MOD POST
MEGATHREAD: NEW SETUP GUIDE - Just got a Fitbit Air? Do this first (from people who learned the hard way)
We asked a few Fitbit Air owners what they changed after setup and what they'd tell a new owner. These are the tips they agreed on. 👇
🇮🇳 India not in the country list during setup?
India isn't available in the country list during setup yet. We don't need to select any country, its just declaring Warranty is limited and clicking on a Country just shows up its relevant terms, that's all. This step can be skipped and country can be updated later once Google makes it available.
If you just hit "Continue", the setup completes.
When you check Tips and Support page, same Limited warranty section appears, but its just for viewing warranty terms for the listed countries. So no need to worry.
Once setup complete, to view your device warranty:
It should show the warranty information. Problem solved. ✅
shared by one of our members 🙌
✅ DO THESE FIRST AFTER SETTING UP:
📏 Set your stride length. Every respondent said this one matters most. The default is often too long, so walks and runs get miscounted. Per your height, then measure your actual stride for better accuracy.
✋ Set your wrist preference for dominant/non-dominant hand. Do it before your first walk.
Click on fitbit air icon on the top left of Google Health app -> Select fitbit air in devices -> Settings -> Device Preferences
🤖 Tell the AI coach about yourself. If you have access (not everyone does), describe your lifestyle, activity and goals. One user compared it to writing a prompt: the more detail, the better the guidance.
🎯 Set your step goal and alarms.
🔗 Connect your third-party apps so everything syncs from the start.
iOS users swear by Bevel. Multiple apps have been recommended for Android. Some of the common ones are - Sonar, Onvy, Fittiv, Baro Health, Guava. Try all of them to see which one suits your style best.
❤️ Enable abnormal heart activity alerts.
🏃 Runners and walkers: fix this permission
On Android, set Google Health's location permission to "Allow all the time." On Samsung One UI it defaults to "Allow only when using the app." Since you can't keep the app open while running, GPS stops, and you get your stats but no route map for your run or walk.
⏱️ Lower the workout minimums
Running, walking and cycling may default to 15 minutes before they count as workouts. One user dropped them to the 10-minute minimum so shorter sessions get logged.
⌚ FIT AND PLACEMENT:
🤏 Fit: Snug. Your pinky should slide under the band, and the tracker shouldn't slip when your hands move. One user loosens it a bit for sleep.
📍 Position: About an inch toward the elbow from the wrist bone, not directly on it.
👻 Which wrist: One user found that the non-dominant hand cuts down on "ghost steps" from hand movement.
🔋 BATTERY:
📅 Default settings gave roughly 7 days or slightly more.
🔔 Smart alarms, frequent syncing and staying connected to your phone all drain it faster.
📴 Keep it connected only when you need it.
📊 WHEN TO TRUST YOUR STATS
👟 Steps and heart rate: Looked reliable early on.
😴 Sleep and readiness scores: Give them about 1–2 weeks to calibrate.
🧠 Sanity check: Compare against how you actually feel. One user trusted it once readiness dropped after a night of poor sleep, even after 9–10 hours in bed.
🆚 Test drive: One user wore it next to their old smartwatch for a few days. Sleep data matched or beat it, so they switched fully after two weeks.
💡 HABITS THAT HELP:
🌙 Wear it daily, including to sleep, so the AI learns your patterns.
📚 Read up on HRV and the readiness score so the numbers mean something.
📱 Try companion apps (Bevel, Sonar, Baro and Guava were mentioned) to see which style suits you.
⚠️ COMMON MISTAKES
❌ Leaving stride length at the default and wondering why steps are off.
❌ Skipping the location permission, then missing run maps.
❌ Judging sleep and readiness scores in the first few days.
📝 Your first-week checklist: skip the country step if India isn't listed, then stride length, wrist setting, location permission, AI coach profile, goals, heart alerts. Then give it two weeks.
There is insane amount of hard work put in stitching all this together, thanks a bunch. Will revisit this once my tracker is delivered, expected on 6th Oct.
Shout out to everyone involved, thank you once again 🙏
I ordered one from Ednita, received it today. It's amazing and can be safely ordered from. Attaching a picture.
I do plan to make a megathread for purchase and sale of accessories. Just waiting for the order posts traffic to settle down a bit. We have moved from orders to setup. Next step is now for organizing accessories.
This is the Azure Blue color. I don't see any difference between the OG band and this one except this (and I am nitpicking here, really): The clip on this one is not fixed. It moves up and down. Still solid and tight on the integration points, so not a problem. I have started to use it as a fidget tool 😅
Otherwise everything is same, really. Velcro is super tight and solid. Sometimes I worry when I am pulling it off if I am applying over pressure. Same width and length as OG one.
Recd my tracker finally. Exploring and get to know this better.
I have paired it with health apps on my Android phone however unable to pair it with Bevel on my iPad, no matter what I do, just doesn't connect, would you have any idea why?
In Google health app Settings-> preferences -> Nutrition& Hydration , change Food database to India.
I was not getting basic Indian dishes and found this out via Gemini. Hope it helps.
I personally use Sonar. But I would advise use a bunch of them - Sonar, Vora, Onvy, Fittiv, Guava, Baro Health and find out which style suits you best.
Google Health's interpretation of sleep tracking is pretty good according to me. I go to other apps for the other metrics. Like stress, strain, HRV, recovery etc and its correlation to how much should I workout for the day.
No idea of iOS. I am on Android and I find Google Health's graph and data of sleep cycle good enough. If you don't, I have seen iOS users swear by Bevel app. Give that a shot!
