Regular readers know that I’ve been a long-term fan of Garmin watches. It’s my belief that the best Garmin watches are the gold standard for active outdoorsy-types looking for a connected fitness watch. The battery life lasts ages, they’re tough as nails, and packed with features.
The incredible Garmin Connect app is subscription-free and contains outstanding tools like Garmin Coach and Training Readiness Scores, tools that other brands (looking at you, Fitbit) ask a premium price for even after you’ve bought the device. Garmins are expensive watches, but I believe most of them represent pretty good value.
They’re so stuffed with features and cool functionalities, in fact, that many features go unadvertised and mostly unnoticed by Garmin enthusiasts, even those that have had a watch for years. Only recently, I learned that a Garmin watch I reviewed, scored highly, and now wear regularly actually has a Find My Phone function I never knew about. As someone who loses things all the time, this has been a godsend.
Inspired, I started combing through forums and the back ends of the various Garmin watches we have here in TechRadar towers to uncover some secret, forgotten and unnoticed features. Some of these I had never used before, and others I had – although combing around the internet, they didn’t seem to be very common knowledge.
1. Touchscreen return
A nice and simple one to start things off, for those of you with Garmin’s touchscreen watches such as the Fenix and Forerunner series. If you’re deep in the watch’s menus and want to go back to the home screen, you can accomplish this by simply holding your hand over the watch’s face for a few seconds. Depending on the watch, it can take up to four seconds to achieve this.
2. Hot Keys
One of Garmin’s most underused features is setting shortcuts with its Hot Keys functionality. Using System > Hot Keys, you can access features quickly using different combinations of buttons.
Locking and unlocking the screen, changing sports on the fly, and opening widgets such as the barometer are all possible. The video from Garmin above shows more, using the Garmin Forerunner 265 as an example.
3. Map settings in Garmin Connect
I can’t believe I never did this until recently. After finishing a GPS workout such as running or hiking, in the Garmin Connect app you can tap on the map of your workout, which usually shows Pace, and toggle different options. In addition to Satellite and Terrain, you can see your route in Heart Rate, Grade-Adjusted Pace, Running Power and Elevation, in order to show how these different metrics varied during your route.
The Terrain overlay combined with Elevation, for example, gives a very accurate assessment of the hills you climbed during your run.
4. Flashlight
It’s well-known that the Garmin Epix Pro, Garmin Fenix 8, and Garmin Instinct 3 have GPS flashlights, but what you may not know is that all AMOLED watches have a version of them too. Via the control menu, or by setting up a Hot Key, you can illuminate a portion of the screen with a red light, or four intensities of white light. Useful!
5. Garmin Share
Garmin Share is a tool I’ve not yet used, but it’s a really fascinating way to keep multiple people on track during a single run or workout. Garmin says the Share functionality can “share saved locations, courses, and workouts directly” without the need to use Garmin Connect on your smartphone.
It’s a neat trick to ensure both you and your running partner are following the same workout or course. Garmin tells you how to do it here.
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