Contents
Description
Custom Settings
Premium features
GPS position
Night and day themes
Main Time
Sunrise and sunset marks
Sky objects
Fonts
Analog seconds
Second screen
Weather
Data fields
Real time HR
Date
Steps / Move status
Battery statistics
Battery drain
Power save modes
Venu support
Description
A watch face with customizable night and day themes and options to display many different kinds of data on two screens.
This face works differently on Venu, so some general information is not applicable for Venu users. Instead, please refer to Venu support.
Custom Settings
To change the settings, follow these instructions: https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/w/wiki/14/changing-your-app-settings-in-garmin-express-gcm-ciq-mobile-store
Premium features
Some of the available features may require an unlock key. These options are marked by a key icon 🔑 in the settings. This icon is just a marker to distinguish the premium options and it will continue to be shown in the settings page even after all options have been unlocked with the key.
Note that there are two ways of marking the locked options in drop down lists:
-if changing the option is not possible without the key, the icon is shown next to the list title,
-if only some of the options can be selected from the list, the icon is shown next to each option that requires the key.
If you select any option that requires a key, but you don’t have a valid key, the selected option either will not be activated, or it will default to the nearest option in the list that does not need the key. In addition, a key icon will appear in the icon line on top of the face.
For instructions how to obtain the unlock key, please refer to this page: https://vgfsyhcxft.com/night-day-unlock/
When you receive the key, you need to enter it in the settings in the ‘Unlock key’ field, and press ‘DONE’ button to save the settings. Then the ‘Key status’ field will be updated to show the status and the expiry date of your key. If you experience difficulties validating your key, please check https://vgfsyhcxft.com/common-problems/.
FOR VENU USERS: After entering the key and saving the settings, you may need to ‘wake up’ the watch from its ‘sleep’ state (show the full watch face) for the key to be validated.
IMPORTANT: The 12-digit unlock key is created for a 6-digit token that is unique to your watch. So, if you enter incorrect 6-digit token on the unlock page, you will receive an incorrect key that will not work. Please be careful and make sure you enter the correct token!
GPS position
Some key features of this watch face (night and day theme switching, weather update) need to know your location to work correctly.
To update the location, open some activity like ‘run’ or ‘bike’ and wait until you see the message on the watch screen telling that the GPS is OK.
After installing Night & Day, the Screen 1: Opt 2 data field will be set to GPS coordinates, so you can easily verify that your location has been updated.
Night and day themes
The day/night themes change automatically on sunrise/sunset. The calculation of the approximate sunrise/sunset times relies on the GPS location from your last activity, so to get correct sunrise/sunset times for your location, please try to open an activity (e.g. run) that uses GPS and get it to lock. The themes can be customized by choosing the colors for background, foreground, time and seconds.
Default night theme
Default day theme
Colors customization
The theme colors can be modified for day and night time separately, and you can choose the colors according to the following table, the colors are identified by numbers:
Please note that this is only a rough guide and the actual colors might look slightly different on your watch.
On the watches with trasflective display (all except Venu at the time of writing), the brightness and contrast of the colors depends on the ambient light. So the colors will look much more vivid in bright sunlight than in dim conditions indoors.
Main time
The main time on the first screen can be displayed with a large font, showing only hours and minutes:
Or with a smaller font, showing hours, minutes and seconds (the same as on Screen 2):
Sunrise and sunset marks
The approximate sunrise and sunset times are marked on the face perimeter at a position corresponding to the analog time of the event. The sunrise mark is a little chevron pointing up and the sunset mark is a little chevron pointing down. After a new installation of this watch face, the sunrise will be at 00:00 (12am) and the sunset at 23:59 (11:59pm). To position the marks correctly, you need to switch to an activity such as running or cycling and lock the GPS signal. Please note that if you change your location, the watch face is not able to detect it automatically. You will need to lock the GPS again to update it for the correct sun times calculation.
Sky objects
These include the Sun, a cloud and birds at daytime, the Moon, a cloud and stars at night. The position of the Sun or the Moon corresponds to the analog hour, and the position of the cloud corresponds to the analog minute. The birds and stars shift randomly every minute.
The Moon shape changes according to the current moon phase.
If you observe your watch during sunrise or sunset, you can enjoy a simple animation of the Sun moving across the horizon.
On devices with solar charging, “solar intensity” reading is shown on the Sun.
The presence of different sky objects can be adjusted with the “Sky wallpaper” setting allowing these options:
-Off (no sky objects)
-Sun/Moon (only Sun or Moon depending on the time of the day)
-Sun/Moon + cloud (everything except birds/stars)
-All
Fonts
With the unlock key, you can choose 4 alternative time fonts, besides the default one:
On some watch models, there is also a choice of regular or bold font for data fields (however this does not apply to Date or Weather data which are always shown in bold).
