Fitbit third-party clock faces end Nov. 28: how to keep yours

Eight Fitbit smartwatches are affected, according to Google’s help page for the change. Its developer forum notice names only six, leaving off two older models, so the help page is the fuller list:

• Versa family: the original Versa, Versa Lite, Versa 2, Versa 3 and Versa 4
• Sense family: the original Sense and the Sense 2
• Ionic: Google still lists it, although the Ionic is under a voluntary recall and few remain in everyday use

Fitbit’s simpler trackers aren’t on the list. That includes the newer Fitbit Air and Fitbit Edge, which don’t run third-party apps. The Pixel Watch is a different story too, because it runs Wear OS and gets its apps from Google Play.

No. A third-party face or app that is already installed keeps running after November 28 without interruption, Google says. What changes is everything around it.

• No new downloads. The Fitbit App Gallery will only offer apps and clock faces built by Fitbit and Google.
• No updates. Developers lose the ability to push fixes, so a bug in a face you rely on will stay there.
• No reinstalls. Delete a third-party face, or reset the watch to factory settings, and you can’t get it back from the gallery.

Think of each installed third-party face as a file with no backup. It works fine until it’s gone, and then it’s gone for good. Replacing the watch has the same effect, since a new device can’t fetch the old download.

Sense and Versa owners can keep up to five clock faces saved on the watch itself. If you like a third-party design, keeping it in one of those spots rather than removing it is the safest way to hold on to it.

The deadline matters most if there’s a third-party face or app you use every day. Here’s the order that makes sense, based on what Google has published:

1. Update the Google Health app to version 5.12 or newer. Google asks owners to do this so Fitbit and Google apps keep working as expected.
2. Do any factory reset now, not later. If your watch has been acting up and you were thinking about a reset, do it before November 28. You can still reinstall third-party faces afterwards, because the reinstall block only starts on that date.
3. Install every third-party face or app you might want. After the cutoff you can’t add new ones, so load your favorites into your saved slots while the gallery still has them.
4. After the cutoff, leave them alone. Don’t delete third-party faces or apps, and avoid a factory reset if you can, since either one removes them permanently.

Owners in the European Economic Area can skip most of this. Google already removed third-party installs there in June 2024 because of regulatory requirements, so this deadline only gives owners elsewhere a final window.

Here’s the awkward timing. Both the Versa 4 and the Sense 2 are still on Google’s store, and each gets a discount in the Black Friday sale that opens November 19. The Sense 2 drops to $199.95 and the Versa 4 to $159.95.

Anyone who buys one on the first day of that sale gets at most nine days to load third-party clock faces before the gallery closes them off. Shipping time eats into that window. A buyer whose watch arrives after November 28 gets only the faces and apps Fitbit and Google make.

For these two models the loss is smaller than for older watches. The Sense 2 and Versa 4 launched in 2022 without third-party apps at all, so their owners lose third-party clock faces only. If a wide choice of faces is why you want a Fitbit watch, that’s worth weighing before you take the deal.

Google hasn’t given a reason. Neither its help page nor its forum post explains the decision. The wider direction is clear, though: Google’s real smartwatch effort now sits with the Pixel Watch and Wear OS, and there has been no new Sense or Versa model since 2022.

The Fitbit App Gallery was never as big as Apple’s App Store or Google Play, but older Versa and Sense watches once ran third-party apps for things like Strava, Uber and Starbucks, along with barcode tools and small utilities. That openness made the watches feel expandable. It has been shrinking for years, and November 28 effectively ends new third-party Fitbit smartwatch software worldwide.

If third-party apps and faces are a must for you, the realistic paths lead off Fitbit OS: a Pixel Watch if you use Android, an Apple Watch if you use an iPhone, or a Garmin watch with its Connect IQ store. Fitbit developers who want to keep their apps alive would need to rebuild them for Wear OS to reach Google Play.

Developers face the same November 28 cutoff. From then on they can’t upload new apps or clock faces, and they can’t update ones already in the gallery. Before the deadline, Google lets them download their existing projects or ask for them to be pulled from the gallery. After it, the Gallery Admin tools are retired, and existing content stays available only to people who already installed it.