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Fed Up With Endless SSO (and other) Glitches: Alternatives to Garmin Connect?

jpwgibson

I'm sick of "Remember Me" not remembering me. 

And now Garmin has introduced an endless loop of age verification.

I feel it's safe to simply assume that Garmin is trying to run this thing into the ground. 

Anyone know of any decent alternatives? 

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  • 0

    runalyze.com isn't exactly an alternative, but it is free, it syncs with Connect and it shows even more data than Connect.

    As much as I like it, there are some problems:

    - no app, only website

    - the website isn't exactly mobile-friendly - it's really made for desktop. you can use it on a phone, but the user experience will be bad and certain features that require hovering with a mouse won't be available

    - uses different algorithm for averaging running dynamics like cadence and ground contact time than Garmin. Average cadence per lap/activity is slightly different, while average ground contact time is much higher than with Connect, even discounting differences due to Connect excluding periods of walking or standing still.

    If you want an app which even works offline, there's ConnectStats for iOS (which is free). This is also not really a true alternative.

    There's really no app or website that will show you exactly the same data that Connect will.

    You can also sync your data with Strava, which imo is much more user friendly, but also shows much less data than Connect.

    There's also this, which I haven't tried myself:

    - https://github.com/arpanghosh8453/garmin-grafana

    At least if you sync with Strava, runalyze or another 3rd party site/app, all of your activity FIT files will also be available for download from those services. Then you can possibly use another 3rd party app or service to analyze the files in detail, like:

    - fitfileviewer.com

    Ofc there is more to your data than the activity FIT files. There's also the all day health stuff, a lot of which is only available in Connect.

  • 0 in reply to flowstate

    Thanks for this recommendation! Runalyze sounds a lot like what I'm looking for.

  • 0

    Maybe they want to have a website but just have never managed to recruit and retain the right people to design,  build, and run it.  It has been quirky like this for over a decade so it is nothing new.  I have previously reported numerous issues regarding the website but gave up because support didn't seem to see the reports as issues.  I can't think of another website I use that has such a clunky experience where the machinations of the sign-in processing is exposed to the user when I navigate to it .

  • 0 in reply to PubBike

    Garmin is just bad at software, UI and UX imo. I could write endless paragraphs about all the issues. I've seen many people post about the perception that Garmin sucks at software in the forums and reddit, for about 10 years (but I'm sure the complaints go back even further).

    There are many bugs and usability issues that have existed for years and will probably never be fixed. Other bugs have been fixed only to come back years later.

    They have improved some things in the watch's UI over the years, but Garmin will never win awards for usability and design.

    Some examples of how bad usability in Connect is:

    - try opening the activities list in the Connect website and scrolling back more than a few dozen activities (like if you want to scroll to activities from 2024, for example).

    You will find it takes forever, and you'll quickly decide to try a different route.

    That list has infinite scrolling (like a social media feed) implemented in such a way that the scrollbar doesn't cover ALL your activities, but only the handful of activities currently loaded (maybe a couple of pages worth). So you scroll to the bottom, and it only takes you to end of that handful of activities. Then you have to wait for a few more activities to load. Rinse and repeat X 1000.

    Others have complained that when they want to export all their activities to CSV, they have to scroll to the end of all their activities as described above, which takes forever. So I'm not the only one who's been affected by this behaviour.

    In another thread I posted a proof of concept of a list with 10,000 items where the user can quickly scroll to any point. It took me 5 minutes to make that demo, using a popular grid package.

    It's not impossible to do. We can also see that other companies like Suunto chose the NodeBB forum software which allows a single thread to have thousands of replies, and you can instantly scroll to any point in the list, both on mobile and desktop. Nobody can imagine a thread with thousands of replies in these forums (whose platform Garmin chose), since you'd never be able to navigate through such a thread.

    Similarly, Spotify has a custom scrollbar in your library page which allows you to instantly scroll to any point, no matter how big your library is.

    It's bad enough that if I want to look at old activities, like a race from 2023, I'm much better off using a 3rd party site or app. After I find the activity elsewhere, maybe I'll look it up on Connect. (Ironically some of these 3rd party sites or apps actually have a way to directly open the activity in Connect, which means that a 3rd party has a better way to find old activities in Connect than Connect itself).

