Unofficial way to communicate with Fitbit without using the app or sending data?

[n1try]

Hi all! I was wondering whether there is a way to use my Fitbit without the official app, so without sending data to Fitbit / Google. Did anyone reverse-engineer the Bluetooth protocol or something?

[Guy_]

Hi @n1try - there would be very little point in trying to directly imitate what the Fitbit App does.

However you can build your own clock faces and send data to your own website but would still need the Fitbit App to use it, providing you don't have a Sense 2 or Versa 4 where even that is not possible, only available on earlier smart watches.

If there is a particular issue it might make more sense to resolve it rather than building something from scratch which may not even give you what you are looking for.

[n1try]

The primary reason why I was asking is a round data sovereignty. I'd prefer to keep all my tracking data to myself, rather than sending it to Fitbit / Google. I'd ideally want to only use the "hardware" part of Fitbit, but not the app, etc. Of course, I see how Fitbit would probably want to prevent this. But not uncommonly (e.g. with a lot of smart home devices, etc.) you'll find someone in the open-source community who had spent a lot of time trying to reverse engineer or "unlock" things to use them the way you want.

[Guy_]

@n1try- quite understandable to protect your data and some watches available on the market don't even require an account.

But to use a Fitbit you need the account and app to even get the watch working and to set the time.

Given this complication and the range of smart features such as clock face changing on the smart watches it is highly unlikely that anyone would even bother hacking it [though I may be mistaken, as someone may have the ability and like the challenge], but you may risk more it there was a hacked version than with the original Fitbit App.

If you only want the watch to use offline, once it is setup you can uninstall the app [or play with the permissions] and your data will be protected. However you won't be able to set the time on the watch. This may not be a major issue if you have a good watch as it will keep good time for a few weeks.

Also performing a shutdown of the watch from the settings menu may clear some data for when you decide to sync it to set the time [and the app would be needed again for that].