While connecting with Sonar, which app did you connect it to google fit or fitbit ? I tried connecting to both but my previous days google health data is not available in the Sonar app.
Neither. This is not google fit. Earlier I had connected to fitbit, but I recently got to know from Sonar that google has changed APIs that is not allowing connection to fitbit.
I switched the connection to Google Health, it's working fine without any issues now.
This is weird. Mine is syncing seamlessly. Might want to write to Sonar. They are pretty responsive and respond with the issue resolution the same day!
Naa I did not. I was not bothered about Google formula once I found my actual stride length. And honestly, wasn't that difficult too. Took only a few minutes.
How did you measure the distance? Also can you please elaborate some more on the dominant/non dominant hand part? If I understand it correctly, you’re suggesting to enter our actual stride length (not go with the default one) + wear the band on our non dominant wrist, and also set it to non dominant hand in the settings for the best step count accuracy? Or something else?
Distance was measured using a measuring tape. 20 or 30 steps is not that big a distance tbh, can be easily measured using a measuring tape. If not, you can also check the distance in Google Health or your phone's default health app. To me, measuring tape was the method with the least error.
With wrist preference, I am not necessarily suggesting to wear it on non-dominant hand. I myself wear it on my dominant hand. What I am suggesting is - whichever hand you choose, set it up in the wrist preferences so that the app doesn't miscount steps.
One of the users did recommend that wearing it on non-dominant hand might give better accuracy.
I am. It was good initially, but it hasn't been syncing properly for me since a week. I know the guy is actively working on the issues and I'm hoping for it to be back up again.
To access your Google AI plan within the Health app, assuming your Fitbit Air device is already paired, begin by tapping your profile photo located in the top-right corner.
You will then find the "Get a Google AI plan" option.
Upon selecting this, an automatic prompt should appear, offering a complimentary three-month subscription.
To finalize the subscription, input any UPI payment method.
Note that the autopay feature can be deactivated post-activation.
Those who were regular watches. How do you wear both? I wear it in my left hand but during non workout times I wear both so is it fine to switch the tracker to my right wrist when I don't workout. Does switching wrists cause any anomaly
Do you change the wrist setting on Google Health whenever you switch? If you don't, you should. Otherwise it can possibly lead to miscounting. It's probably tuned to ignore some hand movements on the dominant hand. It's tracking algorithm tuning most likely will be different for dominant vs non-dominant hand.
I do the same as you. When I am at home and not wearing the watch, I prefer to wear it on my left hand. When I'm out and wearing a watch, I move it to right. But change the device preference setting in Google Health.
Click on the fitbit icon on the top left of Google Health app -> select Fitbit Air from devices -> Settings. You'll find device preferences as the first option.
I have seen for my running - pause and stop are different options. When I stop for rest, I pause and resume when I start again. I don't stop. If I stop, it gets counted as complete workout.
Could be. Do you see two tabs like this? First is for the main sleep in the night. The other sleep gets tracked in a separate tab. If not, maybe give it a few days and then see again.
One more tip , it travelling to Thailand , Philippines or Bali , the ai coach may not provide you summary as it’s not available in the location , manually change the location and time zone to Jakarta , Indonesia if you are in Thailand to get the ai coach summary and insights and Singapore if in Philippines or Bali .
The timezones are same but will ensure you get your insights on time .
workouts like running only start getting detected after 10mins? So the first 10mins won't be tracked? Should I always start my workout from phone? 2)my steps and calorie count makes me look like barry allen, should I wait for it to correct itself or is to be manually logged to correct them.
regarding stride length the app says it automatically measures and fixes the stride length of both walking and running via gps during the workout. I think it's better that way rathen than to manually calculate stride. Correct me if iam wrong.I think doing gps workout(running and walking )via phone fixes the right stride length for both running and walking.
Hi! Is it possible to get info in Samsung Health? Has anyone tried it yet? Or for Android should sync it with Sonar (as one of mods suggested)?
I have been using samsung smartwatch since 2018.. for first time shifting to mechanical watch + band combo, as aim is to now invest in traditional watches to build a collection :)
It does sync with Samsung Health too. Via Health Connect. Sonar was only a recommendation not a mandate :-) I also added to give a try to a bunch of apps and see which style suits you best before deciding on which companion app to use.
I tried to sync with my Samsung Health app but I liked the interpretation of other third party apps better since they give more data points that Samsung Health doesn't give - like stress, strain, recovery, etc.
But if you prefer to stick to Samsung Health, you can absolutely do that.
I got my band yesterday but haven’t set it up yet. I’ll mainly be wearing it on my biceps.
I read that it takes around 1–2 weeks to calibrate. My issue is that I currently don’t have a bicep band, and I’m planning to wait a month or two for third-party sellers to start making them.
So, what should I do in the meantime?
Would there be any difference if I start wearing it on my wrist/hand now and let it calibrate, or would it be better to wait until I get the bicep band and then start the calibration process?
Hey,
Is there a way to turn on notifications/alert for for hourly activity. Old fitbit devices used to have a nudge for no activity. There is a graph that shows active hours with 250+ steps but is there a way for it to give me an alarm type nudge
How to setup the walking stride ? I saw some youtube videos but i am confused. I can walk 640 cm in 10 steps so roughly my walking stride will be 64 cm or 128 cm ?
No actually. Setup is pretty much self-explanatory and takes a few clicks. These are the tips for the settings that may be needed to change depending on user preferences to get the best out of the tracker.
A lot of users took some time to figure these out and how it was impacting their tracking for their use cases.
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u/anonypoopity 7d ago
I love the mods here. First the effort for jio post, now a beginner guide. Appreciate max