Option to turn off step count (or add "Driving Mode") to avoid erroneous steps/floors

[MacWade]

I just got home yesterday from a driving 6 hours in my car and I checked my Fitbit. I was really suprised to see it had given me almost 8,000 steps, 3.24 miles, 134 floors, & way more calories thank I burned while I was sitting in my car.  I looked on the forum to see how to easily delete the steps, miles, floors, and calories so my data would be accurate.  The only way people are fixing it is by manually logging the activity "Automobile or light truck (not a semi) driving" and entering in the duration.  I think that is a cumbersome way to fix the issue everytime I drive because I have to make sure I write down what time I get into and out of my car so I know the start time and duration.  And how does it automatically know the calories burned when everyone burns calories when they are sedentary at different rates.

I think they should add a "Drive Mode" feature that when turned on it won't add steps, distance, floors, & will only add calories burned equal to you sitting in a chair.

You could access the "Drive Mode" either on your Fitbit One or on your phone app to turn it on/off.  If you have a Fitbit One you could press the button till the "Drive Mode" icon appears then hold the button down for 2 seconds to turn it on or off.

On the phone apps you would just go to your device under "Account" and there you could turn it on or off.

You could also have the option to give you an alert when you unlock the phone that reminds you that it is in "Drive Mode" so you don't forget to turn it off when you get to your destination.  It would also be cool if you could use Siri to turn it on by saying "Turn on Fitbit Drive Mode" or "Turn off Fitbit Drive Mode".

[Daasu]

I agree that steps/floors need the option to be deleted.  This particular recommended change has been posted for almost a year.  Some people have complained about this for more than that.

With that being said if you look at the orginal post it states:  "Status: Reviewed By Moderator

Thanks for the feedback! You can always negate any erroneous data by following the steps here. "  This leads me to believe this is a answered/dead post, and moderators no longer read it.

I intend to submit a new request asking for this option to be installed.

My justifications is, I ride a motorcycle to/from work adding ~4k steps.  Prior to the ride I start activity, the end of the ride I stop activity.  I then go into my log add "Driving" to match my recorded activity time.  Lastly I delete my recorded activity.  I do this, because simply changing my activity to "Driving" does nothing.  So problem 1 is I want to be able to delete my motorcycle steps, problem 2 is creating a manual activity when it should properly log in the first place.

[Daasu]

We the community would like the option to be able to delete steps and/or floors.

The recommended (by FITBIT) option is a work around by adding a "Driving" activity which negates the steps and floors.  This is a bandaid and not what the user wants.

This is my current work around:

1.  Start my activity on my CHR.

2.  Ride my motorcycle.

3.  Stop my activity on my CHR.

4.  Goto FITBIT dashboard/log/activity, Enter "Driving" in the manual section and copy the start time & duration from my recorded CHR activity.

5.  Delete my recorded CHR activity.

What I could do instead?

1.  Goto FITBIT dashboard/log/activity, Select "Delete steps/floors" enter start time & duration.

I don't exercise on the weekends, but because I log "Driving" everyday.  My exercise calendar has a check mark for every day.  (This isn't really a big deal, but does make the calendar worthless.)

Lastly, this isn't really a new request.  I found one that started October 2014, with the moderator's comments that say something like "Thank you for the feedback, use the 'Driving' option".  This comment leads me to believe the request is closed.  Additionally, there has been no new moderator comments.  This request hopefully gets a better response.

[Michael]

@Daasu Can't you just: Goto FITBIT dashboard/log/activity, enter "Driving", start time,  duration, and click log. (Which is essentially what it sounds like you are asking for.)

[Daasu]

That adds an activity, and only negates the steps.

The community wants to be able to delete the steps.

[SunsetRunner]

How about a mode for use when driving or using transport where the device essentially ignores movement? I know it's possible to go into your log and account for driving time but firstly you have to remember the times and then remember to do it. I for one, don't necessarily sync or go on the website multiple times a day or even every day.

Perhaps in a firmware mod, the device (I have a Flex but I'm sure this could apply to all) could cycle through modes as you tap, normal-sleep-transport-normal, etc. That way you only have to remember to change modes and any "steps" that are counted while you're on the train, in the car, riding the motorbike etc are simply ignored.

