Fitbit and Alexa: How to connect your tracker to your Amazon smart speaker

Alexa's claws can reach pretty much every piece of connected kit you own nowadays, and that includes your Fitbit tracker.

Whether it's through the Fitbit Versa 2 Alexa support, where the smart assistant lives directly on the wrist, or through the Fitbit Alexa skill, you can link together the two to gain a more rounded experience.

Below, we'll be focusing primarily on how to use the Fitbit skill through an Amazon Alexa-enabled speaker, but we'll also detail how Alexa works on the wrist in Fitbit's latest smartwatch.

Pairing Fitbit and Alexa

Installing and enabling the Fitbit Alexa skill is really quite simple, and the method is the same whether you’re using a Fitbit smartwatch or tracker. That’s because Alexa interacts with the Fitbit app on your phone, not with your tracker itself.

How to download the Fitbit skill

1. First, you’ll need to download the Alexa application for your iPhone or Android smartphone, or head to alexa.amazon.com in a web browser.

2. Log in using the Amazon account associated with your Alexa-enabled device. It could be an Amazon Echo speaker, Fire TV, or one of the many third-party gadgets like the Sonos One that have Alexa built in.

3. Browse to the Skills & Games section of the Alexa application (Skills on the web) and type Fitbit into the search bar.

4. Tap or click on Fitbit and select the option to 'Enable Skill'.

5. You will then be prompted to insert your Fitbit account details; the same email address and password you use to log into the Fitbit app.

6. Finally, you must give permission to access your Fitbit app data and profile. After that, you’re all set.

What Fitbit data is synced?

Once your account is aligned with Alexa, the assistant will be able to read various elements of data from your Fitbit account and relay them back to you.

It might be steps, distance covered, your last logged weight, your resting heart rate, any water consumption you’ve logged that day, or even the remaining battery life on your device.

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This information comes directly from the app rather than from the device itself, which means you will only hear information that has already been synced.

So, if you go out for a run and immediately ask Alexa how many steps you’ve taken when you come through the door, the app may still be catching up and you won’t hear the latest figure.

What Fitbit data can Alexa provide?

There are a wide range of commands you can issue to Alexa, in order to receive informative responses.

Alexa enables you to ask for present or past information and, if there’s more than one Fitbit user in your home, you can also switch profiles. It all starts by using the voice command: 'Alexa, ask Fitbit...'.

Here are some of the commands that can follow:

• How I’m doing today
• How I slept last night
• How far I walked
• How many steps I’ve taken
• How many active minutes I have
• How many stairs I climbed
• If I’ve exercised today
• How many calories I have left
• How much water I’ve had
• What my resting heart rate is
• How much I weigh
• About my battery

All of these commands will give you the most up to date information from the Fitbit app. However, you can also receive information from days past. For example, you can say, "Alexa, ask Fitbit how many stairs did I climb on Monday?".

Switch Fitbit profiles on Alexa

If you’re an active household, chances are there’s more than one Fitbit wearer. Thankfully, Amazon enables you to set up Household Profiles.

This enables Amazon Echo users to access personalised music playlists, calendar information, the daily Flash Briefing and, yes, Fitbit information.

To set up additional accounts, head to alexa.amazon.com, log in and select Settings > Account > Amazon Household. Once you’ve registered another profile, it’s easy to switch between them.

You can use the voice command "Alexa, switch profiles" or "Alexa, which profile am I using?". The Alexa Voice Match feature does not play nice with third-party Alexa skills like Fitbit, so you’ll need to switch profiles manually.

How to remove the Fitbit Alexa skill

If you’re not using the Fitbit Alexa skill, or you become concerned about data sharing, then it’s easy to remove the Alexa’s access to your Fitbit data by disabling the skill. Simply head to Skills & Games in the Alexa app and locate Fitbit. From there, you can locate the Skill and select Disable Skill.

Alexa on Fitbit Versa 2

Fitbit is the latest wearable company to bring Alexa to a smartwatch, in this case through the Versa 2. And while the experience definitely needs work, as we found out in our full review, it's the best example of the smart assistant on the wrist we've seen.

How it works

You simply hold down the side button, wait for the Alexa symbol to appear, ask or command something and wait for it to display the answer on the screen.

There’s no speaker on the Versa 2, so all of Alexa’s responses appear on the screen. And if you’re an Alexa user already, you can also control your smart home devices as it would when commanded through an Echo speaker.

I’ve asked it to dim lights, adjust speaker volume, and even play specific radio stations on certain speaker groups in my home.

Does it work well?

Our experience with Alexa on the Versa 2 was generally positive, but it does have an issue with consistency.

Sometimes Alexa will hear a command but not respond, but it more often returns a message informing us that the connection between the watch and the phone has stopped.

Fitbit has already indicated to us that this is a "known issue", due to the mechanism used by the phone to manage background applications, so performance should improve after future updates.