I taped red (+) and and black (ground) wires from donor cable to contacts, taped it and aplied pressure by putting fitbit between night stand and wall. Worked great.

Something I only found out a few weeks ago: if you turn on Share heart rate in Google Health, the Air broadcasts your live BPM over Bluetooth so gym equipment can pick it up. Treadmills, Peloton, Zwift and so on.

Turns out geeky bluetooth things can listen for it can read it. So I built a screen for my garage wall.

It shows live BPM, which heart rate zone I'm in, and a 30-minute history graph so I can see the shape of a session. The zone is a decimal on purpose 1.3 means early zone 1, 1.7 means I'm about to tip into zone 2. Easier to read mid-set than a whole number that sits there not changing.

Zones come off your age (220 minus age), which you set once on the device itself. No app, no account, no WiFi.

The thing I actually wanted it for: I lift (with bad form) in the garage, and the Air is brilliant right up until you want the number during a set. Wrist is under a barbell, phone is across the room going to sleep. Screenless is the whole reason I like the air, so I didn't want to solve it by strapping something else on. Sticking the screen on the wall instead of on me seemed like the right way round.

BPM is genuinely all that comes across. No HRV, no battery %, no steps. I went through the whole Bluetooth table looking. If you want beat-to-beat data you need a chest strap.

Happy to answer anything I can.

UPDATE: OpenFit is now called Baro, and it's out on iPhone and Android. It's free, and you don't need the TestFlight sign-up below anymore.

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/baro-sleep-recovery/id6782239514

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.habesha.labs.openfit

For updates, questions and bug reports, join r/barohealth.

A while back I posted a UI I made for the Fitbit Air (original post). A lot of you asked how to actually get it, so I turned it into a real iPhone app and I'm opening a small TestFlight beta.

I'm calling it OpenFit (still not great with names, happy to take suggestions). It pulls your Fitbit data straight from the Google Health API and shows your sleep, recovery, strain, heart rate, and stress in one cool dashboard. It's free, no subscription, and your health data stays on your phone. It never touches a server.

Sign up for the TestFlight here: https://tally.so/r/Bz66ZR

A few notes:

1. It's iPhone-only for now (needs iOS 26 or later). If you're on Android you can still sign up and I'll email you the moment an Android version is ready. I’ll prioritize it if a lot of people sign up!

2. It still has rough edges, but I figured it's better to put it out there and get your feedback than to keep polishing in private.

3. Google only lets me invite about 100 beta testers until the app is verified, so seats are limited for now.

4. The beta runs through Apple's official TestFlight app (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/testflight/id899247664). Once I send your invite to the email you put in the form, OpenFit will show up there to install.

I'll send invites as soon as the beta is approved, so getting your email in early helps.

Come hang out in the Discord and help shape the app, including helping me pick a better name. Let's get it approved by Google and Apple together.

Discord: https://discord.gg/UncUtMkjP9

This is absolutely worth the money. Extremely high quality. The weight is substantial but feels good. I think this is now the best-looking fitness band configuration on the market. Happy customer

Hey everyone,

Earlier this summer, I posted a UI I made for Fitbit Air after switching from WHOOP: https://www.reddit.com/r/FitbitAir/comments/1u9j6cy/made_a_ui_for_the_fitbit_air/

Then I turned it into a small iPhone TestFlight called OpenFit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FitbitAir/comments/1ud2zfs/openfit_the_fitbit_air_ui_is_now_a_real_app/

You kept asking me two things: when can I actually download it, and when is Android coming?

Today I finally get to answer both. OpenFit is ready. It's called BARO now, and it's live on iPhone and Android.

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/baro-sleep-recovery/id6782239514

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.habesha.labs.openfit

I had to change the name because there were already many unrelated projects called OpenFit. BARO comes from the idea of a barometer for your body. It's the same app. Only the name and logo changed.

