FAQ / Common problems

How do I change time format to 12/24h?

You can change this in your device settings. It can be done directly on the watch in the system/time menu, or in Garmin Connect Device Settings. It is advisable to synchronize your watch with your phone after you make the change, to make sure it is reflected everywhere.

I want the distance in km, but I get miles, I want temperature in Celsius but I get Fahrenheit, etc.

Reed Works apps follow the units setup of the watch. You can change it by going to your watch settings / system / units menu. It should also be possible to do in the ‘Device Settings’ in Garmin Connect app.

The weather stopped working

This happens quite often with Garmin weather. If the weather does not show any more in the watch face, very likely it also doesn’t show in Garmin’s weather widget. Restart your watch and if this doesn’t help, check if Garmin Connect has background and location permission on your phone.

It was working for one week, but now I see a padlock

This is explained in the description of the app on the download page. Some apps have a limited free unlock period, after which a padlock appears if some premium features are selected without a valid unlock key. For more details, please refer to the description of the app you are using.

I have a valid unlock key but I see a padlock instead of the time

Apparently sometimes some Garmin system updates cause the key to get lost or corrupted. Please check if the key field is empty and if so, enter the key again. If you can’t find the email with the key, please contact the developer with your unlock token. If the previously valid key is not recognized any more, reinstall the app.

The app does not work after updating

Some devices don’t handle addition of new settings in the app well. If the app does not show on the watch after updating, try to open its settings in Connect IQ and save them again. If this does not help, try to reinstall the app.

The date appears in English only

On Instinct 2 devices, the recent firmware 10.10 has a bug and does not handle the date text correctly any more. Garmin acknowledged the problem but we don’t know when they’re going to fix it. To help add priority to this issue you can upvote it here: https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/i/bug-reports/instinct-2-2s-firmware-10-10-date-day-month

I have entered a valid OWM API key, but the weather is not showing

Recently Openweathermap have changed their policies and newly created free “Current weather and forecasts” API keys no longer allow accessing the APIs used by Instinct Pro. For the OWM weather to work with Instinct Pro, either you need an older key that was created before the policy change, or you can subscribe get the “One Call by Call” subscription. It is free if you don’t exceed 1000 calls per day, and Instinct Pro makes less than 200 calls per day.

Unable to uninstall – repeated attempts result in “Uninstall Error” message

On some devices it is not possible to uninstall a watch face while it is currently displayed. This is a Garmin problem that will affect any Connect IQ watch face that you try to uninstall. To get around this, press a button on your watch to show something else (e.g. menu, widget or activity), and then try again to uninstall the watch face.

Unable to uninstall – after removing, the app automatically installs itself again

This is a problem of Garmin Connect IQ. If it happens to you, disable the “Auto update” setting in the Connect IQ app.

How to have the full version?

Please visit:
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/rails-unlock/ for Rails
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/time-flies-unlock/ for Time Flies
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/night-day-unlock/ for Night & Day
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/spinner-unlock/ for Spinner
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/gradient-unlock/ for Gradient
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/instinctpro-unlock/ for Instinct Pro
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/instinctproclassic-unlock/ for Instinct Pro Classic
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/instinctana-unlock/ for Instinct Analog
https://vgfsyhcxft.com/rwsensor-unlock/ for Instinct Pro

I do not see unlock token in the settings, the field is blank

Make sure that the watch face you want to unlock is selected as the active one on your watch. If you still can’t see the token, please check the Bluetooth connection between your watch and your phone, and the phone’s internet connection. You might also try to restart your Connect app, or restart your phone and your watch.

Unlock key does not work, shows status ‘invalid’

First, for the key validation to complete, the face you want to unlock must be selected as the active one on your watch.

Besides that, on Venu the watch needs to ‘wake up’ from the ‘sleep’ state to process the key validation.

Also please note that it is not enough to enter the key and press ‘OK’. After that you need to press the ‘DONE’ or ‘SAVE’ button to save all the settings, only after that the key status will be updated, and to see the updated information you need to exit the settings and enter again. This is a limitation of Garmin’s apps that don’t seem to update the information ‘on the fly’.

However, if you enter the key and at the same time start changing the locked settings, it should work right away. Please make sure that you see the message “Settings saved successfully”. If after that you don’t see your changes reflected on the watch, then you might want to check the key status.

If this does not help and you are sure that you entered the correct token on the unlock page (you can confirm this by comparing the token in your settings and the token in the email you receive) and the correct key into the ‘Unlock key’ field in the settings, then the persisting ‘invalid’ status seems to be a problem of the Connect app having trouble with updating the settings. To get around this you can try:
-Restart the Connect app (sometimes only after several restarts it works)
-Restart the watch
-Use Connect IQ app or Garmin Express instead

Some users are confused by the persistent ‘key icon’ next to some options in the settings – please note that this does not go away once you have entered a key. This icon is meant to clearly indicate which options require the key and so it will always stay there regardless of the key validity status.

Also, if you don’t get the weather data even though you have entered a correct key, this is probably because you have not updated the GPS location. Please see the related point below.

I have paid for the fully functional watch face, but I have not received the activation code

This happens quite often and the usual reasons are:

1) Wrong spelling of the payer email address (e.g. gmial.com instead of gmail.com) – in this case the email containing the unlock key can’t be delivered.

2) The default email in the PayPal profile is different from the one that the payer uses daily, or sometimes already out of use – if you don’t remember what email address you set in your PayPal profile, please log in to your PayPal account and check.

