Sense Exercise app crashes when opening Fitbit app

[alexsense]

Hi.

Today I tried my new Sense and found what I guess is a bug, at least in iOS. Basically if you start an exercise through the app; in this case Walking - then open the Fitbit app on your phone and click in on exercises or the daily step counter the Fitbit Sense will crash and restart.

Does anyone else experience it? Happens every time I try.

Steps to replicate:

- On your sense, open exercise and start exercise “Walk”.

- Open your Fitbit app (it has to be closed before doing this), and proceed to click on the steps counter on the dasboard

- The sense will now crash. The same will happen if you open some other things on the Fitbit app

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @mnky. It's good to see you here in the forums.

Thanks for sharing detailed information about your Sense behavior. While I'm glad this issue isn't affecting your other exercises, please make sure to have the Fitbit app open before tracking a GPS activity so your watch won't reboot by itself when checking your data. Our team will continue working on this matter to bring a solution to all our members. Your patience and feedback are truly appreciated, and won't be taken for granted.

See you around.

[kd5byb]

Good afternoon all,

Some updates from yours truly over the past few weeks.

1)  Seems like if I manually start an exercise such as walking or biking...and I don't play around on my phone...all is well.  The other weekend I selected walking and mowed my yard with the push-mower, and all was good.  (the phone was most definitely out of bluetooth range)

2)  I also manually started a bike exercise then mowed the lawn on the riding mower (I know, I'm cheating!) and it worked fine as well.  In fact, I was rather amazed at how accurate the GPS was on the Sense, it showed pretty much exactly the pattern I've followed mowing the lawn.

3)  This morning after getting up, I put my Sense on charge to take a shower, and as I started a manual sync to see how my sleep was...the Sense rebooted.  This sounds like the issue above that LizzyFitbit has mentioned and provided a link to another topic, to which I'll subscribe once I get this post completed.

It seems to me that it's the app that's causing the Fitbit to crash/reboot in my particular case...like there is something going sideways in the communication between the two and the Sense gets confused and reboots.

Something I'm going to try next:  turning off Bluetooth on the phone so the Sense can't talk to the app and see what happens.  🙂

Thanks much to everyone for all the posts and replies!

thanks,

ben

[CRMcDaniel]

Waiting for solution ...

[SharingOakley]

I have the same issue with exercise app crashing when opening Fitbit app on iPhone 11. The exercise app also crashes when a text or phone call comes in while exercising.

[lucaiuli]

Brand new Sense that replaced my Ionic and it reboots during activity (Walk) when I check my Fitbit app on my iPhone 12 Max Pro phone. All updated to latest versions.

I hope that Google will find a fix for this as soon as possible that won't bring other bugs aswell, like Fitbit did on their time :((

My Ionic was working very nice and I made the mistake to update it. After that, it stopped charging with the same setup that was charging very well during the update and before that for 1 or 2 years.

So, Fitbit updates really bricks the watches. I can't prove that is intentional, but surely it looks like they push something through the update that bring the watches to their knee soon after that. What I know for sure is that all smart devices "call home" and they can see batches of hardware that are about their lifeline and they are "helping" them "die".

So, fingers crossed that Google won't do that for my Sense... after 3 days unpacking it...

Thanks for the troubles, Fitbit!

[lucaiuli]

Ok, I can confirm that the activity (Walk) is crashing the Sense watch when you open the Fitbit mobile app on the iPhone, but it only crash it (reboot Sense watch) when the Fitbit app is forced closed and re-open. If the Fitbit app is left running in the background, no matter how many times I sync, the watch doesn't reboot and the activity is still running and the sync is also correct.

So, only when re-open the Fitbit mobile app after a force close action on iPhone iOS - swipe up - view open apps - swipe up to force close an app.

It looks like the activity app on the Sense is crashing the entire watch system when the iPhone tries to fetch the data through Bluetooth for the first time when re-open the app after a force close (or iPhone reboot).

This are my findings. Hope it helps.

Thanks!

Julian

[Lauren_Sian]

Updated my Sense this morning to the newest update and it’s still happening. Starting to get really frustrated now. Not exactly the cheapest Fitbit device and it’s not fully functional and is clearly not on the team’s highest priority list for the newest update to not even address it. Think I’ll be moving to an Apple Watch after all of this to be honest. 