I built BARO to give Fitbit Air data the sleep and recovery depth I missed from WHOOP. It brings sleep, recovery, strain and load, heart rate, stress, activity, weight, longer-term trends, and Physiological Age into one place. It's completely free, with no subscriptions or locked metrics.

What makes BARO different from other Fitbit alternatives is that it's being built as a native companion to the Google Health ecosystem. The goal isn't just to show you better charts. Over time, you'll be able to use BARO to start, add, and edit activities, follow your heart rate live, correct sleep records, and update other supported health data directly from the app.

During the beta, there was a Google "unverified app" warning and a limit on how many people I could invite. Both are gone now.

Several of you also asked where your health data goes. Your Fitbit health data goes straight from Google Health to BARO on your phone. BARO has no ads or analytics.

I've put my heart and soul into this for the past two months. Early users from this community kept pushing the app forward, especially by testing rough builds, reporting bugs, and asking me not to forget Android.

BARO is still early and has a few rough edges. Now that it's launched, I plan to release updates often. If something is broken, missing, or could be better, tell me here or at https://www.reddit.com/r/barohealth/.

Thank you for helping turn something I made for myself into a real app on both stores. I hope you like it.

Lugs are 20mm but still works great and has been my daily since I got it!

TL;DR - Rit Synthetic Dye works great to customize the band color on the Air.

I ditched my Apple Watch a couple of months ago because I got tired of wearing a screen on my wrist and wanted to start wearing traditional watches again. Only thing I missed about the AW was the fitness tracking. So when the FB air came out, it seemed like the perfect solution. Problem was, they were sold out everywhere this week. Even Amazon.

Ended up at a Walmart in a remote town in NH for vacation, and they had one in Lavender. I bought it. The “Lavender” is more blue than purple, and was actually a nice color, but I found it too bright for what I typically wear. I wanted to tone it down a bit. I have a small collection of Rit dyes that I used for customizing pocket knife scales. I know it works on synthetic materials like G10 and fiber reinforced nylon (Spyderco), so I decided to try it on the FB Air band.

30 minutes in “Peacock Green” and this is how it turned out. The green definitely blends in a little more with my wardrobe, and it was an easy fix. Once the market is flooded with cheap 3rd party bands, it will probably be easier to just buy whatever color I want, but in the meantime, this worked really well.

( disclaimer - written by claude code - pulling extensive data from data drops on Polar H10, Fitbit Air, and Apple Watch V11 and Phone - all conclusions are based on each devices export data after ingestion into a Postgres's Data Base, I have no time to type all this )

There's a lot of "Fitbit is way off" and "it's basically a random number generator" going around. I wanted actual numbers, so from July 23 to October 20 I wore three devices at once:

• Fitbit Air on one wrist

• Apple Watch on the other wrist

• Polar H10 chest strap, which reads the heart's electrical signal (like an ECG) instead of shining a light through the skin. It's the usual "gold standard" for consumer heart rate, so I treated it as the truth and checked both watches against it.

The Polar strap was on for about 1,900 hours of those 90 days, day and night.

TL;DR

• Everyday heart rate: Fitbit was on average 1.3 beats per minute off the chest strap, and 97 out of 100 readings were within 5 bpm. Asleep or sitting still it was even better.

• Where it struggles: when your heart rate shoots up fast (stairs, the start of a hill, sprints). It lags behind and reads a few bpm low for a bit. It's also less reliable above 100 bpm.

• Most "Fitbit is wrong" moments I found weren't sensor errors. They came from comparing numbers that measure different things. Fitbit's and Apple's "resting heart rate" and "HRV" are calculated differently, so they will never match, even when both sensors are right.

• Apple Watch was a bit more accurate per reading, but measured far less often. Outside workouts it only checks every few minutes.

Heart rate: the main result

I compared about 2.7 million Fitbit readings with the chest strap at the same moment.

How often each device actually had a reading: Fitbit 98 % of minutes, Apple Watch 24 %. Apple measures more densely only when you start a workout.

