Launching in March 2026, the $99 Fitbit Air is a screen-free health tracker designed to provide the health tracking features and insights you expect from these wearables without interrupting your activity with notifications. This is Google’s smallest tracker designed to date and a good alternative to Whoop groups. The Fitbit Air offers up to a week of battery life, meaning you don’t need to take it off often or charge it overnight. All of this suggests that the Fitbit Air is meant to fade into the background, going unnoticed while performing key actions for the user, including heart rate monitoring, sleep analysis, and tracking other health metrics.
That said, there may be one time you want the Fitbit Air to make its presence felt: morning. You may want the Fitbit Air to wake you up like some other smartwatches and health trackers do. It turns out that the Fitbit Air has a hidden feature that you might appreciate as soon as you turn it on. The tracker can support silent alarms and you can customize the vibration level.
Instead of using an alarm clock or your iPhone or Android handset to wake you up in the morning, you can ask the Fitbit Air to give you a boost when it’s time to get out of bed. The wearable may not relay notifications from the smartphone app, but it supports alarms, including Smart Wake alarms, through the Google Health app.
The immediate benefit of using a silent Fitbit wearable alarm is that the device won’t disturb other people nearby, such as a partner who might wake up at a different time. Additionally, silent alarms can help you wake up more easily because you’ll feel vibrations on your wrist instead of hearing a loud alarm.
How to activate the alarm function of your Fitbit Air
Since the Fitbit Air doesn’t have a screen, you need to activate the alarm function from the connected Android or iOS device. Go to the new Google Health app and select the device from the list Relationships menu. In the Alarm menu, you can use the Add a new alarm button to set a new alarm. This is where you can activate Smart alarm clocka feature that will allow the Fitbit Air to determine the best time to wake you up based on your sleeping habits. Smart Wake can vibrate up to 30 minutes before the alarm time, depending on when it detects a lighter sleep pattern. If it cannot determine an optimal time to vibrate, the Fitbit Air will vibrate at the specified time.
The app lets you set up schedules, which can be useful if you want the Fitbit Air to vibrate around the same time every day. You can set additional alarms in the app, in case you need silent reminders during the day. It’s important to note that the Fitbit Air alarm feature is not linked to the smartphone’s Clock app. That’s why it might not be immediately clear whether the screen-less Fitbit Air can support silent alarms.
Dismissing alarms requires specific interaction with the Fitbit Air. According to Google, you’ll need to “firmly” press the smartband twice to stop an alarm. This can be another benefit of using this hidden feature of Fitbit Air, as the need to perform a specific gesture can help you wake up faster. If you fail to double-tap the Fitbit Air, the alarm will repeat for nine minutes. You can set up to eight alarms for the Fitbit Air, meaning you can set different morning alarms to make sure you wake up, if that’s your style.
How to Increase the Vibration Level (and Other Helpful Tips)
Switching from a smartphone alarm to a wrist alarm may also require an adjustment period. You may want to set a traditional alarm on your smartphone and a Fitbit Air alarm in the Google Health app for the first few days to ensure you wake up on time. Additionally, since the health tracker can only vibrate, you may want to increase the intensity of the vibrations to make them easier to notice in the morning. The setting is hidden in the Google Health app. Press Relationships to select the device, then open the Device Preferences menu. In there, a Vibration the menu allows you to choose between two modes, High And Weak.
It’s important to note that the Fitbit Air cannot use vibration to relay phone notifications about calls and messages. There are no hidden settings to enable such functionality. Google is expected to update the Fitbit Air to support notifications, and there is no indication that Google plans to do so.
Finally, the firm double-tap gesture has another function you should know: double-tapping the tracker will wake up the status LED, which can offer you a visual indication of the remaining battery life. White indicates battery life is between 20% and 100%, while red means battery life has fallen below 20%. If nothing happens when you double-tap the smart band, the battery may be exhausted. If the device becomes unresponsive for some reason, you will need to place the tracker on the charger and press a button on the charger for about 10 seconds to restart the wearable.