[lucaiuli]

I really hope that is the mobile app and not the Sense firmware. I am afraid to update since Fitbit has the bad behaviour to brick watched with their untested firmware updates.

It looks like, from my tests, that is something related to GPS. When I start a Walk activity indoors without GPS and I open the Fitbit iOS app on my iPhone, the watch doesn't reboot. But if I am outside and GPS is on, just a quick open of the app, crashes the Sense watch and reboots.

Very frustrating:((((

[Lauren_Sian]

Since I have completed the newest update from yesterday morning my Sense is now resetting numerous times a day in exercise and when resting so just in normal mode. Starting to absolutely lose my patience and to be honest this could very much be the 3rd Fitbit I send back in 12 months. Their customer service is awful as well. So disrespectful considering how much their devices cost in my opinion!

[Sparky617]

Updated my Sense software yesterday and today it continues to crash if I open the app while exercising. My now broken screen Versa didn't do this.

[Cathbadh]

I've given up on it - it's been a significant amount of time now and no resolution. Just to rub salt into the wound, the Free Trial Premium automatically rolls into a paid subscription if you miss the email notification. I didn't - thankfully. Cancelling that was itself a complete pain - couldn't find where subscriptions were (you have to go to your Account page from a browser - the sub is not linked to your phone), and the page was just an error message when I did finally locate it. I had to Live Chat support which were, to their credit, able to cancel it in seconds.

This issue has been ongoing for over two months.

[D5R3H6]

Is there an update on this issue? Has it been resolved?

[Bacteriafan]

If I check my Fitbit phone App while using the exercise tracking feature (while on a walk), my Fitbit Sense restarts, the screen goes black, then the diamond appears before returning to my normal watch face. The “work out” is over, I have to start a new workout if I want to track my exercise.  It didn’t do this when I first got it. How do I fix this?

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[lucaiuli]

Hi, @LizzyFitbit 

Any update on this issue from the team in charge?

Thank you for the time you will take to reply to my question, Lizzy.

Julian

[MoMoney1970]

Hi

I have noticed that my Sense reboots every time I sync it with my iPhone XR when I am using the exercise app on my Sense. It seems to have happened since I recently upgraded the firmware.

Is this a know and current issue ?

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi everyone.

I've moved some of your posts to this thread. I understand how you're feeling about getting your exercises interrupted and appreciate your continued reports. Our team keeps working to get this resolved as soon as possible and while there isn't a time frame for the fix, I'd recommend opening the Fitbit app before starting an exercise on your watch to prevent this inconvenience. Please know your feedback hasn't gone unnoticed and will help us to keep our team informed of this situation.

See you around.

[lucaiuli]

Hi, @LizzyFitbit 

Just to let you and the team in charge that I tried your workaround and it didn't work.

What I've done:

- open the Fitbit iOS app on iPhone 12 Max Pro iOS 15.0

- open the activity + gps on my Fitbit Sense

- start the activity

- the iPhone didn't went to sleep and I could refresh the Fitbit app and the Sense didn't reboot

- put the iPhone to sleep and in my pocket and went to my activity

- stopped after 2.5km and open the iPhone

- booooooooooooooooom the Sense rebooted

- booooooooooooooooom my activity went to dust

- bummer!

Thanks for such a nice Fitbit Sense experience

😞

Frustrated!!!!

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi there, @lucaiuli.

Thanks for the detailed information and for taking the time to test your Sense. I'm sorry for the frustration this has caused you, as well as the experience that you've had with the Sense. Our team will keep working on this matter and rest assured your feedback will be passed along to them. I'll update this thread once I have more details.

See you around.

[lucaiuli]

Hi, @LizzyFitbit @all

Yesterday I was notified by the Fitbit iOS app that there is a new update for my Fitbit Sense watch. I updated it successfully and I can vouch that the issue is FIXED!

The firmware version: 128.6.12

Right now I can check my Sense watch when I am in activity + GPS mode and no reboots.

It took a while but it is now fixed.

I don't know the entire software update changelog, but from my tests it looks fixed.

Thank you!

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi there, @lucaiuli.

That's great news! I'm glad this got sorted out after the firmware update and thanks for sharing those details. I'm sure other members will find your post very helpful. Your patience is appreciated and if you have time, check out our Health & Wellness board where you can create your own topics, make new friends and find great tips to live an active life.

Have a good day. 😊