Counting steps while biking

[Heather_Houston]

Hi all,

I ride my bike every day as a means of transportation. I often ride for fun or for a workout as well. When riding my bike, the tracker is counting steps. I've tried switching to bike mode and that didn't help. It shows steps as N/A in the exercise tracker, but the steps show up on my FitBit nonetheless. I had this problem before and since it was still under warranty they sent me a new one...but the new one has the same problem! What am I doing wrong here? And what's the point of having bike mode if it counts steps!?

Let me know if any more information is needed....any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Heather

[WendyB]

It will pick up some steps but not all.

Most people want it to. I know its not step based but it will pick some steps up.

[Heather_Houston]

Thank you WendyB for your comment. I know that many people would want it to
count those as steps...
Even so, I really don't want it to pick up steps while biking. I'll ride my
bike to work (20 minutes max) and rack up 3000 steps. It just doesn't make
any sense! Is there a way to turn this feature off or to remove the steps
from my daily count?

--
Heather Dial, MA
PhD Candidate, Psychology
Rice University

[WendyB]

You could enter a driving record to remove them

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/Can-I-delete-data

A lot of people like the DriveBit app on their phone and it also gets rid of them

[Heather_Houston]

What a neat app! Do you know if it will allow me to record biking on my
FitBit while also logging with DriveBit?

--
Heather Dial, MA
PhD Candidate, Psychology
Rice University

[WendyB]

I'm  sorry I do not know. I dont use the app as I dont have problems with unwanted steps.

Maybe someone else will

[Shelbyfern]

Hi Heather did you find an answer to this as i have the exact same problem, i bike to work and it counts steps even though in bike mode, i contacted the suport but i dont think they really understood me. As i think like you it shouldnt count stes if your biking . cheers

[Heather_Houston]

No, I never did find a solution. Many people just thought it should count
to steps. For awhile I just took it off while biking and then manually
entered the biking as exercise, but I didn't really like that either. So,
now, I just have a ton of steps everyday. If you figure something out,
please let me know!
--
Heather Dial, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
University of Texas-Austin

[steveting99]

I'm noticing the same issue, but the number of steps being counted is significantly less in BIKE mode than using the Smart Track feature. 

For instance in BIKE mode during a 25 minute cycle ride, it counts about 500 steps. 

When using the Smart Track feature, it will count about 2000 steps when the 25 minute activity is recorded as an OUTDOOR BIKE.

So there's some bug squishing to be done on the software/firmware side.

[Bankman1989]

I have the same issue. So I started putting my fitbit in my front pocket. Yesterday it gave me about 3,500 steps for a 90 minute bike ride. It's a small victory. 

When I am indoor cycling it tends to pick up more steps (about 6,000 per hour). Of course you would think with this technology they could come up with a way to fix this issue. 

I do sync my endomondo app through myfitnesspal to my fitbit. It doesn't show ANYONE but me what I did though.

[Chris1963]

I get round this by not having a step target, I set my goal as burning 3000 calories a day. Whether another activity then appears as steps is irrelevent. I see why it does it as people set a step target and want other activities to log a step equivalent so as to give, to them, an accurate representation as if all actvity was step based.