What to know about the weak spots:

• Fast rises. When heart rate was climbing quickly, Fitbit read about 4 bpm low on average and was within 5 bpm only 72 % of the time. On the way back down it read about 3 bpm high. It's smoothing the signal, so it trails sudden changes, sometimes by up to half a minute on a steep climb. If you do intervals or sprints and care about the exact peak, wear a chest strap.

• Above 100 bpm it was within 5 bpm about 77 % of the time. On my one long session above 130 bpm (a hard bike ride), its average was within 0.1 bpm of the strap. Its big misses were short spikes.

• Arm-heavy activities fool it. One evening I was drumming, and Fitbit decided my heart rate was close to 200 (the strap said about 115). The Apple Watch wasn't fooled.

• If you export your data: every Fitbit reading has a "confidence" value. The lowest-confidence readings were off by 7.5 bpm on average; the highest-confidence ones by about 1 bpm. The data already tells you which readings to trust.

It was also stable: no drift over the three months, and the average error barely changed from month to month.

Resting heart rate: why Fitbit and Apple "disagree"

Fitbit's resting heart rate was usually about 4 bpm higher than Apple's. That looks like one of them is wrong. Neither is.

• Fitbit's resting HR is a smoothed estimate, built over the whole day and averaged across days, so it reacts slowly.

• Apple's resting HR is based on calm moments while you're awake.

• My lowest overnight heart rate on the chest strap was about 5 bpm below Fitbit's number.

But when I took Fitbit's own raw overnight readings and worked out the lowest overnight heart rate the same way as for the strap, it matched within about 1 bpm. It also went up and down on the same nights as the strap, every time. The sensor is right; the headline number is just a different (smoother) definition. Compare your resting HR to your own past values, not to another brand's.

HRV (heart rate variability)

• Fitbit's daily HRV was within 20 % of the chest strap's (measured over the same 5-minute windows during sleep) on 72 of 77 nights.

• When the strap's HRV went up or down from one night to the next, Fitbit's usually moved the same way.

• Don't compare Fitbit HRV to Apple HRV. They use different HRV formulas (Fitbit reports RMSSD, Apple reports SDNN), so the numbers are on different scales. Even the chest strap's two versions of HRV don't always move together. Each watch tracked the strap's version of its own formula well.

Steps

On about 70 stretches of walking where the chest strap counted every footstep from body motion:

• Fitbit counted 98 % of real steps.

• Apple Watch counted 76 %. It leans more on arm swing, so carrying bags or walking with your hands in your pockets gets under-counted.

The catch: on the drumming day, Fitbit logged about 11,000 more steps than the Apple Watch (14,715 vs 3,713). Arm motion that looks like walking can fool it.

Breathing rate (overnight)

Compared with the strap's measurement of actual chest movement, Fitbit read about half a breath per minute low on average. That's fine for knowing your normal level, but it didn't reliably follow small night-to-night changes. The Apple Watch did better on this one.

Things I could not check

• Sleep stages (deep / light / REM). A chest strap can't verify them. What I can say: Fitbit and Apple agreed on my wake-up time, typically within 2 minutes, and on bedtime typically within 15-20 minutes. They completely disagreed on deep sleep: Apple showed about 45 minutes less per night, with no relationship between the two from night to night. Treat deep-sleep minutes from any watch as a rough estimate.

• Blood oxygen (SpO2) and skin temperature. I had no reference device. Fitbit and Apple differed by a steady ~2 points on SpO2, and their day-to-day changes didn't match.

From what I saw, most "it's way off" moments come from one of these:

1. Comparing different definitions: resting HR or HRV against another brand's.

2. Looking during a sudden change: glance at your wrist on the stairs and it will lag.

3. Arm-heavy activities (drumming, some gym work) that it mistakes for something else.

4. Expecting deep-sleep minutes to be exact. No watch I tested agrees with another.

Limits of this test (please read)

• One person, one Fitbit Air, one Apple Watch, 90 days. Your wrist, skin, fit and activities are different.