Analog seconds
The seconds come in two styles:
arc:
or dots:
The width of the arc or the diameter of the dots is adjustable with the ‘Seconds size’ setting, with 3 size options.
The analog seconds require the watch to wake up to redraw part of its screen every second, so obviously this will increase the battery drain in everyday use. For improving the battery endurance, there is an option to switch the analog seconds off, or to have them enabled only during daytime (from your wake time to bed time declared in Garmin’s user profile).
Second screen
This watch face can display many different types of information, but in its design the idea was to keep it easy to read. That’s why instead of packing a lot of data fields into one screen, another optional screen is provided, to which you can switch by wrist gesture.
The second screen is visible for about 10 seconds, then it reverts back to the first screen. The 10 seconds duration is imposed by Garmin’s design and it is not possible for the developer to make it longer.
Activation of the second screen requires unlock key.
Double gesture
Switching to the second screen is controlled by wrist gesture. Gesture detection is handled by the watch, and not by the watch face.
With single gesture, it may happen quite easily that you want to look at the first screen but you get the second screen instead. However, if you enable ‘double gesture’, the second screen will only appear when you move your wrist twice within the set ‘double gesture time’.
Double gesture time (ms)
This parameter specifies the time duration in milliseconds within which you need to make the double wrist movement in order to switch to the second screen. The default value is 2000ms i.e. 2 seconds. You can adjust this value according to your needs. A longer duration will make it easier to switch, but it will also increase the possibility of an unintentional switch. On the other hand, a shorter value will reduce this possibility, but you will need to move your wrist quicker.
Getting fine control of the switching between the two screens may need some practice and some fine tuning of this parameter.
Weather
With unlock key, you can get weather update from openweathermap.org. To activate weather updates, select the ‘weather update’ interval in the settings. By defaults it is ‘off’, you can change it to 15, 30 or 60 minutes.
When the weather update is activated, the cloud in the wallpaper will change its appearance according to the current weather condition – it will show different types of weather phenomena – few clouds, scattered clouds, broken clouds, rain, shower, thunderstorm, snow, mist.
On top of that, you can choose for a data field to show a text weather description or the current outdoor temperature. The weather description will be shown in the system language of your watch if it is supported by your watch firmware and by openweathermap.org. Otherwise it will appear in English.
Sometimes the weather description may be too long to fit in one line on the watch screen. In such case, it will be broken up in two parts alternating every minute.
IMPORTANT: The weather update will only work if the watch face is aware of your location, so please make sure that after installing this face or after changing your location, you update the GPS – this is done by switching to some activity like ‘run’ or ‘bike’ and letting the GPS update the location.
Data fields
The configurable data fields can be set to display any of:
- Distance and Calories
- Calories and Active Calories
- Alternate time 1 or 2
- Steps counter vs. Steps goal
- Move alert level 1 to 5, like in the move bar but adding an inactivity timer
- Heart Rate stats with an option to update the HR every second
- Intensity Minutes
- Floors or Climb info
- Past 7 days history of steps, floors, goal completion, distance, calories or intensity minutes
- 4 hours graph of ambient temperature, atmospheric pressure, HR or elevation
- GPS latitude, longitude
- Altitude
- Sunrise, sunset, moon age
- Temperature and Atmospheric Pressure
- Battery info (level, hours since charged: remaining hours estimation)
- Weather description (requires unlock key)
- Temperature (requires unlock key)
Real time HR
To activate it, you need to do two things: 1) make sure the ‘Real-time HR’ tick box is checked, 2) choose ‘Heart Rate stats’ for Screen1: Opt2. Please note that this feature is tied to the active status of the ‘always on’ seconds. So if you set the seconds to ‘Off’, or at night time when the seconds are set to ‘Daytime’, the HR will not be updated ‘real time’. Also please be aware that updating the HR every second will increase the battery drain.
Date
The date format is very flexible. It may require some effort to understand how it works, but it allows you to make it almost any way you like.
To customize the date, enter a string of characters up to 12 in length, with this coding:
D = day number with leading zero
d = day number without leading zero
M = month number with leading zero
m = month number without leading zero
Y = 4-digit year
y = 2-digit year
N = month name
n = day name
W = ISO week number with ‘w’ in front
w = ISO week number without ‘w’
Any other character (e.g. – / : . or space/blank ) will be displayed if it is available in the current character set.
