How to Find a Lost Fitbit? [what You Should Know]

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Last weekend, my wife went to the gym wearing her beloved Fitbit Luxe Gorjana. This is only a couple of hours after coming back home from her workout session that she started to wonder about her watch? Where was it? At the Gym? Did she forget to put it back after her shower? Has it been stolen?

Contrary to the Apple Watch, Fitbit trackers and smartwatches do not let you ping them using your smartphone. So is it possible to find a lost Fitbit using other tricks, and should they be forgotten once you lose them?

It is what we will aim to answer in this article.

Can a Fitbit Be Tracked?

To potentially be able to track a lost Fitbit device will require the use of a GPS. Not a phone GPS but a built-in GPS. The Fitbit Charge 5, Fitbit Sense, and Fitbit Versa 3 come with just that. It is then natural to think that it may be possible to use the Fitbit’s built-in GPS to locate them. Well, unfortunately, that is not so simple. 

Two technical reasons will preclude you from locating your lost Fitbit using the built-in GPS. 

At first, GPS is power-greedy. The Fitbit Sense and Fitbit Charge 5 offer a generous six-day battery life, which is great…but as soon as the built-in GPS is turned on, the battery life falls to 16 hours at the most.

What does it mean? The GPS will be turned off by default to preserve the battery life and only switch on while exercising. So if your lost Fitbit is waiting on a bathroom shelf somewhere, the GPS will be off, and there is nothing you can do to switch it on remotely. Why that, will you ask me?

Well, because Fitbit devices do not come with an LTE or independent cellular connection. It means that the device will not be able to communicate and exchange data when not paired with your smartphone.

Is There Nothing I Can Do to Find My Fitbit? What About Bluetooth?

If you check on the Apple Store or the Google Play store, you will see many apps that will claim to help you find your lost Fitbit in seconds. How do these apps work? Are they reliable? We wanted to make sure, so we installed “Find My Fitbit” and checked it ourselves.

In a nutshell, all of these apps rely on the same principle. They will aim to check the Bluetooth signal emitted by the Fitbit device while synchronizing with the phone.

The main issue is that Bluetooth signals can not travel at a distance longer than 10 meters…and this is in the best-case scenario. So using such an app will tell you if your lost Fitbit is still in the house or apartment and not much more than that. In addition, these apps claim to detect the strength of the signal, which will let you know if you are getting closer to the watch or not. 

In our opinion, these apps are 100% useless and are more a scam than something beneficial. However, we let you check the weekly price to make your own opinion…

The principle of using the Bluetooth signal to at least make sure that your Fitbit is still in the surroundings is somehow sound. But you certainly do not need a third-party app to do that. You already have the Fitbit App on your smartphone, so let’s make the most of it to find our lost Fitbit.

How to Use the Fitbit App to Find Your Fitbit?

Do not expect too much from checking the Bluetooth signal. It is only a way to know that the watch is in the Bluetooth range of 10 meters.

The best way is to launch the Fitbit App on your smartphone and try to sync it with your device. Then, pull the today screen down, and the App will try to communicate with the watch or fitness tracker.

If the device is found and synchronized, you will know that it is still around and have to check the area more thoroughly.

If the device does not synchronize….try to go to places where you may have removed and forgotten your device. The principle will be to pinpoint an area more than a specific location. The process can be long and tedious, but it is your best bet for finding your lost Fitbit.

To Wrap Up

Due to the lack of LTE connection and activated GPS, finding a lost Fitbit may be a complex task. Relying on Bluetooth to pinpoint a location can be helpful but keep in mind that the information provided will not be accurate and will only help define an area in which the device is located.

As for the need to download a specific Bluetooth device finder, I think that it is a waste of time and money. Instead, we suggest using the Fitbit app installed on your smartphone.

If you wonder about my wide Fitbit Luxe, we found it in the gym’s shower room, and we did not use any app for that. Instead, we just called the gym.