Fitbit has announced that it will end the ability to sync your wearable device with PCs and Macs, preventing users from downloading their own music from their computers to their devices.
Fitbit announced it would end the feature on October 13, writing on its page (opens in a new tab) that “we’re removing the option to sync your Fitbit device with the Fitbit Connect app on your computer. Download and use the Fitbit app on your phone to sync your device.”
So how do you get your own music onto your best Fitbit without doing it the old-fashioned way, with a cable and a computer? The short answer is: you don’t.
Fitbit says on its help page (opens in new tab) for music and podcasts that “13. As of October 2022, we’re removing the option to transfer playlists to your Fitbit watch from your computer. You can continue to play personal music stored on your watch and stream music to your watch using the Deezer app and the Pandora app.”
These apps don’t exactly have the biggest user bases, so it seems like a really short-sighted move to encourage people to subscribe to even more streaming services and subscriptions to access the core functions of your watch without ads, as if paying for Fitbit Premium wasn’t enough already. How many paywalls can people reasonably expect to bypass a single wearable, with the purchase of the tracker itself?
However, I believe Fitbit will be working on it very soon. Anyone who’s followed Fitbit closely over the past few years knows that it’s been acquired by Google, and there are a number of new devices (thought to be the Fitbit Sense 2, Inspire 3, and Fitbit Versa 4) that will be released soon.
While they’re unlikely to be true Wear OS watches, they could at least have offline Spotify and YouTube Music enabled, covering a wide range of streaming services so you can at least get your music somewhere.
If you’re a Fitbit owner with an older device who enjoys listening to your music library on the device, you have two months to fill the thing with as many songs as it will fit before the October 13 cutoff point. Fitbit will not delete your existing song library, but it will disable Fitbit Connect, the software application that allows you to connect your device to your computer, on this date.
Fitbit obviously has its reasons for this, and it must have deduced from the data collected by its devices that more people use streaming services on its devices than actually listen to music. I don’t know how much of Fitbit’s user base downloads their own songs to their watch, but I’m guessing it’s not huge. It’s probably hard to accept the new status quo with new devices on the horizon.
Even so, it will annoy some long-time users at a time when the Fitbit just can’t get out of the way. While we can’t wait to see Fitbit’s new devices in September, between the Charge 5 issue, the headline-grabbing Ionic recall, its terrible chart update that convinced its users they had sleep apnea, and now this, surely the wearable maker There seems to be some technical issues at the moment.
Hopefully, these are just teething problems caused by Alphabet’s takeover of the brand, and not long-term problems. Otherwise, the most popular name in fitness tracking is about to have another bad year.
With an MA in Journalism from Cardiff University, Matt started his digital journalism career at Men’s Health and stayed there for over two years, where he won awards in health and fitness reporting. Since then, his byline has appeared in various publications and sites including Runner’s World, Women’s Health, Men’s Fitness, LiveScience and Fit&Well on everything from exercise, nutrition to mental health, in addition to covering extreme sports for Red Bull.
Stretching is Matt’s best fitness tip. He originally discovered exercise through martial arts, a black belt in karate, and trained in kickboxing for years. During COVID, he also fell in love with yoga, as it combined a martial arts style of stretching with some personal space.
