this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Gadgetbridge is pretty good as an alternative if it supports your watch.
For some reason it seems to support literally every smartwatch on the planet except FitBit
Technically you could get current live data (current step count, current heart rate, etc...), but any historical data, activities not connected to the smartphone, probably some UI features, etc... would simply not work and have no chance of working because they have an on-IC encryption module and encrypts everything into unreadable binary blobs before sending it to their cloud server to be processed. I think each of the developers sold their fitbits because it would be a bad experience, so there is nobody to develop the integration.
https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/issues/504
So this one is fitbit's fault for being a shitty cloud SaaS company lol
Years ago, I asked for a Fitbit for Christmas. The next day, I returned it when I found out it didn't integrate with Apple Health without third-party apps.
Bought a Garmin instead. It's not perfect (a bug deleted a year's worth of data one time), but at least I can store the data on my phone instead of it being stuck only in Garmin's cloud.