This discussion has been locked.

You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Garmin Connect combining Text notifications on Fenix3HR

I recently updated Connect(android) AND my Fenix3HR, which has changed the behaviour of text notifications on my watch. (It's been a very long time since I updated connect)

Previously, each text was treated as a separate watch notification, and they would be queued up serially if someone sent a flurry of them.

Now, I still get a notification for every text, but each one always begins with the same oldest un-acknowledged message, and any newer ones are appended to it. Due to the limited real-estate on the watch, this effectively means that I keep getting the same text notification over and over again, with every other message buried and unreadable. I've attached a crude diagram to better illustrate what it's doing.

I strongly dislike this new behaviour, as the whole point of a watch notification is so that I don't have to take out my phone. Is there any way to prevent/disable this "text combining" behaviour? I can't find anything in the settings. Can I downgrade my watch and/or connect app to revert to the previous behaviour? This is exactly the reason that I don't do regular updates on some things, as they frequently make things worse.

0 CristianG over 1 year ago

Did you manage to find a solution for this issue? I also dislike this "feature". Ideally, users should be given the option to either combine these notifications or display only the most recent one, instead of being bombarded with all of them. I completely concur that the current functionality is not desirable from my perspective.

0 Brad_Mockford over 1 year ago in reply to CristianG

Short answer, no I don't have any idea how to change the behaviour of this. I've since upgraded my phone from an outdated Samsung S7 to a Pixel7Pro but the problem persists. Factory reset on my watch didn't fix it either. I tried emailing Garmin support but received crickets.

I actually tried posting this same question on r/Garmin a while ago, but that was during the whole API-protest thing and it either got buried, or we're the minority and most people actually don't care about this. https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/14bvyk7/combined_sms_notifications/

I've done some additional searching and it looks like this is a result of Garmin Connect using the content from the Android "Notification shade" where all the unacknowledged messages accumulate. I'm certainly not an android expert, but it can't be _that_ hard to only pull new SMS content like fitbit and presumably every other sane smartwatch does.

0 trux over 1 year ago

Brad_Mockford said:
Can I downgrade my watch and/or connect app to revert to the previous behaviour?

Yes, you can downgrade both of them. Older versions of the app can be found in public APK libraries, such as the APKmirror.com. And older so called "roll-back" public release versions of the firmware can be found in side-load beta packages that you can find in the forum for your watch model. However, since there is no more any forum for Fenix 3, there was almost certainly also no new firmware release for that model, hence downgrading the app should be sufficient.

0 Brad_Mockford over 1 year ago in reply to trux

Thanks for the feedback! I think the "problem" is in Connect and not the watch, but FWIW I did do a factory reset on my watch and it didn't change anything. This was awhile ago and I don't remember if it immediately prompted me for a SW upgrade, but if Garmin has any SW chops at all they'd have an A/B upgrade image path with a golden "factory" image that would get used in the factory reset.

Similarly, I think sideloading an old APK may fix the problem with the Fenix3, but I also want to upgrade to a newer Garmin model and using old Connect software would likely break some functionality there too.

I think the best solution, other than Garmin actually changing the default source of the notifications, would be to try to configure the Phone to only put the newest message in the notification shade, but I don't have a clue how Android notifications work under the hood.