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Garmin Connect Permanently Running in Background

Is there a way to stop Garmin Connect on Android from persisting to keep the Bluetooth connection alive between my phone and my Fenix watch?

I've just moved from an iPhone to Android. I'm only half a day in to using my new android phone and I'm pretty frustrated how Garmin Connect works on Android.

I don't use any form smart notifications of any sort on my Fenix watch.
With the iPhone, the only time the watch utilised Bluetooth was when I chose to sync the watch with Garmin Connect on the phone. And that was only when I manually started the app.
Otherwise the phone and watch didn't talk to each other.

But now on Android, Garmin Connect constantly wants to talk to the watch and I keep getting low battery warnings from my phone. (phone currently has low battery)
And I keep getting permission requests for my device wanting access to my calendar. I don't use my calendar on my watch and I don't want to start using it either. And I don't want any smart notifications or call notifications or any of that jazz.

The only way I can see to stop this nonsense is to disable Bluetooth on the watch and turn it on when I want to sync and have to turn it off when finished syncing. Which is really annoying.
I didn't have to to that on the iPhone.

So, does anybody have any clues how to stop Garmin Connect constantly talking with my watch?

0 macnuts over 5 years ago

Ben.Young said:
I don't use any form smart notifications of any sort on my Fenix watch.

Have you disabled notifications in GCM app or just in watch settings?

0 Ben.Young over 5 years ago in reply to macnuts

Smart Notifications are turned off on the watch.
On the GCM app all Smart Notifications are set to off and all App Permissions are set to off.

I've also check app permissions through the system settings and GCM doesn't have any permissions.
Also via the system settings, I've also turned off Device Connectivity under app permissions.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Ben.Young

Did you ever get this fixed? My new iPhone has started doing it as well.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Any chance Garmin can answer this one?

0 4859616 over 5 years ago

Mine has just started this as well! I have an iPhone but even when I force close the app (and it is disabled from background refresh) I see that it was running for 10 hours in the background yesterday! It is draining my battery!

0 4859616 over 5 years ago

This has just started happening to my iPhone as well. I have background refresh disabled AND force close it every time I use it, but it was running for 10.5 hours in the background yesterday! It is sucking down my battery! I’m close to uninstalling it.

0 Ben.Young over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

No. It's still bugging me. :-(

0 Ben.Young over 5 years ago in reply to 4859616

I haven't do so as of yet, but one "quick" way to stop the Garmin device and mobile phone from talking to each other is to configure one of the buttons on the watch to as a Hotkey for Bluetooth, and then turn off/on Bluetooth as needed.

Still a hassle to have to do that to get them from communicating with each other.
My watch also bugs me about my phone having low battery when it's below 20%. Really annoying. Once it's started it's almost every 5 minutes that I get a notification about it.