How to read time during activity?

[flroots]

I've tried 3 different activities (walking, elliptical, and tennis), but so far have been unable to read the time while the activity is in progress. Any help would be appreciated. BTW, I want to view heart rate and calories during activity

[marksurry · Accepted solution]

You can set what fields appear when you cycle through the centre section of the display during a workout.  From the watch, select the workout you want to proceed with.  Then before pressing the start/play icon swipe up on the screen to show activity settings.  Scroll to "show stats" where you'll see "middle" just under it.  Select middle then check all the stats you want to show on the middle section of the display during a workout.  When in an activity each tap on the screen will cycle through all the stats you've checked.  Just make sure you've selected time as one of the stats to show.

[wookietim]

What would be perfect would be the ability to add complications to the exercise face so while exercising you can see things. The Fitbit software kinda has that but only to an extent - I'd prefer a totally user defined set of things to display, maybe with the ability to add extra screens to see when you swipe across it. That might be kinda a lot to ask and honestly I have never seen any watch be able to do that with that level of customization so maybe I am asking a bit much. But it'd be nice.

[t.parker]

@wookietim most of the sports watches in the market can do that. I use custom screens and data fields on Suunto and Garmin products, I've been doing it on Polar VantageV and I saw that you can do it on Galaxy Active watch (but haven't used it, it's my wife's :)), which is more of a smartwatch than the sports watch. It is a must for me :). On Garmin, you can define custom data fields using formulas to calculate data (Suunto offered that, too for the Ambit family but then dumbed down all the watches, shame on them). Such customization is not asking a bit much but asking for something that competitors have been offering for many years. For all the activities I do, I always add "time of day" as one of the fields because I need to know the time. With Fitbit, the basic problem is that the fact competitors offer a feature doesn't make the Fitbit think "hmm... maybe we should add something like this".

[wookietim]

I've used Garmin and Samsung watches and they do have the ability to customize an exercise info face but not as extensively as what I am asking for. I want the ability to completely and utterly build out an entire system of several screens, not just twiddle a bit like those watches give me. Maybe I'll give it a go myself someday in writing that code for the fitbit. 

[t.parker]

@wookietim what you've been asking for, I think I have all of the features in the Garmin Fenix 6:

Looking from top-left, 1) bike exercise, 2) I can go to Bike Settings (you can do it for each exercise, also custom ones), 3) after picking options I can edit each screen 4) by modifying and/or 5) adding new data screens. Also 6) I can modify layouts and use any data fields for each screen ( if I want I can use data fields from the store). If you want more, you'd need to use the provided API (I did that for my own bouldering activity as the one which the watch comes with doesn't meet my requirements). On Garmin, I can do all of it on the watch. In the case of Suunto, I can do the same customization using the Suunto App. I would like to see something like that on Fitbit 🙂