[Chriso85]

It would be great if you could have an option to pause/stop tracking steps/floors from either the band (surge) or app (devices with less buttons). With the surge you could press a button combo or have the option in settings. I say this as I drive on extremely rough roads at work and hate having to turn my surge off as I use it as a watch also. The roads usually give me 3-4,000 extra steps a night and as many as 20 floors if I forget to turn my surge off. Working nights the backlight feature is really handy. All other devices you could just hit an option in the app then reactivate tracking when you are ready.

[drdoom]

The ability to define a default activity would be great. I cycle 2-6 times a day for commuting and its such a pain to go and tag each one of these as 'Bike', so much so that I've just stopped tagging them. But now I can't distinguish them from my actual workouts. I can name my workouts differently, e.g. 'Gym' or 'Weights' but it would be much nicer if I could just set a default activity (Charge HR, so no option to select the activity when I start). 

[SunsetRunner]

I vote for this too.

[Inc0gnit0]

I have the same problem with the custom food entries... I inadvertently created a few with typos in the nutritional data, but didn't realize until after it was saved and there is not obivious way to modify the entry once saved. Fitbit please add this functionality if not to the iOS app, then to the web version. PLEASE!!

[lionlex]

I love my Fitbit but the fact that it logs many, many steps while I am in a car is absurd and a major flaw. I have switched it to "dominant" even though it is on my non-dominant wrist but it still does this. Furthermore, while I know we can log "driving" as an activity to remove the steps, I do not have time to remember to do that that after every time I am in a car. PLEASE can you find a fix for this? Is there any way to automatically have it know when I am in a car???

Thank you! 

[sol_ange]

I agree we need to be able to disable the tracking directly from the fitbit (charge HR in my case). It should be easy enough to turn it off.    Thanks.

[gotta_go]

The community would want to delete steps or floors. Driving is a bandaid. I rode my atv in the mountains and got 669 floors. I got badges I did not earn. I logged the hours as driving and the floors disapeared in the app...but the floors still count on my lifetime floors on fitbit.com but not in the app. What i want is to delete them and have the app and the web in synch and as a result have it peel back my badges for 300, 400, 500 and 600 floors for the day which I did not earn. I only want badges I legitmately earn...and deleting floors would work. The travel activity is only a band aid. I love the idea to be able to delete or override data.

[alyssa30]

I have a fit bit surge and I have noticed that I can rack up 700 steps on an hour car journey even though all I am doing is sitting still in the drivers seat, now for those like myself whose job requires them to be on the road a lot it means I am getting a very inaqurate count of my daily steps. I think this could be counteracted by having the ability to pause your step count on the watch itself and then resume when you've reached the destination.

[Jerobakker]

I use the workout mode to time the minutes i'm on my bike from and to work every day, At the end of the day I have to delete the activities, add a driving activity to negate the steps taken. Would'nt it be easier to adjust the workout I recorded to driving without having to delete it and create another one.

[Health_4me]

Unfortunately this does not work, since on my dashboard I have NO "EDIT link" to click on in any of the tiles...... I'd appreciate any other suggestion on how to rid my dashboard of floors etc. thanks

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@MacWade wrote:

I know users often find that they are mistaking awarded steps, distance, floors, and calories throughout the day due to many reasons.  Some are driving, elevators, humidity, escalators, moving around in their sleep, etc.  It would nice is there was a feature on the dashboard that would enable us to quickly and easily delete the incorrect data.  I posted up mockup screenshots below. 

We click an "EDIT" icon to enter into an edit mode.

After you clicked the delete icon a little window would pop up saying "Are you sure you want to delete these steps, distance, floors, and calories?"

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[hankdmoose]

There is (still) no way to delete floors, steps, etc. The images in the post were a suggestion made by a user. Which, as far as anyone can tell, is far more than anyone from fitbit has bothered to do...

Currently the only "solution" is to log new activity and label it as driving. You can get more info on that by clicking the "here" under "reviewed by moderator" directly under the original post.

