What you need to know
- Fitbit watches are soon losing support for Google Assistant.
- Google announced that Assistant would be phased out on Fitbit watches in the coming weeks in a community post last month.
- Fitbit owners can still use Amazon Alexa as a voice assistant in supported regions.
Some Fitbit smartwatches support using a voice assistant like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, but Google is currently phasing out Assistant support. Owners of the Fitbit Sense, Fitbit Sense 2, Fitbit Versa 2, Fitbit Versa 3, and Fitbit Versa 4 will soon discover that Google Assistant is no longer available, if it hasn’t disappeared already.
The phaseout was officially announced last month, and email notices are being sent out to affected Fitbit users.
“Over the next few weeks we will be progressively phasing out Google Assistant on your Fitbit device,” a community post explains. “This change means that Google Assistant voice control for activities will soon no longer be available on your Fitbit device.”
Fitbit users of these devices can still use Amazon Alexa as their voice assistant in these supported regions, including the U.S.
Google is following up its earlier community post and email notices with a notification sent to Fitbit watches (via Android Authority). “Google Assistant on Fitbit watches is being turned down, this feature will stop working in the coming weeks,” the notification reads.
It might seem odd that Google, which owns Fitbit, is pushing users away from Google Assistant and toward Amazon Alexa. However, the move appears to be part of larger changes to Google Assistant. The voice assistant has seen numerous feature deprecations since the start of 2024, and will soon be replaced on mobile with Gemini.
Eventually, Gemini will replace Google Assistant on Wear OS, at least in name. But since Fitbit smartwatches run Fitbit OS — not Wear OS — it’s far from guaranteed that Gemini will arrive on older Fitbit watches.
Amidst the announcement of the discontinuation of Assistant on Fitbit watches, there has been no official mention of a voice assistant replacement, aside from the aforementioned Alexa support.
