My wife and I both pre-ordered a
Fitbit Flex. While it’s not a life-changing device, it’s been generally fun to wear. I’m
always interested in the sleep tracking when I travel … “Awake 16x, slept 5 hours.”
Last night though, my wife’s Flex had stopped working. The lights wouldn’t show up when the device was tapped and when she used the charger, it wouldn’t begin to charge. I found a few recommendations to use rubber bands to hold the Flex into the charger, cleaning the contacts, and a few more. Cleaning the contacts didn’t help. The charger worked with my Flex, so that meant the rubber band trick wouldn’t help.
I found though on the Fitbit support website this morning though a suggestion that worked! Apparently, you can restart/reset the tracker without loosing data. The steps are easy:
- Plug your charging cable into a USB port and insert your Flex as you normally would.
- Insert a paperclip into the small pinhole on the back of the charger (I’d never noticed it before, it’s small!)
- Press gently on the pinhole for 3-4 seconds. You’ll feel a gentle ‘click’ when you’ve depressed it far enough (although my “one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand” count actually got to 6). The lights flashed a few times, and it started charging a few seconds later.
I’m posting this here as my searching the night before hadn’t turned up that specific support web site page. It may be because the web page is poorly titled and applies to four of their trackers.
Hope this helps someone else.
Thanx so much. This was very helpful. I never even realized that small button before. But it did work!
I’d read about the reset button before and have tried this but nothing is working for mine this time…
I’ve had a few times where this didn’t seem to work. I cleaned the contacts of both the charger and the FitBit, and patiently tried a few more times, and it would work.
Thank you!! Helped me too!!
I also noticed once my Flex went into complete shutdown mode and I plug it in to charge it takes over an hour before it starts displaying any signs of life. It happened second time today and since I already been thru it before I was more paitient than first time around when I kept messing with it. That first time I just left it in the charger over night. Now 2 hours in a charger it shows second blinking light.
Eventually, my wife’s fitbit has similar symptoms and stopped charging entirely. Thankfully, it was still under warranty, and they replaced it.
Nothing is working for me I have tried this once before and it worked but not today and it is super tiring, does anyone have any suggestions?
Eventually, my wife’s fitbit failed completely and it was replaced under warranty (it has a 1 year warranty).
Thank you very much, this totally Worked for me!!!!
Thank you! This worked!
I’ve had issues charging my fitbit as well and realized there was some corrosion or stuff covering the connectors (I’m assuming from sweat, condensation, etc.) I took a paperclip & scraped all that away and it is charging fine now!
That’s a good idea too. We’ve used a cotton-swab and cleaned the contacts as well with some success.
Thanks. Although the RESET button did not help this time, I did clean the contact (inside the charger); normally I only have to clean the fitBit’s contacts (not the charger’s) – but good to know about that reset feature. Lights are a’blinkin’ good now 8-)
cant find the pinhole, please help
It’s not on the fitbit itself. It’s in the charging cradle near the bottom of the back. Just a small round hole.
didn’t work. connectors clean. totally dead. contacted fitbit. no help.