[TandemWalker]

@hankdmoose - But that't not to say that Fitbit is not working on it. The problem here is that the suggestion is not getting enough traction, hence the reason why I mention it every change I have. This is a real issue and most fitbit users are affected by it. Either folks don't know about it, or people just don't care about incidental false floors and the odd false floors recorded during sleep or while driving or riding a vehicle. My understanding is that Fitbit has looked at it and are still struggling to figure out a way to do this. The drivebit app takes care of steps just fine, too bad there ins't a similar one for floors.

TW

[hankdmoose]

@TandemWalker - The thing is, this isn't something that should take years or even months to figure out. They can already do it if you create an activity as "driving," so they can already do it. From there, it's a button and a form. Do you want to delete all the steps? Just some of them? All of the floors or just one or two?

That's not even asking for the ability to add steps or floors. The reason I don't bother adjusting anything is because the number of times I pick up a "bonus floor" pales in comparison to the number of times I don't get credit for a floor because I apparently take too long on a landing halfway up, or just because my fitbit doesn't feel like adding numbers at the time.

And when I walk for exercise's sake, it misses exactly half of my steps because apparently I move my arm too smoothly or something. So when I gain steps when I'm not walking, I figure everything's just evening out.

I don't expect perfect statistics. The whole reason I got the fitbit was for awareness, and it's served that purpose just fine.

But adding such a simple correction method should not take this long. And yes, I have programming experience, so I know it's not something that seems simple but is actually really complicated. If their existing code is so bad that they still can't figure out how to add or subtract some data after it's collected, they've got much bigger problems on their hands.

[TandemWalker]

@hankdmoose - I fully agree. False floors and false steps, aside from syncing issues, have  attracted more criticism and complaints than any other issue (just a guess on my part, based on my observations of the activity in the forums.)

We already have the ability to delete a food item that was mislogged, or a whole workout. But these are records that we input.

The difficulty lies, I think, in being able to delete floors/steps recorded by the tracker itself. For example, if I am out walking a regular path that usually gives me 5 or 6 floors, I may get 30-50 additional floors if this happens to be a windy day. How to delete those floors without also deleting the true steps taken while walking on a stormy day might be a little tricky. 

TW

[vjvl51]

Since we seem to be "wishing on a star"...

It would be nice to be able to turn on/off floors so when we're outside walking, the weather/terrain doesn't affect the number of floors for the day.

[TandemWalker]

@vjvl51 - Not a bad idea. But I do want the real floors I should be getting when walking outdoors uphill - these are just as real as any stairs climbed. But you're right - to many folks, floors is just an annoyance that they would rather not have; so having the ability to turn it off would be great. Have you checked the feature requests - perhaps it's already out there. If not, I would invite you to post this as a separate request and see how much traction it gets.

TW

[Daasu]

I started a new topic on this a little while ago. I did it in hopes I would get a new answer because the moderators are not responding to this one. Please go up vote it. https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Requests/Manually-Delete-Steps-amp-Floors-Option/idi-p/95218...

[hankdmoose]

@TandemWalker - The thing is, there should be no difficulty deleting floors and steps, together or individually... they should be kept in completely independant counters. From there, it should just be a matter of deleting from the counter. Even though all the accelerometer and altimeter data are still there, there should be nothing preventing adjustment of derived numbers after the fact. It should literally be an addition or subtraction for whichever number you want to change.

I have to say I'm glad I haven't seen the issues with 30+ erroneous floors from wind. And I live where there's a lot of wind. Most of my fake floors come from moving my arm while I'm driving up a hill. Then there are a few that seem to come out of nowhere. But again, I take those as offset for all the times I don't get credit for a floor I earned. It all evens out in the end 🙂

[TandemWalker]

Well @hankdmoose - You bet it all evens out in the end. How many floors do we do in a day that do not meet the 9ft threshold? So heck, if I get a few more here and there that I didn't climb so be it. And if I get a few extra floors for walking outdoors on a stormy day, then so be it - they serve as a reminder that I had to fight the elements that day. 

As for the fix, one has to assume that if was a simple fix, Fitbit would have fixed it by now. So there's probably more to it than we think. 

Take care. Have a nice day.

TW

[hankdmoose]

Link to the post mentioned by @Daasu.

There's no good reason for this to have not been addressed by Fitbit by now. And by addressed, I don't mean a reply with a band-aid "fix," but actually fixed.