The folks at Fitbit are well aware of the significant benefits that accrue when you make your self-tracking public, so they’ve built tons of social features, like making friends, into the Fitbit app. You might be leery of letting Fitbit rummage around in your contacts, but the company promises not to send anything to a contact without your permission.

Having a Fitbit is all about getting fit and living a healthier lifestyle by tracking what you do and what you eat each day. Sure, you can try keeping all your activities and meals in your head, but believe me that doesn’t work. It’s always better just to let your Fitbit handle the hard part, which leaves you free to focus on the bigger picture.

When you monitor your personal stats throughout the day by using your Fitbit device, the Fitbit app, and the Fitbit.com online Dashboard, it’s easy to fall into a Fitbit-only mindset. It’s a big world out there, and Fitbit isn’t the only fitness and health game in town.Other fitness and health apps include as Strava and Weight Watchers; other fitness devices include Alexa and Cortana; and other types of content for your Fitbit include music and podcasts.

If you want to get your kids doing the Fitbit thing, you probably want to get them a Fitbit Ace, which is a tracker designed for kids. However, to set up the Ace, you first need to create a family account, which is a special subset of your Fitbit friends that has only family members. How to create a family account Run through the following steps to get a family account set up in the Fitbit app: Select Dashboard→Account to open the Account screen.

The number of fad diets clamoring for your attention is downright mind-boggling. From the Atkins diet to the Zone diet, you can find countless weight-loss regimens as well as tens of thousands of books and websites explaining those regimens. How do you choose which one is right for you?Two words: You don’t!Unless you have unique medical needs, a special diet is only going to make things worse in the long run (usually because starving your body of food in general or of certain nutrients in particular just makes your body retain calories and fat).

Fitbits look like simple devices from the outside, but even the least complicated Fitbits—such as the Ace and Inspire—have sophisticated innards bristling with sensors, storage, and other electronic trinkets and gewgaws. Even so, chances are good that you’ll go your entire Fitbit career without having any problems, but if you do, try these basic troubleshooting techniques.

The Fitbit setup process has two main stages: getting you signed up for a Fitbit account and configuring your device. This article walks you through both stages. How to sign up for a Fitbit account When you first open the Fitbit app (or Fitbit Connect), you’re prompted to sign up for a Fitbit account (or to log in with your Fitbit credentials, if you already have an account).

The Fitbit app offers lots of ways to customize your Fitbit experience to help you get the most out of your tracker and your account. You can configure the Dashboard, customize your profile, change app settings, and more. How to configure the Fitbit app dashboard When you’re using the Fitbit app, you’ll spend the bulk of your time obsessing over — er, I mean, studying — the metrics to track your progress today and to compare your recent data with past achievements.

If you have an Ionic or Versa Fitbit watch, you can upload music and podcast playlists to your watch. Then, after you’ve connected a pair of Bluetooth headphones or speakers to the watch, you can use your Fitbit to control the playback of your tunes or podcasts.Before getting started, make sure you’ve installed Fitbit on the computer that contains the music and podcast playlists you want to transfer to your watch: Windows 10: You can use the Windows 10 version of the Fitbit app.