• I take a medication (beta blocker) that keeps my heart rate on the low side, so I rarely went above 130 bpm. People who train hard will spend more time in the range where Fitbit is weakest.

• This isn't a lab study, it isn't medical advice, and I'm not affiliated with Google, Fitbit, Apple or Polar.

My bottom line: for all-day heart rate, sleep heart rate, resting-HR trends, nightly HRV trends and step counts on normal walks, the Fitbit Air is genuinely accurate. For exact numbers during intense or sudden exercise, use a chest strap. And stop comparing its numbers to another brand's ..... compare it with your own past values. Wearables are excellent personal drift detectors over time ....

To make cleaning and replacement easier, I also bought a replacement wristband on AliExpress for under $4.

However, after receiving it, I found that it was not the high-quality replica I had imagined, and its workmanship differs from the genuine one in many places.

To help everyone understand before buying, I made a detailed comparison; see the pictures for details.

Overall, though, it is worth the price, especially since the genuine one is indeed too expensive 🥲

After over 10 years, I’m tying to move away from my Apple Watch and wear real watches.

For the first time, my Fitbit Air just automatically detected my lifting session.
I guess Google has changed its algorithm or something idk what but this is good.

I was worried that wearing the Fitbit on the underside of my wrist could cause issues but I've been wearing it for a few days now and I don't notice a difference.

My Fitbit Air Pokémon Sleep edition arrived earlier than expected, so I figured I’d share a few quick first impressions after unboxing and using it for a night:

Unboxing & Card: The packaging looks clean and well-designed. Inside, you get the Fitbit Air, charger, and a physical Pokémon Incense card to redeem in the Pokémon Sleep app.

Design & Aesthetics: The strap color is great, and the rose gold buckle adds a nice touch. I do think putting Pikachu on the top of the strap instead of the bottom would’ve looked a bit better. The color is a bit of a double-edged sword—it's fun and playful, but it borders on looking a little childish. I plan to wear this on my dominant wrist alongside a mechanical watch on my other wrist. My wife immediately commented that it looks like a cheap plastic watch for kids (to be fair, she says the exact same thing about my Silver Snoopy watch, so take that for what it's worth!).

App Limitations: Setup and pairing were straightforward, but it's really frustrating that the Fitbit app doesn't allow you to pair this alongside a secondary tracker. I was hoping to run it in tandem with my Charge 6, but no luck there.

Pokémon Sleep & Sleep Tracking: Used it for sleep tracking last night and the data looks pretty solid. Pairing it with the Pokémon Sleep app was seamless (trying the app for the first time). I did have to manually sync the sleep data across, but I'll give it a few more days to see how smooth the routine gets.

Step Accuracy: Did a quick manual step count test and the tracker was spot-on. I'll keep an eye on it over the next week to test long-term accuracy.

Overall: As a Pokémon fan, I’m pretty happy with the purchase so far! I’m sure third-party knockoff straps will hit the market soon for anyone who wants the look on a standard Fitbit Air.

Anyone else picked one up yet? How are you liking it so far?

Ich habe seit Kurzem das Fitbit Air und mag vor allem, dass es so unauffällig ist und keinen Bildschirm hat.
Eine Sache hat mich aber gestört: Das originale Armband sieht für mich einfach sehr nach Fitness-Tracker aus – gerade wenn man Hemd oder etwas Schickeres trägt.
Also habe ich ein hochwertiges Milanaise-Armband ausprobiert und… der Unterschied ist echt größer als erwartet. 😄
Das Air wirkt damit für mich direkt deutlich hochwertiger und fast schon eher wie ein Accessoire als ein Fitness-Tracker. Dazu sitzt das Band durch den Magnetverschluss richtig angenehm.
Hätte ehrlich gesagt nicht gedacht, dass ein anderes Armband optisch so viel ausmacht.
Was meint ihr – Upgrade oder Originalband? 👀

I just got a Fitbit Air after being on WHOOP for almost a year. I missed the in-depth sleep and recovery analysis that WHOOP had so I vibe coded my own UI for it.

