The First Five Things You Should Do With Your New Garmin Watch
Garmin watches are fantastically powerful tools, but they can be a little difficult to figure out. No other brand has so many different settings spread across so many different menus. If you’re shopping for a new watch, let me help you find the first few things you should set up and try out.
Most of these tips apply to Forerunner watches, including but not limited to my personal favorites, the 265 and 265S —the 55, 165, and 965 have similar features and controls. Other watches like the Venu 3 and Vivoactive 5 will also have many of the features I discuss here, so if you’re in doubt, check your device’s online manual.
By the way, Garmin has one of the coolest features I’ve seen in any company’s support articles: a bar at the top of the page where you can enter the name of your device to see if the page you’re reading applies to your watch. ( Here’s an example .)
Customize your watch’s home screen
When you look at the watch face, you will see the time and maybe a few other numbers, such as your daily steps. On most watches, you can customize the watch face and data displayed on these complications.
To change the watch face on Forerunner, hold the left middle button (UP button) and select Watch Face. On the next screen:
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Scroll with your finger or the UP and DOWN buttons (middle and bottom buttons on the left) to change the watch face.
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Press the START button (top right) to see a menu asking if you want to apply the watch face or customize it.
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If you choose to customize, you can change the color (scroll again to see options) or data fields (scroll to change data in a field, press the START button again to move to the next field)
On Forerunners, once you select a watch face you like, I highly recommend taking a minute to customize the data it displays. There are some pretty cool complications, including my favorite, which shows the current time relative to sunrise and sunset. (This appears as a blue and yellow arc at the top of the screen.)
Customize your appearance
When you swipe up (or scroll down) on the watch face, you’ll see a variety of statistics and tools. These are the so-called “views”. You will likely find some of them funny and/or educational, while others will be annoying and useless. Good news: you can customize which ones you see!
While browsing your views, hold the middle left button (on Forerunner) or press the pencil icon button (on Venu or Vivoactive). You can now reorder this look by moving it up or down in the list, or remove it completely. Scroll to the bottom of the views list and you will have the option to add new views to the list.
I have my view settings set up with my mileage and training status at the top and other useful things like weather and calendar at the bottom. I’m not at all interested in my body’s battery or sleep, so those are excluded from the list.
Set up activity fields
When you’re doing an activity, like going for a run, you probably have an idea of what numbers you’d like to see during that activity. I like to know total mileage and time of day, but I don’t really care about total time or things like calories.
To set up these fields, proceed to the activity as if you were about to start a run. On Forerunner, press and hold the UP button (middle left). (On the Venu 3 or Vivoactive 5, which don’t have buttons on the left side, you’ll swipe up from the bottom of the screen.) From here, select Manage settings and data screens , then scroll through the available options. . You can either customize the data fields on one of these screens, or add an entirely new screen with the data you want to see.
Set up a Garmin Coach plan to see your recommended workouts for the week.
If your watch comes with daily recommended workouts, like most running watches, you can view the upcoming week’s workouts on your phone, but only if you set up an adaptive training plan.
If you eventually want to create a more structured workout plan, that’s okay (and you can start it whenever you want). But you don’t need a race or a goal to create an adaptive plan. Go to the More menu in the Garmin Connect app, select Training & Planning , then select Garmin Coach Plans and Find a Plan . When you get to the last screen, if it gives you human names next to the general Garmin trainer, ignore the humans and just select the unnamed option. This is the one that puts your daily recommended workouts into the app for you to view.
If you add a race to your calendar (yes, there is a calendar in the app), your training schedule will change to begin training for that race. If you want to learn more about the different Garmin running training plans, I have a breakdown of them , including all the differences between the Expert plans and the Adaptive plans.
Change your goal step by step
By default, Garmin selects a target in steps. And even if you initially get a reasonable number of steps, such as 7,500 or 10,000 steps per day, you may soon find that this changes. What’s happening?
Most likely, you will allow him to set you an “automatic” goal. This feature sets your goal based on your recent average number of steps. This means that if you walked at least 10,000 steps every day last week, your average was probably somewhere above 10,000 – so now the clock won’t congratulate you until you beat your new norm. This can cause your goal to increase slightly over time, which is motivating for some people and annoying for others.
You can change this in the Garmin Connect app. Settings vary depending on the watch; Here’s a Garmin page describing where to find it . Use the app to go into your device’s settings and uncheck the “Auto Average” step goal.