The Fitbit Community is a gathering place for real people who wish to exchange ideas, solutions, tips, techniques, and insight about the Fitbit products and services they love. By joining our Community, you agree to uphold these guidelines, so please take a moment to look them over.
I think you should be able to sync with your phone and then upload data at a later date. Let us store data locally so that an internet connection is not required to see current stats.
Hey @tibi01 instead of randomly starting a new request, starting the count over,, why not first do a search and add your vote and comment to the existing request.
Yes Mike, that's what sucks about it all...no time update without either a wi-fi or mobile-data internet connection.
So stupid if you ask me as the phone can get its updated time from the cell and the tracker should then be able to get its updated time from the phone.
Without offline sync of Fitbit settings it is absolutely useless when traveling. I was stuck with wrong time on my Fitbit and couldn't switch off the alarm until I managed to find WiFi, this is ridiculous and extremely frustrating. Believe it or not, but there are parts of the world where both mobile reception and Wi-Fi are rare (not to mention their speed). I can't believe that so long after this issue was raised this is still not done, for communication between my phone and my Fitbit Bluetooth should be enough!
I can't believe that Fitbit does not allow offline synching. I'm not a US citizen, but have numerous American friends serving in the US armed forces, and some in the Canadian forces as well. Many use Fitbit products, but find it next to impossible to track their progress when deployed. This, if for no other reason, should be a MAJOR incentive for Fitbit to provide offline synching!
I discovered today that not only do you need a data connection to sync, you also must have high accuracy location turned on. There is NO, repeat NO technical reason Fitbit needs to know your location to sync. This is simply their greedy grab of more of our data in order to sell it to the highest bidder. Never again will I buy a product this company.
I just want to see how many steps I have when I am not on a network. It's Frustrating when backpacking to not be able to check steps, especially when everyone else with non-fitbit trackers can! This used to be possible, so please bring it back. If you have to store data locally, then have a setting for how many days will be stored on a device for syncing later if people are worried about too much data. I want to see my steps whether I have network or not.
You don't need location turned on Bob, as I have discovered and mentioned in my post in this thread (Location).
Try it out. I have a Samsung S5 so if you also run android it should be the same for you. Only an internet connection is needed...but that still is rediculous.
But that's the interesting thing Bob...I do not actually press the Sync...I just let the app sit on the dashboard screen and after a short while the blue line at the top progresses across the screen. 1st stop is when it is accessing fitbit.com servers, 2nd stop is when it is uploading data from the tracker and once it reaches the end the dials are updated with the tracker data. All updated and "synced" without location, only an internet connection.
@DerrickS
Are you still here and doing your job ?
This was proposed almost 4 years ago and you reviewed it 2 years ago and said you would pass it along.
Yes, PLEASE allow offline sycing. We should have the option to save data on the phone. I often hike in places where there is no network or data connection available. I will be staying for a couple of weeks in a town with no cellphone access (yes, they do still exist!) and do not want to spend lots of money to get a special network connection just for my fitbit. Very annoying to not be able to get any stats on my iPhone dashboard!
1. Read what I wrote, carefully: There are still SOME things you can't change without syncing. You can't set or change an alarm without doing an actual sync, for example. Same thing for changing notification settings. Some things REQUIRE an actual sync, which won't work without location turned on. And yes, I have always connected turned on.
2. Discovered something even more interesting today. The behavior you describe, updating data without location, works find on the OLD Android app, but doesn't work at all on the new dashboard. Here's a pic:
Note the Charge 2 shows 4,102 steps, the dashboard only 4093. No matter how long I let it wait, it didn't update. Killing the app and restarting it didn't let the data update, either. The message says "Enable Location to Sync." Nothing I've tried will get the data to update without location on on the new dashboard. It looks like this was an oversight on the old app, and they've fixed it on the new one.
3. This is really immaterial. It's the requirement for a data connection that is the problem, not the location setting.
YES PLEASE! In my real life, I work and travel in places where (gasp!) there is actually no internet!! It's pretty crazy that I can't set my Fitbit alarm under those conditions. What a poor design decision on the part of the developers! The cheapest $10 tracker from China has this much-needed offline functionality.
This has been asked for for such a long time. I really love using my Fitbit, but it baffles me that this "feature" has not been implemented yet. Especially since even if you are connected to the internet, you can't just to set an alarm if the fitbit servers are under maintenance.
Love my Blaze till I went to work and all the App info was not available, because of no Internet connection. Now just giving away a 200 dollar blaze case themail sync or lack of makes this junk.
Love my Blaze till I went to work and all the App info was not available, because of no Internet connection. Now just giving away a 200 dollar blaze becase the sync or lack of makes this junk.
