Receiving constant notification to turn on "Location Services"

[Blankboy]

As you can see in the attached image, I am constantly getting notifications telling me to turn on Location Services to ‘Always’. I have no intention of doing that, and it was never an issue before. Is there a way to get rid of this message? Thanks

Moderator Edit: Clarified Subject. 

[Maddog21]

Thanks for pursuing this.  I ran into dead end with Fitbit call centers and escalation process.

I am also not able to reply to hkperrin.

[swampmilkweed]

When the annoying location access notifications stopped, I thought to myself that I would stay with Fitbit longer. I am grateful to hkperrin. However, an odd thing happened today that I had not expected. My Versa 2 went dark for two hours even with a 90% charge.  It finally came back on, but I now think that the Apple watch in my future may be sooner rather than later. Thank you for your support, Maddog21. I read a good review of the Apple watch SE. It is less expensive than the Series 6 and the features it lacks are ones I do not care about anyway. Best wishes.

[ray1617]

It started again! Fit**ahem** is fricken annoying! Time to start looking at Apple watches. Again it’s all about getting personal information about us users.

[swampmilkweed]

When I saw your message, I dashed to my phone to sync my Versa 2. The awful location message didn't show up! Although I am still using Fitbit, I would never trust Fitbit enough to buy another device after all this mess. I have heard from an Apple watch wearer that Apple doesn't care about customers either. I am still leaning toward Apple when my current Fitbit dies. Apple may also have Bluetooth location as the default. I don't know that, just guessing.

[Kimmy92279]

Last year my Fitbit finally died (stopped tracking my heart rate completely) so I gave up and switched to Apple. They may capture data (to be honest I haven’t delved into it in a while since I set it up right with my phone), but at least they don’t ask me about it every freaking time I open the Health app on my phone.

[radhopper]

That doesn’t work either. This is disturbing now. Just started today for me and it’s every time I sync. Make it stop 

[mkping]

here's my enchanting version. every single time i go to the app. bluetooth is already on. 🙄

[Anonycrom]

I reached out to Fitbit support, in part thanks to a previous user engaging them via Twitter. After a short back and forth where I explained the problem, I was finally told the following:

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Got it. There is no option to stop for the location services pop up. The Fitbit app needs the locations services option on your phone to be turned on in order to perform the Bluetooth low energy scans required to sync your tracker. 

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That doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me, since the tracker seems to sync just fine with location services off. But it came from the official support account, so I would not expect a resolution to this problem. That leaves us with the following options:

1. Turn of location services completely, on the entire phone.
2. Turn location services on for Fitbit.
3. Deal with these annoying pop ups.

I don't know how this doesn't violate the App Store's rules for app behavior. If you tell an app you don't want it to use a service, it is supposed to respect that decision. Regardless, this should give us all something to think about.

Edit: Adding screenshot for proof:

[radhopper]

I will never buy another Fitbit, and will tell everyone about this glitch that they have forced upon all their customers. I have bought 3 in 4 years. Never again. This started 3 days ago after 4 years of being a customer. That was the same response I got. Too bad. You don't like it after paying over 100$. tough. Go somewhere else. Funny response to your customer.

[swampmilkweed]

I am an older woman who has used Fitbit for seven years. I'll not buy another one when mine dies. I talked with an actual man on the phone who said what you were told. I told him over and over and over that he was wrong and that my Versa syncs just fine. He talked over me and ignored me. He also went full on condescending and claimed he could take an hour to explain it to me implying I was stupid. Fitbit has fallen very low when it scolds its customers and implies they are stupid.

[hkperrin]

It really sucks, cause I've been using Fitbit for six years myself, and I never had an issue like this before they were bought by Google. I guess it kinda shows why Google bought them. Fitbit isn't really the product anymore, you are.

Btw, Apple revised their guidelines and made it much more clear that this is a violation:

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There are several prohibited custom-messaging designs that will cause rejection. Some examples are offering incentives, displaying a screen that looks like a request, displaying an image of the alert, and annotating the screen behind the alert (shown below). For guidance, see App Store Review Guidelines: 5.1.1 (iv).