    - try paging through calendar months in either the Connect website or app.

    You will see that you have to wait for the next/previous month to load before being able to press the next/previous navigation button again. Again this means that it takes forever to navigate to any point in time that's more than a few months old. 

    In contrast, both Strava and Stryd have ways to quickly scroll through your training log / calendar, even if you have years of training.

    - just look at the gear/shoe management function in the Connect app. I could write volumes about how bad it is.

    Inconsistent workflow (depending on whether you already have shoes assigned to an activity or not), and about twice as many taps as Strava (for example) to do something as simple as selecting shoes

  • 0 in reply to PubBike
    PubBike said:
    Maybe they want to have a website

    Tbh I don't even think they care about the Connect website. Clearly the app is the first priority and I get it. Even 10 years ago, I knew people who would not do something that they really wanted to do, if it meant they had to use a website and not an app. 

    I'm sure the vast majority of newer Garmin users use the Connect app exclusively. I know lots of ppl who don't even use Connect at all, but only Strava (ofc the app and not the website).

    Too bad the Connect app is also bad.

  • 0 in reply to flowstate

    I use them both but the app slightly more nowadays.  Some things are easier on each platform although both have their frustrations e.g.

    Why for example on the web when I rename an activity does pressing return not save the change?

    Similarly on the app, why is the first character lower case and not automatically made upper case?

    On the web the Activity Event type can be changed without going into edit more yet on the app you do.

    etc.

    There's so much that is only partially implemented and doesn't conform to industry norms, but you know all this!

  • 0 in reply to PubBike
    PubBike said:
    Similarly on the app, why is the first character lower case and not automatically made upper case?

    When I edit the activity name in the Connect app on my iPhone, if I delete the existing name and start to enter new terxt, the first character is uppercase, but I have auto-capitalization enabled in my settings (which is the default).

    I don't think there's necessarily an expectation that individual apps will do this for you. Maybe it's different on Android, idk. In that case, maybe Garmin didn't handle Android properly.

    I do think Connect sucks overall, and I know a few people who don't like to use the Connect app because it's too complex.

    Just look at activity editing in Strava app: one tap and you can edit almost everything in the activity (with the exception of a few rarely-used edge cases like trim activity or edit map visibility).

    In the Connect app, there's like 5 or 6 different places to edit things.

    Sometimes I wonder if Garmin employees even eat their own dogfood (i.e. use the Connect app on a day to day basis, for personal use). 

    I've mentioned the gear issue before, but this is how bad selecting gear in the Connect app is:

    - if gear has already been added to your activity (as it would be if you have default gear for that activity type), then opening the gear tab in an activity shows you your gear, but does not allow you to change it. You have to go somewhere else to add or remove gear. In contrast, if no gear has been added, then there's a big "Add Gear" button in the gear tab

    - when you actually edit gear for an activity (by selecting 3 dots > Add or Remove Gear), tapping on another gear item (like shoes) doesn't cause the currently selected gear to be de-selected. So it's another tap to de-select the currently selected gear. This is ridiculous because people rarely want to assign multiple pairs of shoes to same activity (it's clearly not the desired default workflow), and even if they did, there's no way to split up the activity mileage across different pairs of shoes - each pair of shoes would receive the total activity mileage, which again is probably not what people want. So the workflow is currently set up so it's easier to select multiple pairs of shoes than it is to change the currently selected pair of shoes to a different pair of shoes, even though nobody would want to select multiple pairs of shoes, and even if they did, Connect doesn't really support that scenario properly

    - the order of the displayed gear changes apparently randomly

    - the quickest way to add new gear (not adding existing gear to the activity, but adding new gear to the list of gear that you own) from the activity gear tab is to tap on the existing selected gear, which takes you to the "global" gear page, where it's a ton of steps to add gear. But you can't do this if no gear has already been added to the activity (which seems like it would be the primary scenario in which you'd like to add new gear).

    Contrast with Strava which:

    - has a simple dropdown control for shoes

    - the list is always in the same order

    - when you select a different pair of shoes, the existing pair is automatically de-selected

    - it works the same way whether you already have shoes selected or not

    - there's a simple and quick way to add new shoes, whether you already have shoes selected or not