Hi, my suggestion is to allow me to upload my zip data to my iPad even when I am offline. I would also like to update my food diary offline. I am often without a network connection. For example, I go on long cruises a couple of times per year where I can’t connect to the internet. Offline use of the app would be great. I realize that function such as food search couldn’t work but the basic sync and data input functionality would be great. Thanks. Tom
Just returned from a 10 night cruise where the time changed 4 times. Because an internet connection is required to sync I could not update the time on my Charge HR; also - thank goodness I didn't have any alarms set as I could not change alarms either. This was very annoying. I could sync in port, but the next day when the time changed at sea I was off again.
While I sympathise with your views and understand that the lack of the ability to sync without WiFi is irritating, I think everyone needs to remember that a Fitbit is not a phone or a computer, it is a small piece of electronic wizardry that does a lot of things supremely well. I am grateful for what my Fitbit does for me and yes, it could always be improved but I really enjoy what I gain from it as it is. Regards Heather
Please! I don't think you understand how the Fitbit syncs. It ALREADY sends all the data from the device to your phone before it goes to the server. The Fitbit has no way to communicate with anything but your phone, so every single piece of data the fitbit collects gets synced to your phone, and from there to the server. Not letting us sync without a data connection is an arbitrary decision by Fitbit, not a technological limitation.
Heather, as a software engineer I can tell you there is absolutely no technical reason why this is not possible, only Fitbit's stubbornness and lack of care for customer experience that makes them prevent people from syncing to phone when internet is not available. It's a classic case of "we have your money already (you bought our device) so we don't care if you're happy or not". Very shortsighted, if you ask me, as I was planning to buy another one for my husband for Christmas and now I won't - but hey ho. Maybe Fitbit has so many customers coming that they don't need to worry about making existing ones happy.
I get good data from my Charge2 tracker but only when I'm within cellular coverage. As a person with a history of heart problems, I depend on the heart rate tracking. When I spent 3 days in a remote location with no cellular connections at all, I lost all the tracker info even though Fitbit support claims to have a seven day buffer in the device. The only data that was saved was on the third day when we came back into cellular coverage.
So it is reasonable to conclude that the Fitbit software is not designed to sync to a mobile phone directly but only via their website and then the collected data can be shown on the mobile device from the website data only. To BobM2's point, Yes, the data goes through our phone but apparently it is "tunneled" such that I cannot see the results until it has been uploaded. Tech Support recently told me I had to start a workout to see some results locally before uploading can occur. So I guess I'm going to have multi-day workouts as that is what back country hiking is all about.
The existence of this forum thread and the direct responses I've received from Fitbit support indicate this is a problem and they are not likely to change the core of their data collection system anytime soon.
This is not an acceptable method for many outdoor adventurers. So for those like me, we will be looking for other devices that can sync to our mobile device directly and then sync to web servers when convenient.
Fairdad, I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. With the old Android app (the last version using the old dashboard), the Charge 2 WOULD update the app even without a full sync. To be specific, the app won't sync to the servers unless you have location on your phone turned on. Try to run a sync without location and all you get is an error message telling you to turn location on. But if you start the app, even with location off, the Android app would update with the current data from the tracker. The new app "fixes" that anomaly, so you can't update the app at all without syncing. But to repeat, the old app WILL sync tracker data to the phone without syncing to the servers: proof that it can be done, if Fitbit cared about what its customers want.
But even if you were correct about the data being "tunneled", that is still an arbitrary design decision by Fitbit, not a technical limitation. The tracker MUST transfer data to the phone before it can be uploaded to the servers. Period, STOP, end of story. That Fitbit will no longer allow that to happen is their choice, not a mandatory limitation.
Like Lily, above, my field is software development. I've done requirements analysis, software design, development, user-interface design, and project and program management. The key to ALL successful software is user centered design. IOW, determine what the users need, then develop to meet that need. Fitbit turns this on it's head, ignoring what users really want and need.
You are correct they're not going to address this. The forum is full of feature requests that are technically feasible, have been upvoted thousands of times, and which Fitbit won't even acknowledge, much less address. But it's not because of technical limitations, it's because of a lack of concern about the desires of their customers. Fitbit seems to suffer from a huge case of "not invented here" syndrome. If they didn't think of it, then it can't possibly be important. Apparently their design staff never ventures anywhere there isn't a cellular data signal, so they can't imagine that anyone else might.
Heather you are missing the point. The problem is not with the fitbit device but the software on our phones. That software won't work unless connected to the net. That is completely unnecessary
Join us on the Community Forums!
Community Guidelines
Learn the Basics
Join the Community!
Not finding your answer on the Community Forums?
Go to the Help Site
Contact Support