Cannot add new gear to a workout, cannot edit the 'first use' field for gear

So don't put the wrong ‘first use’ date for the new gear item entry when you create it. What ‘first use’ means should be pretty clear. By the way, you can add the gear item in Garmin Connect after the actual ‘first use’ date; I know that for a fact. Just don't get it wrong the first time; the point isn't to create a placeholder entry in the (gear) database and then edit/correct each attribute afterwards at your leisure.

For now, you can delete the gear item which you've recently created with the wrong ‘first use’ date and replace it with a new entry.

I went for a run with a brand new pair of shoes, and the workout automatically uploaded (via my phone) immediately after I finished. In the workout editor, I tried to add my new shoes via the "manage gear" link, but it did not add my shoes to the workout. Also, it has the wrong date for when I first used the shoes.

I think what's happening is that I cannot add the shoes to any workout that took place before the 'first use,' but since I cannot correct the first use, I cannot add them to the workout where I actually first used them.

Is there any way to get around this? I suppose I need to add my gear on garmin the day before I intend to use it. Or just not bother using that feature, since it's already a bit of a pain.

Mistakes happen when entering data and I totally understand. As part of your question relates to improving features (as opposed to a bug) I will raise it there, as I would also like this changed.

So don't put the wrong ‘first use’ date for the new gear item entry when you create it. What ‘first use’ means should be pretty clear. By the way, you can add the gear item in Garmin Connect after the actual ‘first use’ date; I know that for a fact. Just don't get it wrong the first time; the point isn't to create a placeholder entry in the (gear) database and then edit/correct each attribute afterwards at your leisure.

For now, you can delete the gear item which you've recently created with the wrong ‘first use’ date and replace it with a new entry.

It would be self-explanatory if it worked correctly, which it doesn't. You can't add it until the day AFTER the first use, which isn't only not clear, but incorrect. If I set a "first use" for a piece of gear on 11/22, but you don't let me add it on 11/22, then it's incorrect.

So don't put the wrong ‘first use’ date for the new gear item entry when you create it. What ‘first use’ means should be pretty clear. By the way, you can add the gear item in Garmin Connect after the actual ‘first use’ date; I know that for a fact. Just don't get it wrong the first time; the point isn't to create a placeholder entry in the (gear) database and then edit/correct each attribute afterwards at your leisure.

For now, you can delete the gear item which you've recently created with the wrong ‘first use’ date and replace it with a new entry.

Whoa there. Don't you play the Blame The User card for this. This is 100% software design fail.

Strike one - When creating a new piece of gear, the first use date is auto-populated to a bad date, and there is no indication the significance of getting this field wrong. To user it looks filled in an reasonable.

Strike two - When user discovers bad date, s/he is unable to fix it because the field is non-editable. (Why???)

Strike three - User has to resort to searching forums, get unsatisfying answers delivered with a dose of attitude, but ultimately has to delete and re-enter equipment, scrupulously remembering to back-date the one field.

Why is the auto-populated date bad? Because it's common for the user to focus on capturing a GPS trace with the device on his wrist right now, and to add equipment via phone app or website later, often days or weeks later. Read the other threads. This may well be the MOST common use case.

But for this common case, the software leads the user directly into a trap.

This is just plain broken, and is NOT the user's fault. Garmin, please fix this.

I've not experienced the problems above apart from the first use date not being editable, although that is by design.

I have just created piece of Gear of type 'Other'. The date was automatically populated with 18/01/2018. I added it to an activity I did today and it worked correctly.

I don't understand why Garmin doesn't let you edit the first use field once you have created it but for sure they have their reasons! There is a workaround, but it is a pain if you've added that piece of gear to a lot of activities and need to go into them all and add gear to them all, but there is some functionality built in to help with this.

There is another bug though, and that is that Gear of type 'Other' isn't automatically added to activities of type 'Fitness Equipment' even though there isn't a checkbox for Fitness Equipment. I logged it and Garmin accepted it as a bug so it will be fixed eventually, although no harm in others logging it with product support and I encourage people to log any bugs they come across.

Came here following a search to see if the current behaviour can really be this bad or whether I've done something wrong, and I agree 100% with CyclingFred. Why on earth should first use date even be a factor? I can see why you'd not want retired equipment clogging up a UI, but first use? Seriously?

My own frustrating use case is simple; some years ago I added a bike to my gear closet, and got the purchase date wrong at the time. I just noticed an activity I did with that bike and tried to add it in retrospect, but I can't.

Garmin, ether give us a credible reason why this should be, or fix it. Please.