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https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/app-architecture/accessing-user-da...

(Emphasis added.)

The violation outlined here is that the alert we are all seeing is not an alert brought up by the app requesting permission from the Apple API; it is in fact an alert designed to look like one built in to the Fitbit app. The app knows that it doesn't have permission because we all denied it the first time it was requested (and an app is only allowed to request it once), so they are imitating an Apple system alert that tells us to give the app permission by modifying settings in the Settings app.

You can verify yourself that this is not a system message and instead is part of the app itself, because there is a bug that gives it away. If you close the Fitbit app without dismissing the alert, then reopen the app, a new alert will be displayed on top of it, with a new scrim. You can keep doing this until the stack of scrims has completely blacked out the contents of the app, and the alerts all need to be dismissed individually before you get back to the app.

[Lobsterine]

But if you shut off Bluetooth then it shuts off sync?  That doesn’t  seem to be a fix. 

[Gadtly]

Excatly! 

My fitbit has started to glitch, so an apple watch is soon be on my wrist! 

[kkatzmann]

Awful. I’ve been having the same annoying problem and finally looked this up.  Going to switch to an iPhone likely after many years and several Fitbit models, even recommending and purchasing them for 3 other family members. Ugh

[radhopper]

Don’t bother, I have an Iphone. It is every time I sync.


Sent from Mail for Windows 10

[swampmilkweed]

I loved Fitbit for SEVEN YEARS. It used to be great. That is all gone now. I bought an Apple watch a month ago. It does some things well and some things less well than old timey Fitbit.  Current Fitbit is horrible. I wish this were not so.

[Claire123456789]

Genius! Thank you so much for posting and saving my sanity! 😊 On my charge 3 , I just went to ‘exercise’ then ‘run’ then turned off ‘use phone GPS’ and it worked!! No more annoying messages.

I’m also amazed there are so many posts on the forum about this problem and so few useful responses.

[Quilless]

This is not correct.  I turned off bluetooth and it is now saying I cannot sync my data unless I turn Bluetooth sharing back on.  The location sharing message keeps popping up every time I launch the fitbit app.  This is incredibly annoying.  I do not want to select Always share.  I do not want the battery drain.  I do want to share when I'm using the app but that is not enough to stop this annoying message.  Please fix this insanely stupid prompt.  Do I just need to give up on fitbit and switch to an apple watch?  I can't believe how dumb this is.

Moderator Edit: Formatting

[CindyMFitbit]

Hi everyone. It's good to see you participating in the Community Forums. It's nice to see new faces around!

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue. I appreciate your efforts and the additional details shared. I understand how you are feeling about this situation. Our team is always working on improving our devices and user experiences, and your comments are always welcome. 

Please note that currently it's required to have the location services set to "Always" on your iOS device whenever you're going to use MobileRun or Connected GPS. In order to stop getting the pop up on the Fitbit app, you can try doing the following on your phone:

1. Make sure the Fitbit app is updated, a new version was just released a few days ago. For more information, see How do I use the Fitbit app?
2. Open Settings > Privacy.
2. Tap Location Services and make sure it’s turned on.
3. Find Fitbit in the app list, and make sure that Allow Location Access is set to Always.

If you're not going to use MobileRun or Connected GPS, you can leave the location access set to Never. 

Hope the information is helpful. 

[mdamouse]

This very annoying and serious issue with the Fitbit App and the unwillingness of the developer to fix it after years of customer complaints is unacceptable. The Fitbit app drains the phone battery more than any-other app and even if it didn't the app should listen to the paying customer and only use location services while app is open without the constant annoying message to set location services to always. 

I currently own the Charge 4 and have a pre-order in for the Charge 5. If this is not fixed within 30 days of me receiving my Charge 5 I will box it up and return it to Amazon.

If Fitbit  wanted to they could have fixed this years ago but they are obviously more concerned with keeping track of customers location 24/7 than they are in listening to years of customer request for privacy.