Let's discuss the real secret of Connect IQ.

Perhaps many developers are wondering why their developed apps have a good reputation and high download numbers, yet rarely appear on the rankings.

In fact, it's not the developers' fault; some developers have monopolized the rankings using special techniques.

  • This is the watch face with the highest historical downloads and possibly the best word-of-mouth. It is free and open source, yet it has only 4,000 ratings in 7 years.

    However, the number of comments from other authors only takes two months to exceed it, and is increasing at a rate of 50+ comments per day.

    This is a screenshot taken four days later.

  •  When their downloads were less than 1,000, their number of reviews had reached 70+

  • This is a normal watch face with over 1 million downloads and only 2000+ comments.

    Other people, with download numbers less than half of it, received ten times as many comments.

  • I've reported this issue in the past, and I've also questioned why my watch faces are very popular on social media but rarely appear on the server's leaderboard.

    However, those who don't know the secret would only say, "Come on, you're not as popular as you think."

    They think I'm jealous, but it's not their problem.

    I've also tried to learn development skills and improve the watch faces.

    I actually managed to get the watch faces briefly appear on the leaderboard by posting popular threads on Reddit, but they were quickly outperformed by other authors.

  • About three months ago, I discovered this secret: the number of comments from those top-ranked users far exceeded that of free watch faces, which didn't make sense.

    I stopped my ineffective complaining on the forum and asking the official to modify the ranking mechanism, and instead started using multiple accounts to comment on my own watch faces. I added about 5-20 comments per day. My watch face immediately appeared within the top 30 on the leaderboard, and my download volume was about three times higher than usual.

    Although I couldn't compete with the top ten developers, who might have automated scripts, the number one guy, if willing, could steadily add 100 comments per day, combined with the normal daily number of about 10 comments.

  • Recently, garming finally noticed this issue. It blocked my account and removed all my watch faces. However, it still allows other developers to continue.

    Maybe they have reached an internal deal. or garming's official staff may be lacking in competence and fail to realize that due to the high exposure brought by being in the front row, when the number of comments you manipulate exceeds a certain value, the ratio of downloads to comments will actually tend to be normal.

  • I tried to appeal and also tried to write emails to the official staff, but received no feedback. That's why I'm writing this post.

    For three or four years, Garmin has let everything slide, yet told me I violated the rules.

    I tried to be a normal developer for a long time, but there was no response.

    It wasn't until my account was frozen that I posted hundreds of comments, while those who had posted tens of thousands of comments over the years remained active.

  • I respect Garmin's decision to ban the account, but could you please keep my watch faces? Currently, all my watch faces rely on Connect IQ for settings.

    Now I receive dozens of emails every day asking why the watch faces cannot be set. You can remove the watch faces from the leaderboard and block them, but please ensure that other watch face users can continue to use Connect IQ to set their watch faces.

    This is my minimum requirement.

  • When you were banned, I'd expect that all of your apps were removed from the store and are no longer visible even with a search on the name.  And if the app isn't in the store, app settings are no longer available.