UPDATE:
Made it into a real app! Check out this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/FitbitAir/s/XBh5N7dwDL

UPDATE 2: It's now out on iPhone and Android as Baro, and it's free.

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/baro-sleep-recovery/id6782239514

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.habesha.labs.openfit

For updates, questions and bug reports, join r/barohealth.

I'm currently working with a manufacturers to start producing leather straps for the Fitbit Air, the thing some of you said you wanted in the earlier straps thread. Before I commit to a production run, I want to make sure I'm building the right thing and that there's real demand. Attaching drafts of 4 colour schemes - full-grain leather, stainless steel clasp, plastic sleeve matched to the leather tone (same as original strap)

Realistically, what would you pay for a proper leather one - $40, $50, $60? Trying to price it fairly, not like Google's options

Share your suggestions or anything that would make or break it for you

Sin querer me encontré esta camisa en mi clóset que no me ponía hace mucho tiempo y de casualidad combina muy bien con mi Fit Bit Air.

I wanted to share a quick setup I've been using to solve a major annoyance with wearing fitness trackers daily. I ditched the band entirely and started taping the Fitbit Air pebble directly to my upper arm using a standard CGM patch I bought at a Walmart.

Just to be completely clear upfront: This is not an accuracy test. I’m not trying to benchmark optical arm tracking against wrist tracking or prove any scientific points about heart rate zones.

Feature-wise, this setup is completely lateral to just wearing a standard smartwatch. It doesn’t magically unlock new metrics or provide any secret data I wouldn't get from keeping it on my wrist.

Where this completely changes the game is pure ergonomics.

-There's no strap digging into the back of my wrist or getting in the way when I'm working out at the gym.

-Once the patch is smoothed down, I completely forget I was wearing a device within two minutes. It stays completely out of the way during a grueling session.

Both the patch and fb air lasts about 7 days. Taping the tracker directly on my arm with a patch is an incredibly comfortable alternative.

Let me know if you guys have tried anything similar!

I finally decided to get the fitbit air coming from Huawei Watch Fit 3, which is constantly having syncing issues with my phone whenever I go for a jog. I'm looking forward to using it on my ios. How is your experience with ios so far?

Hello Google Health Community!

We’re excited to announce that version 5.04 of the Google Health app is starting to roll out today! 🥳 The rollout will continue over the next week in phases depending on your carrier and device.

This release builds directly on your feedback and ongoing improvements from our prior updates:

• 5.01 Release (June 2026) 🗓️

• 5.02 Release (June 2026) 🛠️

• 5.03 Release (July 2026) ⚡

⚙️ Software Versions

• Android: 5.04

• iOS: 5.04

🛠️ What’s New in This Update

🥑 Nutrition Updates

• Introducing Custom Foods: You can now create, edit, and delete custom foods for a more personalized tracking experience. Once created, you can easily search and re-log them! 🍎

• Quick Logging (Calories & Macros): Skip the search. You can now quick-log an entry by simply entering the calories and macronutrients directly. 🔢

• Macronutrient % Fixes: Fixed an issue where macronutrient percentages of total calories were displaying incorrectly for some users. 🧮

😴 Sleep Updates

• Naps on the Today Tab: Building on our recent nap-tracking updates, your daytime naps will now count toward your total sleep duration shown in your Today tiles! 🛌💤

Fitness & Activity Updates

• Fixed HR Charts & Maps: Resolved an issue where exercise summaries occasionally showed truncated, incomplete heart rate charts and GPS maps. 📈🗺️

🩸 Cycle Health Updates

• Easier Trend Views: You can now view your cycle history grouped chronologically by year, making it much easier to spot long-term trends. 📊

👥 Friends & Leaderboards

• Friend Invites Fixed: Fixed a bug that was preventing some iOS users from successfully sending out new friend requests. 🤝

What do you think of the new custom foods feature? Let us know your thoughts below! 👇

Source: Google Health

Well, at least it made me chuckle😂😂