The Fitbit app has been down for five hours and counting, leaving users unable to view their sleep, heart rate and activity stats, or access workouts and meditation sessions. Those who log out of the app are unable to log back in.
The company is aware of the problem and says that it’s currently working on a fix, but there’s no timescale so far. We’ve reached out to Fitbit for comment.
DownDetector shows that users around the world began reporting problems at 12pm GMT (7am EST), when the app began failing to connect to Fitbit’s servers.
Editors at Android Authority and TechRadar have found that, although the app interface loads at first, modules fail to appear and data isn’t synced from their devices. Widgets for step count, calories, Active Zone Minutes and floors climbed all remain blank.
Other users have been logged out and are unable to get back in. Instead, they receive an error message ‘Fitbit.com is unavailable. Please try again later’. It’s not possible to log into the Fitbit.com website to view your dashboard either.
Without the app, it’s impossible to review sleep scores, activity trends and SpO2 readings. Fitbit Premium users will be unable to access their catalog of workouts, including the new meditation sessions from Deepak Chopra added last week.
Fitbit devices will also be unable to receive firmware updates until the issue is resolved. These include the new blood oxygen saturation app for the Fitbit Charge 4, which is meant to be rolling out over the coming days.
Fitbit has acknowledge the outage on its Twitter account, and says that it’s working on a solution.
We have identified a technical issue interrupting Fitbit services, and are working to fix it. Thank you for your patience.March 3, 2021
The issue doesn’t seem to be universal though; some owners of Fitbit smart scales have reported that they can’t sync their weight and body composition data, but TechRadar’s homes editor is able to use the app with her scale as normal.
What should you do?
For now, all you can do is wait. Don’t reinstall the app or unpair your watch – while that’s often recommended as a way to resolve problems, this particular issue is on the server side, not on your phone, and you’ll be unable to log back into the app or reconnect your device until it’s resolved.
Although the outage is inconvenient, it shouldn’t cause any problems longer term. Your data might not sync with the app right now, but it isn’t lost; it will still be stored on your fitness tracker or smart scale, and will be uploaded to the app once Fitbit’s servers are back online. When this happens, you can expect your stats to sync with third-party services like Strava as well.
More to follow