The first use field is used to control which items of Gear appear in the box when you click on the Gear icon in an activity. It does not show any items that are retired or first used after the date of the activity. If you have a lot of gear items, this functionality is really helpful.

I think that Gear functionality is useful and works pretty well except for the bug I mentioned above.

djlemma PubBike muppix CyclingFred paulmshepherd Here's a solution for anyone who wishes to edit their GC gear's date of first use. You need a computer or an Android phone. Once you follow the installation steps, you'll be able to change your gear start date whenever you want, until Garmin decides to change/upgrade that part of GC.

Requirements: Chrome or Firefox on PC, Mac, Linux, or Android. (*)

Installation Steps:
1) Install Requestly on your Chrome or Firefox browser: http://www.requestly.in/
2) Open the following link: https://app.requestly.in/rules/#shar.../1549157228200

You should see a item called "Garmin Connect: Allow edit of gear begin date"

3) Click the "Import List" button in upper-right hand corner of the page

Now you can edit the first use date when editing your gear on the Garmin Connect website. Simple as that.

Disclaimer: If Garmin changes the gear page in the future, this hack will either break and/or fail to pick up some of Garmin's changes.

You can get the official behaviour back at any time by deleting/disabling the rule, or disabling/uninstalling Requestly. (You can quickly deactivate/reactive Requestly by right-clicking on the "R" icon next to the URL bar. You can turn rules on and off by left-clicking on the "R".)

(*) Side note: the next time someone asks you "Why do you still use a computer in 2019 lol" or "Why would you ever use a website instead of an app", now you have an answer for them. Sometimes you can get sites to do what you want, not just what was strictly intended. I say this as a long time iPhone/iPad user, too.

EDIT: BTW, I've had no problems adding gear on the same date as first use. I also checked to see if there was some kind of time zone issue. When you create gear and set the date of first use, the time of first use (not visible to you) is set to midnight local time. This means that if your time zone is set wrong in Garmin Connect, you may not be able to use new gear on the day of "first use".

OTOH, if your time zone is correct and this is still happening, then obviously there's some (other) bug in GC. It would probably have been better if they omitted the internal time of first use (and timezone dependency) but it is what it is.

So don't put the wrong ‘first use’ date for the new gear item entry when you create it. What ‘first use’ means should be pretty clear. By the way, you can add the gear item in Garmin Connect after the actual ‘first use’ date; I know that for a fact. Just don't get it wrong the first time; the point isn't to create a placeholder entry in the (gear) database and then edit/correct each attribute afterwards at your leisure.

The point of a functioning, usable and useful UI/UX is not to punish users for making mistakes, nor to punish users when your own software has a bug. It may also not be clear what are the consequences of setting the "first use" date. Sometimes when we see a setting that looks useless, we don't bother to set it to the correct value. It's called being human.

I think my previous post in this thread proves that there was literally no reason to have that restriction, except somebody thought "It doesn't make sense to edit the start date for existing gear". Funny that there's no problem with creating new gear and setting the start date years in the past. I could also argue that doesn't make sense.

Or Garmin could just copy Strava and not have a "first use" field. But then again, Strava doesn't let you add retired gear to old activities.... At least Strava would (also) let you unretire gear, so you could go add it to old activities if you wanted to. I think that is actually a much simpler solution than having a useless "date of first use" field that just gets in the way when you actually want to add gear to old activities.

To be clear, I think the only reason that the "date of first use" field exists is so you can add retired gear to old activities. And to be clear, I think it shouldn't exist. I think it should work just like Strava where you would have to temporarily unretire that gear, add it to whatever old activities you want, and retire it again.

Because how often do people actually edit old activities? And when we do, it kind of sucks that this seemingly arbitrary restriction is here to make it harder.

Or maybe, when editing activities, there could be a link that reads "Retired Gear...", and you could click on that and scroll through all retired gear.

I don't know, anything but the way it is today.

I agree it would be helpful to be able to modify the first use date, but it is not a big problem as the workarounds completely fix the issue if you have entered the wrong date by mistake. They can just be time consuming and annoying.

There are lots of threads on this in the past...

https://forums.garmin.com/forum/into-sports/garmin-connect/130548-first-use-date-on-gear-is-incorrect
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/into-sports/garmin-connect/150372-
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/into-sports/garmin-connect/82180-first-use-date-in-gear-page

and in one thread even the moderator SUSSAMB agrees that it should be editable.

If this is important to you consider whether to submit this as a support request or idea if you have not done so already.

Because it is easily fixed I have never bothered to report it. There are plenty of other bugs for which there is no workaround so I tend to focus my energies on those.