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".

[mising]

While this would be nice to have natively, there is a semi solution for Android at least.

DriveBit:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.littlebytes.android.fitbitdrive&hl=en

I place the widget on my home screen and give it a tap when I start driving and another when I am done.  Seems to work pretty good.

[capolo]

A driving mode or do not track option is very necessary, and being able to enable it from the tracker is just as important. My suggestion for the charge and charge hr is a 3 tap combination to enable the mode with some sort of vibrate or icon displayed indicating the mode is active. To disable the driving or do not track mode would be a double button press. Seems like that would be both simple and convenient for user

[DesertloverOV]

I think we in the user community have not created enough angst with the “powers that be” at Fitbit for them to notice this manual editing and/or deletion desire. I have only five (5) community email responses to this subject line of “Manually Delete Steps & Floors Feature “, whereas the complaints about “Incredibly High Floor Count “ have generated over 370 since early February, 2015.

I have taken to resetting my Charge HR every time I recharge it and this seems to restore its “brains” until I need to recharge again. By then it is getting “squirrelly” again. At this point I can not honestly recommend this device over any of its completion. I’m not yet ready to abandon all hope, but there is a limit to ones patience.

[MarleyCleo]

Please add feature to allow user to delete false floors etc.

[Leigh2L4]

This is my #1 feature request.  Just give us a way to stop / power off the fitbit when driving.  That's it - very simple!

[susantuck]

Seriously, Moderator?  as has been stated over and over again, switching to 'driving time" absolutely does NOT fix the problem, even temporarily. 

[norvmark]

I drive 2 hours every day to and from work.  Having the ability to put the device in Drive Mode is somwthing that is very desirable and needed for the device to be of real value to me.

[dustoff54]

PLEASE add the edit feature.  I commute to work on a motorcycle and it adds thousands of steps. Editing on the computer every night using "driving" is a pain in the butt.  As of now, my fitbit is useless.

[Lee_j22]

I was thinking that there should be an option for your fitbit when you get into a car or drive. There should be an option to deactivate the counter so it doesn't count the bumps you hit in the car as steps!

[LinaeT]

I have been using the Drivebit app and it does take away the steps that accumulate while you are driving, but it also took away ADDITIONAL steps as well and I am not sure why or how to correct it.

[LinaeT]

I am all for the DRIVE MODE on the Fitbit One!

[pearlbear]

Yes!! I was doing a road trip, and I got this great badge since I'd crossed the continental divide!! I think it told me I'd done 50 floors! It was fun to get a badge I probably would never otherwise get. 🙂

[ChrisJr]

This is a GREAT idea.  I haven't read through all of the comments, so this might have been said already, but this would be great for all Fitbit models.  I have the Charge HR.

[StanJake]

excellent idea, just went for my first motorcycle ride with my new surge and it found just over 8k steps and 36 floors.

[Tseeman]

Would like a way to turn it off from my phone. It tracks steps when it shouldn't some times, like when you ride a motorcycle.

[Tseeman]

I have the flex. And ride a motorcycle. It needs something so it stops counting while I am riding.

[annrunsondunkin]

This is a really frustrating lack of feature for me. I walk to and from my bus everyday and want my fitbit one to be on to count those steps. However, today it counted both steps and 7 floors walked up that were erroneous. The fix posted originally didn't work to reduce those, and you can't turn the fitbit OFF without being plugged in. This seems a really simple fix that needs to be deployed. I also have stair climbing as part of my personal daily goals - having wrong info in there makes the device lose it's usefulness to me.

[susanranda]

Agree.  I had stopped using my fitbit a year ago, and have restarted.  Have used it for a month now, so have new and old.  It would really be nice to get the old stuff out of there, without losing all new dats.

[jls2502]

I went for a walk today, climbing only two flights of steps over the whole walk and my Charge HR recorded 99 FLIGHTS of steps. This is ridiculous. I bought this model specifically for the ability to record floors -- my office is on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator and there are days when I go up and down several times with no Flights recorded. last week while traveling, I did zero sets of stairs but it recorded 23 flights -- apparently recording partial elevator trips?? I don't know -- we were on the 33rd floor, so even that doesn't make sense. I tried to delete the steps from my activity log online and that didn't seem to want to work either. What can be done here?

[KBunn]

Having to go back later and mark a particular block of time as being driving is terrible.  It would work far better, if I could select "driving" as an activity when I got behind the wheel instead.  Yesterday I clocked over 11k steps, and 83 floors, while sitting behind the wheel of my car virtually all day.

[SunsetRunner]

@wlmorin that is a great idea I had just thought of this and looked to see if there was already a suggestion in the forums. The Automatic IFTTT channel already has an IF for "New trip completed" with elements [TripStartedAt] and [TripEndedAt] all you would need to do is have the Fitbit channel allow a THAT  action with something to the extent of "create new activity of type [driving] from time a to b"

[scottmfinn]

Driving in the activity log doesn't work.  See the forums.  Fix this by adding the feature or well just fixing it.  I now have a 30,000 step day addition that will affect my trend data and there is no way get rid of it.  ##BUMMED

[Josh23]

I drive package car for UPS as I am in and out all day so it is not practical for me to log in driving time every single time. I figured out a simple way to do it is by pushing and holding the button to start an activity as I'm driving and then stopping it when I stop driving and then later on when I get home I go through and change each activity to driving. The only problem is when I do this it does not erase the steps out. If there is a way that it can erase all of the steps and then I think this would be a simple fix to all the steps being counted while driving.

[bgrauberger]

Agreed, I drive a commercial vehicle and log thousands of steps and 100 floors daily because of the route I drive. Maybe something that takes into account when fitbit goes over 15mph and deactivates the counters?

[Romper]

I love this suggestion by MacWade!  I just got my fitbit Charge HR earlier this month and I ride horses.  I want to log and track my heartrate because it's a WORKOUT but I didn't necessarely want it to log the steps while riding.  Although, because it is such a workout I've decided not to feel as bad as I did originally.

It's frustrating that I've spoken with tech support and they tell me to manually enter in "driving".  I did that and my steps are still there - it didn't do anything.  MacWade's suggestion above seems like an easy fix.  It's our personal log and we should be able to adjust it as necessary.