'Activities & apps' not showing on connect IQ app under 'Devices' for Fenix 8

Widgets and Glances are the same.

Ok thank you. The widget I have installed (as per the Garmin IQ app) isn’t appearing in that list. Any ideas?

No idea.

Check on the watch: Customizing the Glances List

8280247 said:

The widget I have installed (as per the Garmin IQ app) isn’t appearing in that list.

I do not own the F8, but I do not think that 3rd party IQ widgets are supposed to be configurable through Garmin Connect. Either use the Connect IQ app, or Garmin Express for configuring IQ apps, or as Andy suggested, do it directly on the watch.

Can you post a link to the Connect IQ app you installed? Or tell us the name?

It should be noted that for newer devices, there is actually no such thing as a Connect IQ widget per se.

Older watches, such as Fenix 6, had separate concept of CIQ device apps (apps that are launched from the activity list) and CIQ widgets (apps that from the widget/glance list, accessed by scrolling up or down from the watchface).

New devices, such as Fenix 7 and 8, do not have CIQ widgets. An CIQ app that's older (and/or that supports older devices) that was configured as a widget will be built as a device app for newer devices. Such an app will always be available from the activity list on newer devices, but it may not be available from the glance list on newer devices, even if it was available from the glance list on older devices.

This is because devs have to do additional work to make apps appear on the glance list for newer devices, and some devs may be unaware of this.

I mention this because it has happened more than once that some older app was initially configured and marketed as a "widget", meaning it was intended to be launched from the widget/glance list, and this worked fine on older devices. But when the app was ported to newer devices, the dev was unaware of the additional work that was necessary, which means that the app is only available from the activity list.

TL;DR it may be possible that the dev intended the app to be a "widget" (i.e. available from the glance list), but it's only available from the activity/app list.

e7andy said:

Widgets and Glances are the same.

Not quite. This is kind of true, but there's a lot of nuance here. It would be more accurate to say that glances have replaced widgets. This happened a while ago for watches, and I noticed it's also happened for newer Edge devices.

On older devices (e.g. Fenix 5), widgets were full-screen pages that you could access by scrolling up and down from the watch face. These pages were supposed to "provide information at a glance" (Garmin's words). Each page at this level would represent a distinct widget. e.g. There would be a separate page for heart rate, another page for steps, etc. If you pressed the START button when a widget's front page was selected, you would be able to gain additional functionality (e.g. more screens to look at). The Connect IQ app type of "widget" had the same functionality as described above.

Newer devices (e.g. Fenix 6) introduced the idea of glances, which were based on the same idea as widgets, except the watch would display 3 glances at a time. This would allow users to see more information "at a glance". For users who liked the old kind of widgets, there was an option to disable "widget glances", which meant you got the old full-screen widgets back. The Connect IQ app type of "widget" would work with either the old full-screen widget regime or the new glance functionality. Crucially, if an old CIQ widget was not updated to provide glance functionality (i.e. to display a small amount of information that fits in 1/3 of the screen, known as a "glance view"), a default glance view would be provided by the system (consisting of the app name or icon). This means that a dev could port an old widget app to one of these devices, and it would work as a glance, without any additional work (related to glances).

Even newer devices (e.g. Fenix 7) got rid of the old full-screen widgets and only have glances. Crucially, they also got rid of the distinct Connect IQ widget app type. Any CIQ app that was configured as a widget would be seen as a "device app" by these devices (which means that it would be available from the activity/app list). Optionally, any CIQ device app would also have the ability to provide a glance view, which means the would be available either from the activity/app list or the glance list. Crucially, if the app developer did not explicitly add support for a glance view, then the app would not be available from the glance list.

As mentioned previously, what all of this means is that an app which was originally designed as a "widget" (thus making it available from the widget/glance list) may in fact no longer be available as from the widget/glance list on newer devices, if the dev skipped a crucial step when porting to newer devices.