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Garmin activities sync to Strava

Hi everyone,

Could someone please help me with some settings?

When my Garmin activities sync to Strava, the names are all in Chinese.

I have checked both on my iOS app and the web; they are all in English.

How do I change it?

Thank you very much.

  • Unfortunately I know nothing about other sources. it is probable that Strava does not sync with them in the same way. The communication Garmin-Strava works in this way: when an activity is synced from the watch to GC, the FIT file of the activity is immediately accessible on Garmin's API and Strava loads it from there, creating their own name. The FIT file does not contain any activity name. It only includes the ID of the activity profile (i.e. Trail Run), and the name of the workout if one was used during the activity.

    Strava then creates their own name, based on the sport profile and the time of the day, for example "Afternoon Run". I never saw any other language used, than English, but that may be because my Strava profile was always set to English. Perhaps you used Chinese, at certain time. I really do not know, but I recommend asking at Strava - their Support is rather responsive.

    Other data providers may use a completely different data format, since the FIT format is actually Garmin invention, and may not be used by others.

  • The communication Garmin-Strava works in this way:

    I'm aware of all of that, but OP may not be (I'm not OP). I don't really care that much, just idly speculating about the other services.

    BTW, while it's true that FIT files don't contain the activity name in Garmin Connect (which is autogenerated on the backend based on user settings and editable after the fact), I wouldn't imply that 3rd party services can't sync Garmin activity names. For example, runalyze syncs with Garmin Connect and uses the activity name that's created/set in Connect. Rn I'm looking at an activity in runalyze which shows the name that I set in Connect.

    Similarly, there are 3rd party python scripts that will bulk download your entire Connect activity history (in the form of FIT files), and they are also able to determine activity names.

    Obviously the Connect API provides a way to determine activity names but Strava chooses not to use it.