For example, you can use the following formats:
“n D N” → Fri 24 Aug
“n D.M” → Fri 24.08
“d/m W” → 24/8 w34
“Y\M\D” → 2018\08\24
“m-d-y” → 8-24-18
The day and month names will be shown in the language set on your watch.
Steps/Move status
Moving icon
This optional icon tracks the user’s activity measured in steps. It combines the functionality of the ‘steps bar’ and ‘move bar’ seen in various other watch faces, including the Garmin’s built-in ones. Its starting point is the sunrise mark, and it moves towards the sunset mark around the face perimeter as you proceed towards your daily steps goal. When the goal is reached, the icon disappears, you’re done!
But if you stay still for an hour or longer, the icon will change colors every 15 minutes, from yellow to dark blue, purple, orange and finally red. After another hour of inactivity, the icon will change to a little STOP sign.
To clear it back to its normal state, you need to walk for a while. It seems that the longer you stay inactive, the longer it takes to clear the inactive status. Please note that the sensing of the user movements is handled by the watch internally, and the watch face only relies on the status reported by the watch.
You have 3 moving icon choices – an animal paw print, human footprints or a baloon (the default).
Move alert optional field
As an alternative or a complement to the icon, this field shows the numeric inactivity level:
1 = 1 hour of inactivity (blue icon)
2 = 1 hour 15 minutes of inactivity (purple icon)
3 = 1 hour 30 minutes of inactivity (orange icon)
4 = 1 hour 45 minutes of inactivity (red icon)
5 = 2 hours of inactivity (STOP icon)
Besides that, the field also shows inactivity timer that starts counting after 1 hour and clears when the inactivity level goes back to zero (which corresponds to the “Move bar cleared” alert shown by the watch).
When you are considered to be in an ‘active’ mode, this field will just show ‘ok’.
Battery Statistics
This field combines three pieces of information:
- current battery level
- time since last charge
In this case, ‘last charge’ means the last time a level increment of 1% or more was detected. So even after a short charge, the time counter will get reset to zero.
- estimated remaining time
At the moment of writing, Garmin does not provide the ‘remaining battery days’ parameter to Connect IQ developers, so here this value is calculated by the watch face itself.
Please note that this is just an estimation and it can’t always be accurate, as the battery drain depends on varying usage patterns. The estimation is based on the recorded discharge rate (i.e. how many % of the battery has been used vs. the time it took) and an assumption that the discharge rate is roughly linear (which means that for example discharging from 90% to 80% will take about the same time as discharging from 20% to 10%).
Because of this, it will require some time, up to 24 hours for the estimation to approach a reasonable value.
Also, if you do not use this watch face for a while (and charge the battery in the meantime), the battery stats may be off until you charge the battery again while keeping Night & Day as your active watch face.
Battery Drain
This watch face was optimized to reduce the battery drain, but you need to be aware that your choice of configuration options will have impact on the watch endurance between charges. In general it is expected that activating small time with seconds on the first screen, analog seconds, ‘Real Time HR’ and complex data fields (history/graphs) may drain the battery faster. Please note that an option is provided to enable analog seconds (and HR) during daytime only, so that the battery drain at night is reduced. Daytime and nighttime is determined from the user settings (bed time / wake time).
The ‘Battery Stats’ data option can help you figure out how different configurations affect your battery life. This field tells how long it has been since the last charge and how many % of the battery was drained, and tries to predict how long your watch will last if you continue to use it as you did since the last charge.
Power save modes
With an unlock key, it is possible to choose a battery saving mode, showing time only:
- off (the default)
- on (always on)
- night (on during your bed time declared in Garmin Connect user profile)
- on DND (when the watch is in Do Not Disturb mode)
Note that ‘on DND’ is a handy way of quick toggling between full power and power save, by using the DND shortcut on your watch. You can either access it from the shortcuts menu, or assign it to a single long press of a button.
The possibility of doing so may depend on your watch model and is outside of the scope of this manual – please refer to your watch user manual.
Venu support
During ‘wake hours’ declared in the user profile, Venu operates in two distinct modes – short ‘wake up’ after gesture, button press or double screen tap, and ‘sleep’ otherwise. Wake up mode allows bright full screen updated every second, but in sleep mode the screen is only refreshed once a minute and the display has to be reduced/dimmed to conserve power and prevent burn-in.
In ‘wake up’ mode you get the full display, and in ‘sleep’ mode you can choose one of the ‘always on’ options:
- off (nothing shown, best for battery)
- time
- screen 1 (same as the full display but without the wallpaper or seconds)
- screen 2 (alternative screen layout with 4 additional data fields)
Screen 1 and 2 activation requires unlock key.