The Fitbit Charge 6 is affected by the ongoing bug. (Image: Fitbit/Getty)
If you own a Fitbit and have noticed your daily distance is no longer being accurately recorded, you are not alone. Owners of the popular Fitbit Charge 5 and Fitbit Charge 6 devices have been complaining online that their trackers, released in 2021 and 2023 respectively, have suddenly stopped automatically measuring how far users have walked or run within a day.
It’s a bug that appears to not have been fixed despite Fitbit acknowledging the issue on its online community forum six months ago. Some online reports also claim it is affecting other models .
Though Fitbit devices can be used to manually track specific kinds of workout activity, one of the most basic features is the ability for the tracker to automatically collect your distance travelled alongside other key metrics such as steps, heart rate, and floors climbed simply by wearing it.
Express.co.uk has been wearing a Fitbit Charge 6 for several weeks, and recently we noticed that the distance at the end of our day was reading 0.00km despite having walked thousands of steps. Fitbit customers with similar issues have been posting in the official Fitbit Community forums online since July of last year complaining of the same issue.
A Fitbit spokesperson declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.
“We’ve seen reports from Fitbit users that they aren’t seeing distance being tracked in their Fitbit app,” Fitbit user RiekoC on July 20, 2024. “This issue has been escalated to the team.”
“Our team is aware of the situation and is working on a solution to it”, community user and Fitbit Moderator JuanFitbit on July 24, 2024. “Many users have now confirmed that they were able to fix it by entering the stride length themselves. It’s worth a try until our team has worked on the solution.”
He then left instructions on how to fix it, but the solution is far from ideal. The whole point of a Fitbit is that it is a smart device that can automatically track how far you’ve walked. The firm, which is owned by , says the way to fix the issue is to manually input your stride length in your Fitbit account so that your Charge 5 or Charge 6 can track distance again.
This is a fiddly fix. Fitbit’s official advice is to measure your stride length:
“Go to a place where you’re sure of the distance, such as a track”, the company .
“Count your steps as you walk or run, making sure you travel at least 20 steps.
“Divide the distance traveled (in yards or meters) by the number of steps you took to determine your stride length. If needed, convert your stride length into inches or centimetres.”
You then have to go to the Today tab in the Fitbit app and tap Exercise days > Menu> Activity settings > Stride Length and then enter your hopefully accurate stride length.
This laborious workaround does not appear to have been actively communicated to Charge 5 and Charge 6 owners, many of whom will not have been online to such enthusiast websites as the Fitbit Community forum to find a fix.
Oddly, the Charge 6 we are using manages to record distance covered when tracking a run using GPS, presumably as it is able to determine stride length from the data.
“Another question that I would like to know is why, if you do an exercise like walking with GPS enabled, doesn’t it use the stride length from that to calculate non-exercise step stride length?”, Fitbit user MrUnix on the forum on August 16, 2024.
“Walking as an exercise isn’t much different than just normal walking around the home/work. Seems like it would be kind of trivial to implement rather than just basing it on gender and height, which is what I believe the automatic setting takes its cue from.”
With Fitbit silent on the matter, it is unclear if this frustrating bug affecting potentially thousands of Charge 5 and Charge 6 owners is close to being fixed.
We gave the Charge 6 a glowing on its release in 2023 calling it “the best activity trackers” but with the current bug we currently recommend you do not buy it.