Garmin - can't connect with the app

Sleep as Android Q&A
21

For me, it doesn’t work. I have a freshly updated Vívoactive 4s and a Hisense A9.

  1. I deleted the Sleep app from my watch.
  2. I got the beta.
  3. I downloaded the .prg file for Vívoactive 4s.
  4. I transferred the file to my watch with Android File Transfer (it was a nightmare).
  5. I restarted the watch
  6. I opened the Sleep app on my phone and on my watch. The app got stuck at the orange text “Connecting to phone…”.
  7. I restarted the watch app. This time I tried the other way round: I ran a nap from the phone app.
  8. The phone app showed “Garmin. Waiting for connectivity”. The progress bar made progress, but nothing happened.

I’d appreciate your help.

22

Hello @Sypianski … sorry for the issues, can you please update to latest Garmin Add-on? The issue should be fixed now… this was highly probably a recent regression in the add-on… when e migrated it to Android 13+ API levels…

23

About a week ago I started noticing that my Vivoactice 3 was showing the “connecting to phone message”.

20240414_104542
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This happens even though I started tracking from the watch, but then I noticed that when the tracking started on my phone the message “sleep not installed on garmin” appeared. This happens in spite the tracking showing the message “Garmin connected”:

Screenshot_20240414_104516_Sleep
Screenshot_20240414_104516_Sleep1080×2400 146 KB

When I go to the Garmin “Add-ons” on the app it looks like it is not installed on my watch:

Screenshot_20240414_104450_Sleep Garmin
Screenshot_20240414_104450_Sleep Garmin1080×2400 135 KB

If a click on the “Install”, it forwards me to a blank page on Garmin connect IQ:
Screenshot_20240414_110002_Connect
Screenshot_20240414_110002_Connect1080×2400 113 KB

I’ve lost all my data now, after uninstalling all apps and add-ons on my phone and watch, but nothing helps.
I have two different Vivoactive and the same happens on both.
I now need help finding out a solution

Enrique Mora

24

What am I missing? I have a Garmin Forerunner 945. I have tried uninstalling the apps from my Android phone and from the watch as well. I have gone so far as to format the watch to factory settings. I consistently get the connecting to phone message on my watch. I have installed the .prg file on the watch as well. I loved the app when it worked correctly. I am pretty new to all the tech stuff. What am I missing to make this work?

25

Have you had any success in getting the app and the watch to connect? I have a Garmin Forerunner 945 and have a similar issue.

26

Everything works fine now. Not because of me, I don’t know what happened, but several weeks after I post the message it started working again.
There must have been some kind of update that solved the problem.

27

I just got a Garmin Vivoactive 5 just because I thought I could finally use proper sleep tracking with Sleep as Android. The watch was able to connect once during the initial setup and it hasn’t worked since.
Often the watch app seems to crash (IQ! showing) or it is just stuck not doing anything and just shows “Connecting to phone”. Then I have to long-press the lower button and force kill the watch app.
Sleep as Android shows “Garmin connected” but it’s not tracking anything.
I tried force killing the connect app and all battery optimizations are off, what else can I try?
I have a Pixel 7 and am on Android 15.

28

Hello @techfeasible, are you using Garmin or Garmin alternative option in the Wearables section?
The exclamation mark means, that there is something non-standard happening in the ConnectIQ app, and we need it to run. Are the optimizations disabled for Connect app and the Bluetooth as well?
If you force close the Connect app and the addon, is it still showing the warning?

29

Hi @lenka-urbandroid, I didn’t realise there is Garmin Alternative, I am using the Garmin option.
I had a look at the battery optimizations again and realised that I had falsely assumed it was set to unrestricted. Android 15 doesn’t show the options for background usage unless I click on the text of the checkbox and I completely missed that. After setting all the sleep and connect apps to unrestricted it finally worked.
I will test this tonight but for now thank you for your reply.

30

Hi, glad to hear that!
Keep an eye on it, and if the tracking misbehaves again, please ideally use the Left ≡ menu → (?) Support → Report a bug. Thank you!