From easy watch face development to community building, say goodbye to these features
Long before it was acquired by Google, Fitbit had some great software features centered around its community of users. The Adventures feature, for example, has been incentivizing users to meet their step goals by unlocking virtual tours of popular destinations such as California’s Yosemite National Park. At the same time, its Challenges have become so popular that many of the best fitness trackers have copied them. But as the brand continues to transition into Google’s ecosystem, Fitbit is now ditching these old features, as well as support for open groups.
Fitbit has surprised users by announcing that Adventures and Challenges will be discontinued on March 27. This means that your favorite social activities and immersive competitions based on step counts are going away.
Users will lose any trophies they earned from challenges they participated in after March 27, but they can download their data before that date by visiting this Fitbit settings page and going to the Fitbit dashboard. Nevertheless, users can still interact with friends via the app’s Friends leaderboard and Community Feed.
Furthermore, open groups, which allow anyone to join a community with a common interest, will be phased out beginning next month. When this occurs, users will only be able to form private closed groups with their friends — open groups, however, do not require an invitation to join and anyone in the community can send a request to get roped in, much unlike closed groups. Fitbit users will still be able to congregate through the Health & Wellness forums.
And as if those closures weren’t enough, Fitbit Studio — a tool for building third-party apps and watch faces for its smartwatches — will be shuttered as well on April 20, according to 9to5Google. Developers are advised to use Fitbit’s command-line interface tools for future app creation.
Fitbit says these latest moves are part of its efforts to streamline the app experience and provide the best tools for a healthy lifestyle. However, they’ve also been regarded as paving the way for tighter integration with Google services. As part of that goal, you’ll be required to log in to your Fitbit account with your Google account beginning this year. The Google sign-in option on the company’s website is also being phased out.
