Active calories not counted

any update 2 years down the line? I had the same issue yesterday.

I figured out another work-around I'll document below, but I also realized that even though Garmin Connect does not correctly aggregate active calories, Apple Health does.  As it should be, Apple prioritizes the source device and sensors that originally documented the activity.  In other words, if you have parallel workout data from both Garmin watch and Garmin Edge, if the Edge was the device that captured the workout, it ignores the Garmin "priority device" nonsense and uses solely the Edge data. 

Long story short, if you are happy with all the Garmin data BUT the Active Calories counter, you can just get to that data in Apple Health.

Of course this is never reflected on the Garmin watch correctly which lead me to try this last-ditch workaround effort and surprisingly it worked.

• On your Garmin watch, go to the Bike/Cycle activity and go to settings. Make sure to enable "broadcast HR". 
• Make sure you pair your power meter and any other bike sensors to both the Garmin Watch and your Edge. 
• As you prepare to ride, start your activity on BOTH your watch and the Edge. If you've done everything correctly, you should see all sensor data including watch HRM data on Edge as well as Garmin watch.
• Upon completing your ride, save your Garmin Watch ride.  On the Edge, just discard the ride. 
• Garmin Connect will show the correct active calories (from REAL sensor data) as recorded on the Garmin Watch and not whatever ridiculous algorithm it is using to "guess" the active calories.

For me, this is a far better option than the Extended Display feature because Extended Display frankly sucks. The screens are terrible, hard to configure, and I feel like I am using 10% of the capability of the Edge (no weather screens, no music controls, can't show graphs/charts, etc)

The absurdity of having to go through these kinds of workarounds and the absolute non-input of Garmin support over this years-long issue is infuriating.  This is the kind of **** that leaves the door open for Apple and others to come steal this market. 

Next experiment

Today again with EDGE 1050 and Fenix 8. All calories on the ride were generated by the power meter only, as I put on my  H10 belt but not the pod 

I recorded a bicycle ride on the the EDGE with power data but no heart and simultaneously recorded a walking activity with watch OHR. At the end of the ride I saved the EDGE ride and discarded the walking activity. The EDGE recorded effectively the same calories as I would have expected if HR had been included. After fully synching  all devices calorie balance still looks good.

Good news, I've received following answer from Garmin:

We're following up on the report we received that after recording a ride on your Edge device, the active calories in the activity were greater than the all-day activity calories measured by your watch for that day. We're pleased to report that this issue has been resolved with changes we made to the primary training device priority. If you want to be able to have calories from your Edge to take precedence over your watch's calorie measurement on your rides, please set your Edge as your primary training device. Here's an FAQ https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=hCXLI2NgKa2vAATksWTr59 on how to change that setting.

I'd reported it quite some time ago, and finally it seems to be resolved.
See also https://forums.garmin.com/beta-program/fenix-8-series/f/community-discussion/403940/multi-device-calories-true-up-is-finally-working/1941073#1941073 for the similar discussion.

No, this is not right. Myself, and everyone else here, would like to have the device which is used to record an activity to take priority over the primary training device, while the activity is being recorded. The typical case is using an Edge bike computer connected to a HR strap monitor. I don't want to switch to the Edge as primary training device because I don't wear it 24/7, but I want it to track my HR, calories, etc. WHILE on a bike ride.

i think the idea is that the "primary training device" should be considered as the one that wins in case of the conflict.

when your watch is on your hand and the Edge is recording the training, there're going to be competing set of metrics since the watch is tracking metrics regardless of if the activity is being recorded explicitly.

what aggravates easy conflict resolution, is that the watch could be paired to external HR monitor, but Edge to HR monitor and power meter, for example.

there's definitely should be a mechanism how to manually configure it to resolve the conflict, and from my understanding the "primary training device" is addressing that by taking the precedence.

if the edge is not recording anything, there's no conflict and all the activities captured by the watch will be used.

I agree it's still confusing, I would rather introduce devices metrics priority instead of single "primary" (easy to imagine having 2 bikes with 2 computers, etc)

So what you are suggesting is to set up e.g. the Edge as PTD and my daily watch as secondary? This is against Garmin's explicit advice so set up the device you use/wear most as PTD. Why so?

Also this is not ideal, because I have multiple Edge devices (for a number of reasons) and I'd like all of them to take priority, over my watch, when I use them.

In addition, my watch does not pair with any external sensor unless I start recording an activity on it, and I would not record on the watch if I am recording on a "dedicated" device, e.g. the Edge.

but *if* the Edge is not connected to any sensor (HR , power meter, etc), then it's captured active calories could be even less than captured by watch, that is not recording the activity but just monitoring it's own metrics for the same time interval
meaning it's not that easy to automatically resolve the conflict and it seems to be the right approach to allow user configuring the priority.

I agree that the implementation is falling short and you're out of luck with 2 Edge devices. If i understand the current "solution" correctly (which is not necessarily the case!), you'll have to do not use your watch with another not-PTD Edge.. 
As I mentioned above, being able to set a priority/weight for each device would be much better from my perspective..

Primary wearable is your watch and previous advice from Garmin was that PTD & PW should be the same device if possible. What it seems they are now saying that the PW should remain as your watch and and the PTD should be changed to the EDGE.
What, as others have said, would be simpler for everyone would be that any calories recorded during a recorded activity take precedence over any calories which have been recorded passively on a second device. I can't see that being too difficult to implement.