Android and Windows contacts not receiving Live Track

I use a 735XT. Recently some of my contacts that are set to receive Live Track do not get it. As nearly as I can tell, those who use iPad or iPhone get the Live Tracks but those who use Android and/or Windows do not get Live Track. An exception is that my wife and I do get the Live Track. 

What's causing this strange behavior?

  • The LiveTrack link is sent by email or text so it is device independent.

    Have the recipients checked their spam folders?

  • Thanks, Andy.

    Perhaps a recipient with marginal computer knowledgeability might accidently do something that causes emails from Garmin to go into their junk folder. But my daughter makes her living working on her computer. OTOH, recipients who use iPads and iPhones never seem to have a problem.

  • It is an email so it doesn't matter which device you are using. Just check the spam folder. You don't have to do anything to get emails to your spam folder. It is automated. You just have to remember to check your spam folder from time to time since there are mails that end up there by accident.

    I've got a lot of emails from Garmin sent to my spam folder by the automatic spam filtering. 

    It might be the email client or the email provider is different for the users that it works with.

  • I use Android and W10 and LiveTrack works fine. Must be a user problem.

  • When you say "I use android & W10" are you speaking as the "Recipient"  or as the person wearing the Garmin watch?

  • As  wrote, the OS of the recipient does not matter at all. The email is either sent out, or it is not. And the sending mail server only communicates with recipient's mail server, never with the client device. In other words, the sender is unaware of recipient's OS, and it also plays no role. The email is deposited into recipients mail box on the server, which is in 95% a Unix machine. Practically nobody uses Macs for mail servers. And you can (and usually do) pick up and read the messages from the mail server with several different devices, each with a completely different OS. 

    So if your daughter does not receive the email, while others do, then either you did not enter the address correctly, or her mail server (not here computer or phone!) is misconfigured, or uses too strict filtering and rejects emails from Garmin, or it indeed landed in the spam folder. There is no other possibility.

    If you are still persuaded that the OS of your daughter's computer matters, then ask her to test reading the content of her mailbox with a Windows or an Android device, just to see whether the email is there or not. If she is an IT person, you will see that she will just laugh at you Wink

  • Points taken. But can go back to my  problem?

    That is, why at some recent point in time, did some of my recipients stop getting my Live Tracks?

    I've had my 735 XT for about 7 years with basically the same recipients... family and hiking buddies. The bit about Windows vs. Android vs. iPhones is a weak weak, but it is true that the iPhone users never tell me they didn't get the Live Track.

    BTW, I'm not a newbie WRT computing. I have 3 degrees in Engineering, and taught Engineering & Computer Science at a major university, have written many thousand lines of code, had visiting appointments at major universities around the world, have been assembling my own computers for 15 years, etc., etc. .You can hold the applause, but don't pass me off as a dimwit :-)

  • Which email provider are they using?

    Try changing to an email address from a different email provider. 

  • That is, why at some recent point in time, did some of my recipients stop getting my Live Tracks?

    Since you are apparently an IT person, the best way to find out would be setting up your own mail server (if you do not already have one), then sending the LiveTrack email to an address on that server, and from there redirecting it to all recipients (or at least to the ones you want to troubleshoot). You could then check the mail server log, and see whether the emails were delivered, or rejected, and you would probably also see the reason (i.e. detected as spam, DMARC failure, routing problem, mailbox full, ...).

  • ... and if you added more than 25 LiveTrack recipients, then that could be another reason why some of them do not receive the email. I cannot find a recent article defining the limit, but an archived version from 2023 tells the limit were 25 recipients. And perhaps Garmin changed the limit lately. The solution is again simple - use a mail list or a forwarding email address, redirecting the notification to all your recipients.

    Or you could also write a script posting the link to your server, where you can the embed the LiveTrack session. In that way you followers will be able to see the LiveTrack alwasy on the same address