Distance no longer showing on non-step activities.

[kmaroo19]

I worked out on Sunday and did a “weights” workout and at the end had a mileage stat provided. Tonight when I logged in after doing another “weights” workout I noticed that the mileage stat is gone, not only for my workout tonight, but for all previous weight workouts. Also, I lost mileage I used to have on any workouts I’d done as “kickboxing”, “yoga”, “spinning”, and “walk”. This is an exceptionally valuable stat and it makes no sense why Fitbit would just remove it from being tracked from all workouts except “run” and “treadmill”. 

Moderator Edit: Clarified Subject.

[Fenz]

Wondering the same thing! I do a bootcamp class most days and enjoy tracking distance! 

[kmaroo19]

I've been talking with Fitbit on their Twitter page and they seem very unconcerned about this fact.  Like "Oh it's just not a mileage based activity, so oh well that it's now gone". They really should have noted that something like this was coming and changing.  There's no reason they just switched it over to not counting mileage (and converting any old workouts to remove mileage) without some sort of a heads up.  Very poor customer service Fitbit.  This is why people leave brands without looking back.

[Fenz]

How upsetting, it's personally a huge motivator for me. They could haha at least moved it to workout impact on day. You're right, it's bad customer service and although I've had a Fitbit for 5 years it will definitely make me switching brands! 

[MarcoGFitbit]

Hello @Fenz and @kmaroo19 thanks for joining the Fitbit Community, it's great to have you on board. 

I appreciate your participation in the Forums and for sharing your experience with us. I know how important is for you to get a "distance" stats on your non-step based activities, but the reason the stat was removed was because, as you were mentioned by our Twitter team, in activities such as "weights" or "workout" you're not moving from one point to another, therefore no distance gets tracked. 

Our team is always looking to improve the Fitbit experience and as this was an important feature to you, I would like to encourage you to submit your insight as a suggested idea, to add this stat back to the exercise summary.

Feel free to share your suggestion with your friends and family to add more votes and comments, this is the best way to make your voice heard and get the attention from our development team.

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

[Fenz]

I guess with a "bootcamp" style workout which is what I'm selecting
distance can be important as it's different every time. I understand with
weights and some others it's unnecessary but to me it's an incorrect
generalization to lump bootcamp into that. I'll suggest an edit but I'd
appreciate people considering all the different options outside of
run/walk/cycle, I'm already envious of the accurate tracking other
bootcampers are able to see during bootcamp workouts with their apple
watch. Very disappointing.

[kmaroo19]

Marco, 

What I still don't understand is WHY this update was made in the first place, and WHY it was pushed out to Fitbit users without their knowledge, and WHY it didn't occur with the general app update that occurred on my phone April 2.  At some point between 2pm on April 14 and 730pm April 16 there was an update made, with no notice made, to remove these stats.  Again, I ask, WHY?  Should this not be a functionality that is provided with all activities regardless of whether we cover a lot of physical ground or not?  If I'm doing jumping jacks, I may not be covering a lot of physical ground, but I am still doing a lot of physical movement that would correlate to distance covered over that same time frame.  I'd consider adding in an idea as you suggested, but honestly with the lack of feedback I've gotten from that feed....the reality is highly likely that it's going to fall on completely deaf ears not interested in updating the app back to a way Fitbit felt unfunctional

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @Fenz and @kmaroo19, it's nice to see you around.

I'm sorry for the delay in my response and thanks to both of you for sharing your experience with your Fitbit devices.

@Fenz, I appreciate your feedback about this situation. It'll be a great idea to have other options to choose from the exercise app. Our team is always looking for good ideas to implement them in our devices and while the boot camp style workout isn't an option to get distance, you can create it and manually add your information to see distance, duration and calories.

@kmaroo19 first of all, I'm sorry about the misunderstanding with the previous information. Let me share that all our Fitbit devices were designed to track step-based activities, while the updates to fix any bug and enhance their performance. For those non-step exercises, you have the option to use the exercise app on your device or to manually log your activity. As @MarcoGFitbit mentioned, if you're doing an activity that doesn't take as many steps as when walking, your device will detect that you're not moving, therefore no distance will be recorded.

I understand the importance of seeing distance logged for your exercises and I appreciate you for posting that idea in our Feature Suggestion board. I'm sure others will find this a helpful suggestion and vote for it. Our team will also make sure to continue to improve our product and services based on your feedback.

See you around.