Auto lap by timing gates Is Greyed out in Connect Web and Mobile

Thank you so much flowstate.  It looks like you need to have a compatible watch (Fenix 8, 970, x1), and if you had a course created before, you have to go and edit the course so that you can enable it.

I'm not 100% sure that you need to have a compatible watch.  But you definitely need to go edit any course you had created before to enable it.

Np. To be clear I don't have a compatible watch (I have an FR955), and I was def able to turn on the feature.

(Obviously it wouldn't work with my watch.)

I do think that the way it's currently implemented is misleading and confusing. The toggle should be available (ungreyed) from the start, instead of imposing a weird order of operations on the end user.

Garmin UX is bad overall.

Just look at the newish (?) changes to the courses page in the website related to searching for courses and how your own courses are auto-filtered by your map position and zoom. If your courses are filtered, there's a tiny message at the bottom of list, but you won't see it initially if it the list is too long for your screen (you would literally have to scroll to the bottom of the list to see it). The tiny message says you can't see some of your courses, and to view all of your courses, you should reset the filters and the map view. Then they give you a button to reset filters, but no button to reset the map view. The only way to "reset" the map view is to do it manually (which is not made clear in the UI).

It's not even clear what "reset map view" really means here. If it means change the map view to what you would normally get when you load the page for the first time, that's not guaranteed to show all your courses either. What they really mean is "manually zoom out and pan the map view so that all your courses happen to be visible", which is ridiculous imo, especially if you have courses in different cities or countries.

Then there's the fact fact that unchecking the "search when I move map" checkbox also does not reset the search criteria to show all courses, so it's fairly useless. All it does is freeze the filter at the last map zoom and position.

TL;DR people keep asking "why can't I see all of my courses" and the only advice people can give is to *manually* zoom out and pan the map so that all your courses happen to be included in the map view. There's literally no way to get Garmin to do it automatically for you.

Strava is a lot smarter about this. They just give you a separate page with all your courses that's completely divorced from the other page that shows courses on a map.

Then there's the terribad gear selection UI in the Connect app. I could go on and on tbh.

Thank you.  

In the course detail page, it looks like you could turn it on and off, but you can't.  

You have to edit the course.  Since I haven't created courses since the launch of the 970 and this feature, it didn't figure out, until your comment, that I needed to edit the course to enable it.

I agree the search is horrible, next to useless, you just have to zoom in and out.

Before posting this thread, I went looking for official courses to see if they had the feature enabled, It's a total pain to find them now.

Once again, thanks.  I'm running a half-marathon in a week, and I really wanted to use this to pace myself.

You're welcome. I think what adds to the confusion is that when you create a new course, the toggle is greyed out (leading people to believe the function isn't available). It's ridiculous that you have to add 1 km of distance before it becomes available.

Arturo said:

I'm running a half-marathon in a week, and I really wanted to use this to pace myself.

Speaking of UX, even DCR has point out that "auto lap by timing gates" is a weird name for the feature. It's really basing your auto laps on the mile/km markers in the (digital) course itself, not literal timing gates on the physical course, as the name kinda suggests.

Anyway, I did notice that once you enable autolap by timing gates, purple mile or km markers are added to your course *and* you have the ability to manually move them to align with your idea of the correct position (which is obviously the least that one would expect).

I also noticed that while "special" distance markers like 21.1 km are automatically generated, there's no way to add a non-standard distance marker of your own (like 10.5 km). You can add a course point with a distance marker type, but I don't see a way to specify the actual distance.

Good luck with your race!

Thanks. 

I think the 1 km minimum is because this is really meant to be used with PacePro and PacePro, uses at minimum 1km.

Yeah, the name made me wonder if it had to by linked to official timing gates.  I think the name is so that it doesn't get confused with the normal autolap feature.