Launched in March 2026, the $99 Fitbit Air is a screenless health tracker designed to provide the health tracking features and insights you’d expect from such wearables without interrupting your activity with notifications. It’s Google’s smallest tracker made to date, and a good alternative to Whoop bands. The Fitbit Air offers up to a week of battery life, which means you don’t have to take it off that often or recharge it overnight. All that suggests that the Fitbit Air is meant to fade into the background, to go unnoticed while performing key actions for the user, including heart rate monitoring, sleep analysis, and tracking other health parameters.
That said, there may be a time when you want the Fitbit Air to make its presence felt: in the morning. You may want the Fitbit Air to wake you up as some other smartwatches and health trackers do. It turns out the Fitbit Air has a hidden feature that you may appreciate as soon as you enable it. 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 up in the morning, you can have the Fitbit Air give you a nudge when it’s time to get out of bed. The wearable may not relay smartphone app notifications, but it supports alarms, including Smart Wake alarms, via the Google Health app.
The immediate advantage of using a silent alarm from the Fitbit wearable is that the device will not bother other people in your vicinity, such as a partner who may wake up at a different time. Also, silent alarms may help you wake up more easily, as you’d feel vibrations on your wrist instead of hearing an audible alarm.
How to enable your Fitbit Air’s alarm feature
Since the Fitbit Air doesn’t have a screen, you have to enable the alarm feature from the connected Android or iOS device. Go to the new Google Health app and select the device from the Connections menu. In the Alarm menu, you can use the Add New Alarm button to set a new alarm. This is where you can enable Smart Wake, a feature that will let the Fitbit Air determine the best time to wake you based on your sleep patterns. Smart Wake may vibrate up to 30 minutes before the alarm time, depending on when it detects a lighter sleep pattern. If it can’t determine an optimal time to vibrate, the Fitbit Air will vibrate at the designated time.
The app lets you configure schedules, which can be useful if you want the Fitbit Air to vibrate around the same time each day. You can set up additional alarms in the app, in case you need silent reminders during the day. Importantly, the Fitbit Air alarm feature isn’t tied to the smartphone’s Clock app. That’s why it may not be immediately clear that the screenless Fitbit Air can support silent alarms.
Dismissing alarms requires a specific interaction with the Fitbit Air. You’ll have to double-tap the smart band “firmly,” according to Google, to stop an alarm. That may be another benefit of using this hidden Fitbit Air feature, as the need to perform a specific gesture may help you wake up faster. If you fail to double-tap the Fitbit Air, the alarm will snooze for nine minutes. You can set up to eight alarms for the Fitbit Air, which means you can set different morning alarms to ensure you wake up, if that’s your style.
How to increase the vibration level (and other useful 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 during the first few days to make sure you wake up on time. Also, since the health tracker can only vibrate, you may want to increase the intensity of vibrations to make them easier to notice in the morning. The setting is hidden in the Google Health app. Tap on Connections to select the device, then open the Device Preferences menu. In there, a Vibration menu lets you choose between two modes, High and Low.
Importantly, the Fitbit Air can’t use vibrations to relay notifications from the phone for calls and messages. There’s no hidden setting to enable such a feature. Google would have to update the Fitbit Air to support notifications, and there’s no indication that Google plans to do this.
Finally, the firm double-tap gesture has another function you should be aware of: Double-tapping the tracker will wake the status LED light, which can offer you a visual indication of the remaining battery life. White indicates that battery life is between 20% and 100%, while red means battery life has dropped below 20%. If nothing happens when you double-tap the smart band, the battery may be depleted. If the device becomes unresponsive for any reason, you’ll have to place the tracker on the charger and press a button on the charger for about 10 seconds to restart the wearable.