3) The recipient mailbox is full.

If you can’t retrieve your unlock key because of the invalid email account, you can use the ‘Contact’ link here or the ‘Contact developer’ link on the download page for help, but please be patient because the developer may not always be able to reply immediately. Please make sure you provide the correct return email address, otherwise the developer won’t be able to get back to you, back to square one 🙂

I can’t get the alternative time zones working. It isn’t possible to change the offset

This seems to be a recurring problem in Garmin apps not being able to handle entry of decimal numbers as expected. If you can’t edit the offset in Garmin Connect app, please try Connect IQ instead. If both fail, it may also be worth trying Garmin Express on a PC.

I try to download this watch face and it tells me my device needs an update but it is up to date with the latest SW

The most likely explanation is that you have tried to update the watch firmware and then immediately to install a new watch face, using Garmin Express. Please note that while your watch is connected to a PC with a USB cable, the files are only copied to the watch, but not really installed. For an installation via Garmin Express to complete, you need to disconnect the USB cable first. Therefore, if the new watch face requires new firmware, you need to disconnect the cable and allow the firmware installation to complete before attempting to install the watch face.

The ‘resting HR’ is not displayed (showing only –)

This appears to be a problem of Garmin firmware – from time to time it stops providing the resting HR information to Connect IQ apps. If this happens, you can fix this problem (at least for some time), by going to the watch Settings/User Profile/Heart Rate/Resting HR and choosing an option there.

HR and Seconds only show for a while and then lost! Why?

Garmin pre-2017 watches (e.g fenix 3 family, FR23x, Vivoactive HR) generally can only refresh the watch face once a minute, except when in ‘high power mode’, which is activated by a wrist gesture and lasts about 10 seconds. That’s why there are so many watch faces that can display the seconds only for a short while and so many confused users thinking this is a bug.

In fact this is not a bug but a way to conserve the battery. However, with the newer watches beginning from fenix 5, Garmin introduced ‘partial update’ function that allows a watch face to be updated every second, if special care is taken by the developer to keep these updates within allowed ‘power budget’ limit. Again, this is meant to extend the battery life, so generally there is not much that a watch face can do besides updating the seconds and HR.

So if you are using one of my watch faces and you do not see the seconds displayed continuously, most likely your watch simply cannot support this function.

It is also worth noting that the activation of the ‘high power mode’ works both ways, so that when you raise your wrist, it is activated, but when you lower your wrist before 10 seconds elapse, it is immediately deactivated.

I like the look of the watch face but there is a very long delay when you press a button to navigate away from the watch face screen

This is a problem that is difficult to avoid on older watch models (forerunner 230, 235, 630, fenix 3, vivoactive), due to the way the watch firmware handles the transition between screens and a low processing power of the watch.

If you compare a complex Connect IQ face to Garmin’s native face, the CIQ face will generally cause a longer delay. Native Garmin watch faces are part of the watch system software (AKA firmware), which means they are highly optimized, but not very flexible. On the other hand, Connect IQ faces give the user a lot of choices, but at the cost of running on top of the Connect IQ engine, which adds an additional level of intermediate processing (or translation from what the developer intended to what the watch eventually does).

For Time Flies, the default configuration after first installation will result in some 2 second lag on the slow watches. You can reduce the lag by disabling the shadow effect (set the ‘Shadow’ option to ‘Off’. Any additional data that you configure (option fields, graphs in DBox) will increase the lag. Also, more complex hand shapes such as ‘Sport’ will cause a longer lag than the simple ones such as ‘Straight’.

Time Flies on some models has an option called ‘Fast screen switch’. If this is activated, the lag on switching screens should be reduced, but in some cases this may cause the watch face to redraw only partially – this is a tradeoff. However, the screen will be fully refreshed on the next full minute, or immediately if you move your wrist.

The watch reverts to the built-in digital watch face or shows IQ

This kind of problem could be the fault of the CIQ application, but sometimes it could also be caused by issues with Garmin’s firmware. If the face has been working well and suddenly does not work any more after Garmin’s firmware update, it is probably a firmware’s problem.

If it happens you can try these steps:

1. Check that your watch has been updated to the latest available firmware version (there is a topic on this above).
2. Go to the face selection menu on the watch and select your chosen face again. If this doesn’t help,
3. Try to uninstall the face and install it back.
4. If the default face appeared after changing some setting of your current watch face, try to revert this setting and repeat step 2. If it is confirmed that the setting change was causing the problem, please report via the ‘Connect Developer’ link.
5. Sometimes the watch firmware may enter some unstable condition that causes the Connect IQ applications to malfunction. In such cases a power cycle might help – turn the watch off from the menu (soft reset) or press and hold the power button until the display goes blank (hard reset), then press again to turn the watch back on.
6. If your preferred watch face suddenly stops working after firmware update, it is always good to check if other watch faces still work well. If they don’t, it is the firmware’s problem and probably the only solution is to wait until Garmin fix it.

The features of the watch face activated by wrist gesture don’t work

It seems to be a recurring problem with Garmin firmware – the watch system does not notify the watch face of the wrist gesture, unless you enable backlight activation by wrist gesture in the watch settings.

For example, on fenix 5x, press the menu button, then choose Settings->System->Backlight->Watch Mode->Gesture->On, or ‘After Sunset’.

This seems to be a common problem on Vivoactive 4 or 4s – apparently gesture activation does not work there at all (at least for some users, maybe for all). I don’t know if there is any solution for this.