Love your Fitbit but not receiving any text messages, notifications, or incoming call alerts from your phone to your Fitbit? Tried everything but left wondering how you can get your Fitbit to show your text messages and other notifications and alerts.
If you aren’t receiving notifications on your Fitbit and don’t know why or how to fix it, this article is for you!
Many Fitbit owners (including me) complain that notifications have stopped working, regardless of the type of device, impacting both iPhones and Android devices.
Today, we look at several different troubleshooting methods before calling it quits.
For those who recently updated the Fitbit app, reboot your phone and try setting up notifications again. And Android users, make sure you set the Fitbit app’s battery access to unrestricted (not optimized or restricted), so the app runs continually in the background.
If time is short and you don’t need a thorough step-by-step, follow our top 6 recommendations to get notifications, incoming calls, and text messages to show up on your Fitbit. The article outlines additional tips.
If your notification issue is that you don’t see enough of the text, try tapping on the notification, and it should expand so you can read through the entire text message or app notification.
One of the features we love about Fitbit is that you can get notifications for just about any app on your paired phone. It can actually be overwhelming!
Now, if your Fitbit isn’t showing any app notifications or previews of your text messages, it’s usually a simple fix.
Unfortunately, there’s no one fits all fix. That’s because there are many reasons why your notifications or texts aren’t showing up!
So let’s run through the most common things to cause Fitbit notification issues.
Syncing often prevents or delays notifications. And Fitbit only shows notifications when the device is unlocked.
Notifications automatically disappear from your Fitbit after reviewing messages on your paired phone. This is intended behavior and cannot be changed.
There are a lot of notification settings to check on Apple devices. So it’s easy to miss one or two. So let’s check those out.
The first issue is that you did not set up the Fitbit app to send notifications to your Fitbit device. To check this, you can do so in two different ways: via the Fitbit app or on your Fitbit device.
Before jumping into your phone, make sure that you turn on your Fitbit device’s Notification setting.
Depending on your model, you may have a distinct notification setting (like on the Inspire series trackers), Do Not Disturb (DND), and Sleep mode settings.
For the Fitbit Sense series, Charge 5, and Versa 3/4, there’s an additional mode called Focus mode (Exercise Focus on the Charge 5) that silences notifications and calls during workouts with the Exercise app.
It’s easy to confuse the differences between DND and sleep modes.
While both modes mute notifications, sleep mode reduces your screen’s brightness and prevents the display from turning on when you move.
If you do not interact with those notifications, they automatically disappear from your device’s screen. Swipe down from the top of your Fitbit’s screen to see unread notifications.
The other method for checking notifications involves the Fitbit app on your phone, tablet, etc. To check the notification settings, you’ll need to follow these steps:
Occasionally, everything may work on your Fitbit, and suddenly, it stops.
The first culprit is how far away you are from your smartphone.
Say you’re cleaning around the house and leaving your phone in one room.
Well, your notifications might stop after a certain distance threshold has been met.
In the case of Fitbit, your smartphone must be within 30 feet to transmit correctly. If not, your Fitbit will become just a digital watch until you get back within range.
The nice thing is that you won’t have to worry about re-pairing the Fitbit, as your devices should communicate.
Once you’re back in range, everything should go back to normal.
When we sync our devices with more than one mobile device (especially two phones), our notifications often disappear or go haywire.
That’s because your Fitbit can only receive notifications from one phone–when you allow your Fitbit to view (and send) texts, you create a bond between that phone and your Fitbit.
Your Fitbit can only bond with one phone at a time.
If you sync your Fitbit with more than one phone, make sure you turn notifications on for only one phone and turn them off on the other–that way, they won’t interfere.
Frankly, we have trouble with notifications not showing up even when syncing with our iPhone and iPad.
So it’s a good practice to use only one mobile device with your Fitbit consistently.
The methods above are likely some of the easiest ways to get your Fitbit back in working order. However, there are still some others that you can try before giving up.
Some users discovered that if they turned off the Text Message option in the Fitbit app Notifications settings and toggled on the individual messaging apps they used, they received all their text messages.
This next option is straightforward, as Fitbit suggests you Force Quit the Fitbit app. This can be done in various ways, depending on your device.
Another way to get your Fitbit working again is to refresh the notification settings. To do this, you’ll need to follow these steps:
This gives your device a “fresh” start without setting everything up again. Performing this task has been known to knock out any cobwebs.
There’s an old saying, “did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in?” Although technology is much more advanced than 20 years ago, this adage still applies from time to time.
Performing a restart on your Fitbit varies, depending on your device.
For example, these are the steps to restart your Sense series, Versa series, Blaze, or Ionic:
This forces your Fitbit to restart, returning you to your chosen clock face once completed.
See this article for other Fitbit models or a step-by-step: Need to restart or reset your Fitbit device? Learn the steps.
If all else fails, you must go through and set up notifications again from scratch. Of course, this method is only suggested if your Fitbit works in every other capacity.
However, here are the steps you need to take to set up notifications from scratch:
If you tried all the steps above and still cannot get your notifications to show up on your Fitbit, uninstall and reinstall the Fitbit app.
To reinstall, visit the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and download and install the Fitbit app. You’ll need to set your Fitbit device up again.
Since Fitbit saves your account information on its servers, deleting and reinstalling the app does not result in data loss.
These are just some methods you can use if you run into issues with notifications on your Fitbit. If one of these worked for you, let us know in the comments below!
If you found a different method than the ones listed above, let us know to add it to the list! Oh, and be sure to mention which device you are using to help others figure out the problem.
