Fitbit to remove challenges, open groups and adventures from the mobile app

Fitbit is working to improve its app experience by focusing on providing the best fitness tools to its users. As part of these efforts, the company will sunset a few features, including open groups, Fitbit challenges, and adventures, starting on March 27th. Fitbit claims that these features have limited use, implying that users haven't been using them enough to justify their continued development and update. The reaction from the Fitbit community seems to suggest otherwise.

Open groups, unlike closed groups, are accessible to everyone in the community, and users can join them by sending a request. However, Fitbit has decided to remove open groups entirely instead of making them easier to create, as requested by some users during the pandemic lockdowns. Fitbit challenges are events that users can participate in, such as daily step races, while adventures incentivise users to walk by unlocking virtual trails and landmarks based on their step count. Users will lose any trophies or awards earned from these challenges when they leave the app, however, they can download their data before March 27th.

Lastly, Fitbit will discontinue Fitbit Studio, its tool for creating apps and watch faces, and will only support its command-line interface tools for app creation in the near future.