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Garmin connect Apple health sync bugs

MCEWEN98
4 months ago

The Garmin connect synchronization to Apple health still does not work well. 

1) you have to leave the app open due to Apple’s restrictions on how apps are allowed to write to the encrypted health data, but there is no notification when the activity gets synced to Health. A simple popup would be pretty helpful. 

2) when the connect syncs activities it appears to grab about the last 2 weeks and sends them to health, overwriting the previous activities. This wipes out any metadata added via health, like the effort rating for tracking RPE load. A simple check to see if there’s a matched activity would work a lot better, and probably help shorten the mysterious “how long do I have to leave the app in the foreground” time delay. 

  • 0 3 months ago

    I am also having the issue with #2. If I add any metadata, such as RPE ("Effort" in Apple parlance), it repeatedly gets overwritten by Connect, and any downstream apps that read from Health also lose that information.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to stmpjmpr

    I gave up on the Garmin app syncing to Apple. I don’t think they will ever make it work right. I added a betterGarmin to Apple sync feature to an app I made instead (Intervals Companion on iOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/intervals-icu-companion/id6739638454 ). I sync more data more reliably than Garmin does. If I can do it they can do it. They have no excuses for not making this work better. 

  • 0 28 days ago in reply to MCEWEN98

    Came across this thread just now as the GC -> Apple Health syncing really annoys me. I tried your Intervals Companion app but noticed that even though I have Garmin checked for the Apple Health Sync Settings, the RPE in intervals is not copied into Apple Health at all? I also now have a duplicate workout since GC is also still syncing to Apple Health. Guess if your app indeed syncs RPE, I have to disable certain parameters from syncing between GC and AH? (such as workout, but keep heart rate and other vitals metrics to be synced by GC to AH?)

  • 0 28 days ago in reply to pdj-84

    I’m not grabbing RPE from intervals, only fields available in the original FIT file. Might be easy to add though. To prevent duplicates  you will want to disable workouts for GC in settings -> privacy & security -> health -> GC. My app does keep track of what itself syncs and shouldn’t create duplicates. Should be ok to have the other fields enabled if you’re collecting them from a Garmin device.

    Like GC the app needs to be open and in the foreground to have write access to AH, as that’s a restriction imposed by Apple. 

  • 0 27 days ago in reply to MCEWEN98

    Would be great if you could add RPE Grinning  also noticed that garmin syncs different Numbers for active and total calorie while your app syncs the same number in both field. I guess the resting calories are not available from intervals?