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Failure to sync activities intermittently in Garmin Explore (GE)

So I thought I would post my experience. Maybe others can add to it.

There seems to be a lot of people who have commented about the iOS Explore not syncing activities from the watch. Some say it doesn’t work at all, and other have maybe a similar experience to me.

First, I have two watches: a Fenix 6X Pro Solar and the Instinct Solar. This issue happens to BOTH watches.

Second, both watches sync to Connect (GC) just fine, and all the time. So all my activities do get into Garmin’s platform.

Third, I’m an iOS user only. I use an iPhone and an iPad Pro, so I have no way to sync, update or anything, except through iOS.

In my usage, I have found that I can sync for some number of days, and then it just stops. I usually don’t even catch it right away. After talking with Garmin Support (who had no solutions), and after going through all steps from logging out and back in, to uninstalling the app, and even updating my watch OS, nothing solved the issue. But if perform a full RESET of the watch then my syncing will resume for another random number of days.

Now, recently, another factor has come to light. It seems I lost my ability to sync after a recent app update. On July 7 a new iOS Explore came out. I was a few days late on installing. But it just so happens that the last time my watch synced an activity was on July 10. After that, no activities will sync. 

What makes this issue more difficult is the lack of an EXPORT feature, for an activity, in the GC app itself. It would seem so simple to have an EXPORT button, so that iOS users could get around an issue like this just by exporting to local iPhone storage, and then IMPORTING to GE. 

Anyway, that is my experience and progress on this issue. I’m not sure why it’s been around for so long, without any kind of resolution. 

  • I'm also in the Apple ecosystem w/iPhone & iPad Pro; I've had my watch for 2 months now, and had an InReach Mini 2 before that.  I've only saved one activity from the InReach, but in the last 2 months I have 27 activities saved and one apparently lost from GE.  I'm not sure what happened to the one and didn't care about it much at the time...it was a repeat of my most used trail, so I had a number of similar activities over the exact same area.

    You might share other notes re: your setup.  I always carry my iPhone, it's always paired via BT, and I always have "Sync Current Activity" set to on.  I always check my phone at least at the end after saving the activity, to ensure everything is sync-ed.  I usually check before and sometimes during, to see how things are going and to "get the big picture".

    I have had rare (1-2?) cases where I needed to re-pair the watch to get GE working again...have you tried that?