Stop Charge 3 Counting Steps When Cycling

[missmuseli]

Hello,

Does anyone know if there is a way to stop the Charge 3 from step counting when cycling? Each time, I select the bike exercise before starting a ride. When I check the bike activity afterwards, it says that the ride has contributed 0 steps towards my day but the total count for the days I cycle is always 1000s more than I usually do!

Can anyone shed any light on this please? 🙂

[Procter101]

It is a poor product.

I have had similar problems and finally got a replacement 

[Rich_Laue]

Like most step counters, the bike bouncing over bumps can add steps. Both apple and Garmin have many complaints.

Yes Fitbit could auto remove these steps, but fitbit users can not agree. Some want the steps removed while others feel a bike ride doesnt give enough steps, and  want every pedal counted. A third group wants all bike rides converted to steps but they do not know what conversation to use.

Fitbits response seems to sit back and let the users hash it out. In any case, because bike is not a step based activity the steps are not added to the days totals and therefore can be ignored

So which group should Fitbit respond to? You cant have it all 3 ways.

[karkfart]

I've been using my new Charge 3 today. It correctly detected the bike ride that I did but it also detected steps during the period of my ride. Does this have any impact on the overall calorie estimate for the day?

[missmuseli]

Those steps generated from the cycling bumps are included in the daily total. 

A simple change would be to have a setting whereby you could tell the Fitbit to stop step counting when the bike activity is running. 

[t.parker]

@Rich_Laue This isn't true. Garmin has some complaints about not counting steps when cycling (some users would like to have some way of converting cycling into steps which IMHO makes absolutely no sense). Garmin devices (at least those I am familiar with) turn off steps counting during non-step based activities. My Fenix 5 doesn't add any steps when I cycle. Polar follows the same pattern (can speak only for VantageV and it doesn't do that either, although I usually don't take this watch with me when cycling but use Polar bike computer), and the same Suunto watches. In the case of stepping, one must use multisport mode (which isn't supported by Fitbit devices) and switch to another activity with steps. I do that when I mix cycling, hiking, running, rock climbing (this activity counts no steps either). Another issue is that the steps cannot be removed easily. For example, my yesterday's indoor workout (no GPS) contained no distance and really no steps but the watch detected some (this mode is kind of generic and doesn't disable steps detection). Simple edit option solves the problem (in the app edit->enter 0 for steps->enter 0 for distance->save - simple). So no, other companies didn't solve the problem because for them such a problem doesn't exist. They thought about it early when they designed their products and disabled steps counting from the very beginning for sports which contain no stepping or gave enough tools to correct that manually.