resolve the situation and by resolving I do not mean it finds the files at their new location; it simply puts an "!" mark against those playlists with message "files not found". So you will be better off "hiding away" your existing playlists and creating brand new playlists.
6.2 Create a separate folder away from your main music library folder and copy only the music that you want to transfer to Ionic in it. Configure this new folder as your music folder in FB app so that it has to sort only a small number of files.
6.3 FB player recognizes playlists created in Windows Media Player (WMP) or iTunes (if you set up iTunes to share its playlist files). Groove player does not allow sharing of playlists so don't use Groove.

7. You can create new playlists manually in FB app but that is not advisable for two reasons:
7.1 while you are doing that your watch may lose connection to wifi and you will be stuck in vicious circle.
7.2 once you have synced such a manually created playlist with your Ionic and now you want to add another song to that playlist; what I and many other people have observed that, FB app first un-syncs whole playlist from watch and re-syncs everything again. Its a longer process and thus prone to failure. For playlists created in WMP or iTunes, you can add/remove items to those playlists in respective players before opening the FB app. Once FB app loads, it syncs only the delta.

8. Be patient.

9. Once you have found a spot that works in your house, stay at the same spot every time you do the transfer process.

Hope this helps.

[SunsetRunner]

OK I have to agree the music transfer feel like a 1990's tech startup alpha release. How could they have made this any more non-current technology compatible. There device is dependent on so many other things its mind boggling. Messing around with BT and wifi and needing a separate PC to connect and create playlists in WMP or Itunes what a joke. Their app should be able to connect to the device every time no issue and they should manage the playlists and songs and transfer them back and forth to the device not needing to sync with WMP library. Its not like its difficult to write a playlist creator software heck they could have even used one the 200 open source ones.

I think I should send it back and go for the Garmin FORERUNNER 645, sure it costs more but it works. Maybe Fitbit could learn something by using competitors products or have a core user group that can give feedback about terrible decisions the development team has made.

[MissUrka]

@SunsetRunner

I think I should send it back and go for the Garmin FORERUNNER 645, sure it costs more but it works. Maybe Fitbit could learn something by using competitors products or have a core user group that can give feedback about terrible decisions the development team has made.

I am a big fan of the 650. Even earlier models. 

[jmporter92]

This worked for me! Thanks!

[Justin774]

Totally agree. I'm bought the Ionic watch mainly for the Fitness + music storage. Can't believe how difficult it can be to transfer music to Ionic. Bought 2 weeks ago and multiple calls to support helpline and still no help. They even advised that there was something wrong with watch....think more problem with software and interface. Apple Itunes to IPOD Etc was never this difficult. Plug lead in and Syn without all these problems. Loosing the will to live with this Ionic. Never recommend to anyone. Garmin and IPOD here we come again

[GTPune]

@SunsetRunner It seems they did an engineering blunder by putting a weak wifi receiver in the hardware, perhaps cost cutting or they were trying to save on battery power, but other than that, the problems seem to be on the app side, not the watch side.

They seem to have a home grown music transfer app which was completely unnecessary. There are plenty of options available off the shelf. While other functions (eg firmware transfer) use BT as backup if wifi fails, this functionality is not implemented for music transfer. Lazy programming? Or the team working on music transfer module does not have a BT guy :)? Android and iOS apps don't have music transfer function, which again is the problem on the app side. What astonishes me that these are pure programming fixes that FB can get fixed but they seem to be completely indifferent to this matter.

[Compact]

Not sure if this has been noted (probably has) as 33 pages of replies, but I couldn't transfer until I swapped my win10 wifi to Network Profile Public.

And yes I agree with everyone, the music transfer process is rubbish and a black spot on the Watch.

I hope they come up with a better process, but I won't hope my breath.

I won't be recommending this watch to others wanting to use it for running and music

[Indaskys]

Same with the weather app

From the office

Moderator edit: personal information displayed

[Compact]

My hope has been cut short.

Trying to transfer 1 podcast in  playlist (Kermode & Mayo's Film Review).

Watch hanging off my BT homehub.

The transfer stall, I tried to remove, that stalled. Now stuck with the icon spinning in Fitbit windows, the Podcast on the phone corrupt and cannot play.

And not able to transfer or remove.

The app is so rubbish, there is no progress report. The top bar sits at "Determining Estimated Sync Time" and the icon spins.

It seems removing takes as long as Syncing.

I may give up and just use my phone (which does beg the question of if I need the watch in the first place, as I still have to carry my phone...

[Osmar]

"To start the process, connect the Ionic to your PC FB app over BT and let
is sync. "

It doesn't connect.

I just left 10 songs in my PC. Deleted all others.

The ionic is right in front of the router.

The wifi is 2.4 and set up.

The ionic connects to the wifi and 30 seconds later, disconnects.

5 hours later, it still on "looking for your watch".

The Deezer app doesn't sync too.

[freezydk]

Sounds familiar !!

[jackyyy]

I use TuneFab Spotify Music Converter for ripping Spotify Music to MP3 and then transfer to Ionic which is so convenient for me to play my favorite music with Ionic.

[Osmar]

This is useless if we can't transfer music to the ionic..

[Compact]

I finally managed to get a playlist on to my watch. The 1st that kept failing was a podcast 98MB in one . The second was an album 70MB made of 16 tracks. 

My guess is one large mp3 is too much, whilst multiple smaller mp3's are easier to transfer. 

It means that any podcasts I want on my watch I'll have to split into smaller chunks. 

Faff but better than nothing at all. 

Pc, Bluetooth off, 2.4 wifi both Pc and watch, wifi set to public in win10, only 2 playlist in iTunes  

[Sophialing]

Could I confirm that which music file you have? Apple Music? iTunes audiobooks? Audible audiobooks? If yes, the same situation I met with you. Fortunately, I have found out a great software called DRM Audio Converter Mac that can work well for me. You can have a try of it. Hope it's helpful for you too. 

[Compact]

I'm old school with my own MP3's in iTunes on a PC.

Not down with the streaming kids 🙂 

[PeteG-1]

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@Compact wrote:

I'm old school with my own MP3's in iTunes on a PC.

Not down with the streaming kids 🙂 

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@CompactMe too, but NOT because I don't want to purchase digitally-distributed content, but because I'm acutely aware of the pitfalls.  I've done some DRM design work, and it's a mess, to put it nicely, IMO.

@Sophialing Be cautious.  Sometimes, removing DRM for personal use, on multiple devices is within the confines of that media contact (many allow for varying types of fairly tight, simple use).  

On others, it's very illegal, depending on how/where you're using it, some prohibit it at all. 

Or it can fall into one of the "maybe its' okay, depending on the target device, and a whole host of other stuff", which gets really complicated, fast.

I don't know the numbers these days, but my guess is that most stuff from this era falls into the latter.

Not a very often "enforced" issue, but "odd" things can happen, say if your removal mechanism doesn't preserve the original, and you have to sync it again, or similar...