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.
@DrRobin I'm talking about FitBit devs because, to me, this one should be a core app. Anyway I'll try to do a search on the Feature Suggestion Page. Thansk!
I would love to see some sort of basic route following added to the ionic, similar to what is available on Garmin devices and Strava. This feature would be great for planning trail or road runs ahead of time in an area that I am unfamiliar.
@DrRobin I really like the look of your app and the way it functions. This is a great start. However, I am hoping for more of a "breadcrumb" trail that can be followed by the user with alerts for when you get off track. To be clear, I'm not talking about a full featured map, just a "trail" with the shape of the course. Strava has a great route planner and a very active community of users that create road and trail running routes for others to follow. All of these routes are available to be exported as GPX files that can then be imported into various devices (such as the COROS apex). This make it something that can be done right on your phone and then exported onto the watch. Again, route following of a pre-planned breadcrumb trail was something my early 2000's old-as-dirt Garmin forerunner watch had and it worked very well. They, as well as Suunto and COROS have improved this functionality greatly since that time. I would really like to have a Fitbit Ionic but this one missing feature is holding me back.
Strange...I just noticed that this is marked as an "existing feature". Could someone explain how this would work on the Ionic? Is this a native application, or a user-built app?
@ScottHsv There is no application or feature, at least none that anyone here has been able to find, not one that fulfills the original request anyway. @LizFitbit changed it to "existing feature" and then promptly disappeared, despite multiple attempts to get her to come back and either explain more about this feature she claims already exists or to revert the status.
I agree, this feature is wrongly marked as existing and nobody of the fitbit community is looking into this although many people want this feature. And that is really sad and actually this missing feature is the ONLY reason why I do not have a fitbit versa already. If the feature that was described would exist in maps that would be a good compromise. But nobody found this feature and nobody of the fitbit community helps and explains further... Maybe we need to open a new thread that is marked non-existing for fitbit to look at and I think that is what I'll do very soon... As I am really annoyed by this thread... And as I see a lot of people actually want this feature
ScottHSV, Like you I had a Garmin Forerunner until it leaked and replaced it with a Quatix, but it wasn't quite the same. My current problems with Waypoints are:
- The Fitbit doesn't have enough memory to add more functionality. It is limited to 64K and has been full several times over;
- I am re-writting the whole app to save enough space for a simple map display of the route and your location;
- The re-write is a slow process, not helped by the day job getting in the way.
I am not sure when I will get chance to finish the re-write and submit a new version.
Regarding a Google Maps type app, I did consider this, but there are several problems:
- getting the route in to the Fitbit (You could set this up on a phone);
- then the Fitbit has to download the route;
- display a map or directions.
All of the nav would need to be provided by the Fitbit, I cannot see a way that the Fitbit can be tethered to the phone app and I doubt that the Fitbit has enough memory space.
Perhaps if someone was willing to write a mobile app and somehow graft the Fitbit comms in to it (doesn't appear to be currently possibly) there might be an alternative, but I don't have the experience or time to do this.
Hi everyone, thanks for this suggestion. We've changed this back to 'Reviewed' status as you've told us the below workarounds aren't the complete solution that you want. I'll post any further updates here.
There is currently a way to get navigation instructions with vibration alerts on the Ionic and Versa. Under 'notification settings' in the Fitbit App, enable 'background navigation instructions' and make sure Fitbit notifications are enabled too. When you launch Google maps from your phone (be sure that your phone screen is turned to off/sleeping for this to happen), you should start getting text push notifications on your watch.
If you want to see a map and your live location, there are third party apps for this (search 'maps' in the Fitbit app gallery).
I can't speak for everyone but I'd be happy with the workaround if it actually worked. All I need is navigation instructions to appear on my watch so that, when I'm biking, I can just get a buzz, look at my wrist, and say "ahah, turn right, got it" without needing to have my phone visible.
As it is, however, there is no "background navigation instructions" in the "notification settings" of the fitbit app. Technically speaking there isn't even a "notification settings" in the fitbit app, there's just "notifications".
Seems like Fitbit does not care to make a good product for us, even though this feature was already in play in older devices pebble. The app is already out there Fitbit just makes no effort to make it happen. Too busy making Fitbit versa 2, which I won't buy considering what a flop this on is.
just adding my voice to this. it is really necessary in this day of people grabbing phones out of hands. i had this happen to me whilst walking in London, using google maps on my phone. had i had the ability to do this on the fitbit, it wouldn't have happened. just got the versa 2, was hoping for this capability. i guess i'll wait with everyone else.
Google maps are the one of the core features we use very often so it would be a great pleasure of adding google maps to fitbit versa lite version as well.
@LizFitbit Please can you respond to the users request for you to elaborate on your workaround:
"There is currently a way to get navigation instructions with vibration alerts on the Ionic and Versa. Under 'notification settings' in the Fitbit App, enable 'background navigation instructions' and make sure Fitbit notifications are enabled too. When you launch Google maps from your phone (be sure that your phone screen is turned to off/sleeping for this to happen), you should start getting text push notifications on your watch."
As @WizardStan correctly mentioned "there is no "background navigation instructions" in the "notification settings" of the fitbit app. Technically speaking there isn't even a "notification settings" in the fitbit app, there's just "notifications" ". I have also checked and double checked for these settings on latest Fitbit app version.
Are you perhaps referring to a planned future updated version of the app?
Can anyone from FITBIT shed some light on this? I've tried to do what @LizFitbit said and her instructions are just bonkers. Can we please get some clear instruction on how to get google map notifications on a versa? Please! 😞
We've been asking for this feature for a long time. We've gone round and round with the moderators here and support on twitter and nothing. All they ever say is "suggest the feature!" This is just not right. Especially when their pebble use to do it with much less power. They either don't care or they have coders who can't or don't' know how to get it done. Either way, it's not right.
I've found a solution to this problem and many others I've been having with my Versa: I bought a new battery for my Pebble and threw the Versa in my drawer, never to be thought of again. It's not perfect, but it is superior to the Versa in every conceivable way.
honestly, they don't care. it's not something they are ever going to update or work on. i feel like a fool for buying the versa 2 in the first place. and mine is broken, it is not tracking sleep, which has nothing to do with this topic, but just to say that it was incredibly difficult to get their support team to engage and stay engaged in order to resolve the issue. it's still not fixed, and i'm still waiting for the solution. i'd say on the whole, the company just doesn't really care about their customer or their customers needs.
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