App is very slow when logging food

[MdRtsHAaKu]

Recently the app has intermittently been very slow and laggy when I'm logging a food item.  When the three-tabbed view for frequent/recent/custom foods appears, it's frozen for a while and won't scroll, then when it does and you select an item there is a delay before the item appears, and so on -- every interaction with the app is sticky and slow.

I only see one other report of this recently in the Android forum.  Is anyone else having trouble?

[DeptOfDefense]

Yes, I have noticed this problem for a while now, currently using a Samsung Galaxy S4 with Android Lollipop. Every single thing I do in the app has turned into a click, wait, click wait process. It can literally suck 5 percent of my battery life just logging a single meal, although when I look at top battery-consuming apps on my device, it does not necessarily indicate that Fitbit is a high battery consumer. It has become very frustrating to work with the app for this reason, but I have been using it for several years now so I'm unwilling to switch to something else at this point. But if this continues I may just quit using it altogether. It's just not worth it to take that long to log my food calories.

[MarcoGFitbit]

Hello @MdRtsHAaKu, I hope you're having a great day, it's nice to see you around. Have a warm welcome to the Fitbit Community @DeptOfDefense! 

If you've noticed that the app has been lagging lately, please try to force-close the app by double tapping the home button and swiping up the app vertically, for iOS. For Android devices, tap on the menu button (three horizontal lines) on your phone and swipe the app horizontally. If that doesn't seem to work, please log out from the app, restart your phone and log back in, this will reset the connection the app with our servers. 

Additionally, please make sure you have a strong Wi-Fi signal or enough cellular data. 

I hope this can be helpful, give it a try and keep me posted in case you need anything else. 

[Wyenot]

I have the same problem the food element is slow to enter food but even slower to go back to the food graph of calories in vs out. Running Samsung Note 4.

[Wyenot]

I've tried all that, on off, close app, close all apps etc  and it make no difference. I have the same problem even when I have an excellent wifi signal

[Wyenot]

I've tried all that, on off, close app, close all apps etc  and it make no difference. I have the same problem even when I have an excellent wifi signal. running Samsung Note 4

[Steve_H041077]

I'm having exactly the same problem and it's making the app very frustrating to use. It was working fine a few months ago but has recently become slower than ever.

My WiFi connection is strong and my phone is a new Moto G5 Plus running Android 7. Everything else runs lightning fast except for the food log. I tried force-closing, logging out and rebooting phone and no difference!

It's a real shame as it impairs the performance of an otherwise great app. Please fix this!

[Hungvu]

Hi Marco,

Are you saying that did you try to turn it off and on again? 

[Wyenot]

Always the first thing you do with all technology. So yes.



Sent from my Samsung device

[JessicaMaria]

In effort to help simplify my life, I deleted another nutrition app and have been forcing myself to use Fit bit for nutrition as well. 

The slowness is making me second guess that decision.

[jericevans]

I'm seeing this as well, it is becoming prohibitively slow to enter food.  Slow to populate the list of frequent, recent, and custom foods. Slow to search. And, even after submitting, it takes a very long time just to reload the food screen.

I have Pixel 2 and Android 8.1 with a strong mobile connection, and strong WiFi.  Everything else is very quick, very snappy.

I've force restarted the app, and rebooted the phone.

Helpful suggestions welcome (including useable alternatives).

[MarcoGFitbit]

Hello everyone!, I hope you're having a great day. 

I would like to thank you all for your reports, at this moment I would like to gather some information from you so I can forward it to our team so they can take a better look at this situation:

1. Phone model you're currently using.
2. OS version running on your phone
3. App version currently installed (go to account > help to get it)

Thanks for your patience and understanding, I'll be waiting for your reply. 

[jericevans]

Google Pixel 2, Android 8.1.0 (February 5, 2018 patch level), Fitbit app version 2.66 (2193248)

Some additional information:

Performance had degraded to the point where it was simply no longer usable, so out of desperation I went to Settings -> Apps -> Fitbit -> Storage and cleared first the cache (no effect), and then data.  Afterward performance returned to reasonable levels.

[MarcoGFitbit]

Hello @jericevans, I hope you're doing well, thanks for taking the time to reply with the information requested and for letting me know the troubleshooting steps you have tried in order to try to resolve this issue, I appreciate it. 

I'm very happy that after clearing the cache of the app on your phone, the performance improved. Please keep in mind that the Google Pixel 2 is not a yet listed as a compatible device as our team is still testing it. It's possible that your tracker will work with your mobile device, but its performance will not be optimal until the mobile device has been fully added to our list of compatible devices.

I hope this resolves your inquiry, if there's anything else I can do for you, please feel free to reply. 

[jericevans]

Just to be totally clear, it wasn't enough to wipe the cache; It wasn't until after deleting the application data that normal operation was restored.  In other words: What did it was either clearing the app data, or, clearing both the app data and cache.

Clearing the app data will require you to log back in, and to recreate any customization.

[DeptOfDefense]

I really don't think it has much to do with the phone model, OS type/version, or fitbit app version. I believe it is intrinsic to the app. Seeing sometimes ten or a dozen (or more) of the same exact food item in the database cannot be good or helpful for performance. I never know if I'm selecting the same item or not, and if I'm not, then I just unnecessarily added one more food item to my personal data. No wonder it takes so long to reload the multiple duplicates of data every time I change a screen.

Having said that, the performance does seem to come and go for me, regardless of clearing cache or app data, which I do not do very often. I don't think it has much to do with signal either, whether over wifi or broadband. There is just way too much garbage data in the food database, the risks and hazards and to-be-expected behavior, I guess, when it is community-driven and open.

For what it's worth, I use a Samsung S4 (yes, that old of a phone), Android Lollipop (5.0.1), app version 2.66 (2193248) but I have had this problem, as I said, on and off for a very long time (been using it 3+ years).

[MdRtsHAaKu]

I have not done the analysis, but I'm _fairly_ sure those of us having trouble are using older phones.  The app was borderline unusable on an iPhone 6s.  But what do you know, I upgraded to an 8 and the app is suddenly fine!

I'm chalking this up to the development team always having the latest and greatest shiny things, and the app has just added more and more stuff, and now the older phones can't cope with it.

(My other theory was time-of-day, that the user base had grown so that we were overloading the servers at common mealtimes... but I couldn't really pin it down.  And they _should_ have monitoring in place and the ability to quickly throw more hardware at that kind of problem.  How users experience the app on old technology however, they can't really *see* that.)

[BluePlate]

I'm on a Samsung note 8 and the lag is TERRIBLE!

[BluePlate]

Lately my food tracker has started to run so slowly that it's almost unusable. At each stage of the process--loading my recent or custom food lists, returning to my daily intake list after adding a food--it takes SO LONG to load the page that my screen times out (which means it's taking almost a full minute or more!). This is making the app almost unusable, as it takes so long to input any meal that involves more than one component. 

Anyone else have this issue? Anyone have a solution? 

[DeptOfDefense]

I agree, age of phone has nothing to do with the problem imo. My phone is old, but I had problems with slowness in logging food even when my phone was new, and even now sometimes it is much faster. It just seems to be a random, sporadic problem.

It may, however, be specific to Android devices. Moderators, is there any update on this issue?