Refresh the data field

No, unfortunately I don't own a CIQ 3.2 device. I would be really curious to see how it works with a data field on a real device.

Thanks for that detail! Personally I find it valuable to hear about these undocumented differences/quirks, although I wish they were documented and/or accurately modelled in the simulator.

Give you an example with a watch face with on device settings.  To get to the settings, you go to the watch face picker, and when you see the target watchface, you have a chance to customize it.  Then you leave the picker. and the WF runs in it's normal way.

It's really nothing new, as it's been the same when you customize native watch faces for a long time.

The only time I've seen you can do on device customize for a DFs is when you first add it to a data screen, but I've not looked at this in some time and it may have changed.

Sure I get how native on-device settings work. My question is about CIQ 3.2 on-device settings and your statement that the app restarts after the application-defined view is popped.

My point is the CIQ 3.2 custom on-device settings feature initially seems like it could be a very powerful way to push an *arbitrary* view which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with settings. e.g. It could be lap history, or a map, or any number of alternate views.

None of that works if the data field has to restart after the view is popped, though.

For a practical example, I have a full-screen datafield app whose normal view is 6 fields of the user's choice. The app also has a way to show lap history, but it's very clunky to switch views -- user has to press a key sequence such as UP, DOWN in a fairly short amount of time.

I wanted to use on-device "settings" to push the lap history view for an improved UX on 3.2 devices, but based on what you said, that seems like a non-starter.

The analogy with native views is that the native navigation map on 935 has a Pan/Zoom menu which doesn't take you to "settings", but it takes you to a separate map view which can be panned or zoomed using the UP, DOWN and START keys (none of which can be used for those purposes in the default data field view, obviously.)

If someone wanted to implement something similar in a data field app, it's likely they wouldn't want the app to restart after exiting the Pan/Zoom view.

I tried to activate the traditional settings but it's not working. I rode the core topics about app settings, but I don't see anything if I use the Garmin Connect Application. No settings available in my Data Field... I just added a properties.xml file with settings tags inside... What did I missed ?

Thanks 

If you want to test traditional app settings on a sideloaded app, the app has to be published to the store. For testing purposes, you can check the "Beta App" checkbox which hides the app from everyone except you (the author).

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/core-topics/beta-apps/

As mentioned in ^ this article, you need to use a different UUID for your beta app and the real app which you will eventually publish.

Also, not to state the obvious, but each setting has to have a corresponding property (which I assume you have).

EDIT: As Jim pointed out, you can also use the App Settings editor in Eclipse, which is probably the preferred method of testing settings. But obviously that doesn't work with a sideloaded app on a real device.

I don't publish beta apps unless/until I need to test the app on a real device. But you'll probably want to do this at least once for any app with non-trivial settings, before you publish it for real.

See the New Developer FAQ:

forums.garmin.com/.../new-developer-faq

You can test them in the Sim using the App Settings editor in Eclipse.

How can I export the App with VSCode ?

Use the command palette (CMD-SHIFT-P / CTRL-SHIFT-P) > "Monkey C: Export Project".

All of the Connect IQ commands start with "Monkey C". In this case you could just type "CMD-SHIFT-P, export" or "CMD-SHIFT-P, monkey"

Arg !!! Too stupid, sorry...