Question regarding the operating system of the Garmins smartwatches

9919244 over 3 years ago

Hello everyone!

I have a question regarding the operating system of the garmin smartswatches out of curiousity!
I am sorry if this kind of information is already out there so its unnecessary for me to do this post!

Is the operating system that is running on the smartwatches linux-based? What is it called? How is it implemented?
I read a post calling it GarminOS, but i have not seen any information regarding it on garmins website.

Thanks in advance!

Top Replies

Travis.ConnectIQ over 3 years ago +2

Most Garmin wearables and cycling computers that run ConnectIQ are built on GarminOS, which is not based in Linux.
jim_m_58 over 3 years ago +1

Not sure it matters as there's no way to interact with the OS. CIQ is the only interface for code.
9256409 over 2 years ago +1

There's an interview with a Garmin developer here (about 10 mins in). https://cppcast.com/brad-larson-cpp-watch/

30s summary: Full custom OS with threading and memory management but no processes and…

All Replies

0 jim_m_58 over 3 years ago

Not sure it matters as there's no way to interact with the OS. CIQ is the only interface for code.

0 9919244 over 3 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

by CIQ, do you mean Connect IQ? Just want to be sure :)

"Not sure it matters as there's no way to interact with the OS" - ooh ok. I was just curious as there is no information from what i have seen about the operativ system the watch is running. So i was just quite curious about it

0 Travis.ConnectIQ over 3 years ago

Most Garmin wearables and cycling computers that run ConnectIQ are built on GarminOS, which is not based in Linux.

0 9919244 over 2 years ago in reply to Travis.ConnectIQ

Oooh ok, thats interesting! Thank you for the answer
So the operativsystem GarminOS is something that is uniquely developed from scratch for the garmin devices???

0 Travis.ConnectIQ over 2 years ago in reply to 9919244

Yes.

0 9256409 over 2 years ago

There's an interview with a Garmin developer here (about 10 mins in). https://cppcast.com/brad-larson-cpp-watch/

30s summary: Full custom OS with threading and memory management but no processes and no concept of user-mode/kernel-mode. Written mostly in C, though the UI framework is now C++. ARM Cortex M processors running in thumb mode. Custom VM to run CIQ apps.