Why is there a ~1MB limit on app size, when Garmin's own FAQ says the limit on number of apps users can install is to account for additional data apps use?

Hi all,

I would really like Garmin to address this issue: as per Garmin's own FAQ page on "Connect IQ App Limits on a Garmin Device" the reason for limiting the number of apps a user can install on their device (which depends on the device and can range around 32 apps total or less) is as follows:

"Each Connect IQ app can store additional app-specific data that will take up additional disk space. The limit for your device is based on the possibility of every app taking up additional memory."

That sounds great, except for the fact that as far as I can tell apps can only use around 1MB of storage for both the code and any additional data they want to use. This is completely contradictory to the above statement from your own FAQ page saying that apps can use additional app-specific data that presumably can take up a LOT of space, and hence you limit the number of apps that users can install.

You cannot have it both ways - limiting users to only a handful of apps that they can install AND limiting developers to around 1MB of space! This is stiffling innovation and the utility of these apps! Moreover, this is extremely misleading to users who will be under the impression that apps can be a lot more capable than they are actually allowed to be! Already, the apps on Connect IQ are doing remarkable things with just about 1MB of space to play with. Imagine what else they can do if this was not a limitation!

There are some apps that I use that can definitely benefit from a more generous app storage space allowance. I use several popular mapping/navigation apps that essentially enable some of the map/navigation/route based workouts on lower end Garmin watches that are locked to the more premium watches, such as the FR965, Fenix's and Epix's etc. Such as the ability to download a route onto any device, even if they don't have Garmin's map features, and follow that route to complete a workout etc. Increasing this arbitrary limit of 1MB will allow these devices to download more routes onto the device for offline usage, allow them to download open source maps for offline usage during these routes so that users can enable some of the mapping features that are locked out to more premium watches.

If Garmin only allows about 1MB of space for an app, and only allows about 32 apps (or sometimes even less!) then you only need about 32MB of extra storage for apps! Then, what is the point of selling and advertising devices like Venu 3 that has 8 GB of space? It is disingenuous to the user to advertise it as such when there are severe limitations on what that storage can be used for! Imagine your smartphone or computer coming with several hundred GBs of storage and only allowing you to install a limited number of applications and that too with a maximum limit on the size of each app! This will stifle innovation!

Please modernise your Connect IQ platform and allow users to install as many apps as they wish and allow developers to use more space (if not unlimited space, at least a lot more generous such as 100MB), like every other device allows you to do! Users will be more than capable to make the trade-off themselves and decide how much storage they will use up and manage their storage themselves. There is no need to handhold users by arbitrarily limiting how many apps they can use and limiting developers with how much storage they can use.

Unless there is some very good technical and hardware limitations that lead to these restrictions, which I cannot imagine there are, please allow us to do this in the future! Let me know if this is not the right forum and there is a better place for making suggestions to Garmin for improving their devices.

Top Replies

Scarecrow123 over 1 year ago +1

My Vivoactive 3 has only a megabyte of app storage I think. So if you install a 400kb watch face that’s nearly half of your entire app allowance already. Course it’s an older watch but I’d love for the…
FlowState over 1 year ago in reply to jim_m_58 +1

jim_m_58 said:
What error do you see and when do you see it?

Nobody said anything about an error, they're just saying the tight and seemingly arbitrary CIQ size restrictions don't make sense on watches…

All Replies

0 Scarecrow123 over 1 year ago

My Vivoactive 3 has only a megabyte of app storage I think. So if you install a 400kb watch face that’s nearly half of your entire app allowance already. Course it’s an older watch but I’d love for the system to be more flexible.

0 litetaker over 1 year ago in reply to Scarecrow123

Yes, the older models have much more limited amount of storage. I used to have the Vivoactive 3 in the past and it had only a few MB of space for apps I believe. So, for such devices, having limtations or restrictions like this makes sense. But, for newer devices and more expensive devices Garmin includes at least 8 GB of storage space for music and apps, but limits how much we can actually use for apps to still only about 1MB per app. That is very disappointing. All the extra space is just wasted. I don't use music on my Venu 3, so I could use that extra space to save maps for offline use with some mapping apps from Connect IQ. But Garmin simply doesn't allow this

0 jim_m_58 over 1 year ago in reply to litetaker

On a va3, there was a limit of 16 apps and 1mb of space on the file system.

What also comes into play is updating an app. Let's say you have one app installed and it's 600k, leaving 400k free. There's not enough space to get an update for that app assuming the update is over 400k.You need to uninstall the app and reinstall to get the updated version.

The release builds of my prg files are generally under 100k, with many under 50k. A debug build of a sideload can be 3x the size of a release build, but when doing a sideload, the limit isn't checked, but it will be the next time you install/update from the store.

While there can be much more space on a device than is available to CIQ, the space is set such that CIQ doesn't impact other thing - like have plenty of room for music, activities, firmware updates, etc.

Back when CIQ started, if you contacted Garmin Support with an issue, the first thing they would have you try was to uninstall all of your CIQ apps. It's much better now days, but the reality is Garmin Support knows very little about what a CIQ app does and it's impact.

You can see the info in the Connect Mobile App, as far as how many apps are installed/can be installed, as far as memory used and total available.

This is something that needs to be considered when deciding what devices your app supports. And it's not only old devices, as things like the Instinct2 also have a small amount of storage for CIQ apps.

There is the limit as to the space used by CIQ on the device's file system, and also the limt as to memory when the app is running

What error do you see and when do you see it?

0 FlowState over 1 year ago in reply to jim_m_58

jim_m_58 said:
What error do you see and when do you see it?

Nobody said anything about an error, they're just saying the tight and seemingly arbitrary CIQ size restrictions don't make sense on watches with lots of storage. I happen to agree.

I also don't see why there should be a limit on the absolute number of installed CIQ apps (regardless of their size).

Maybe these limits made sense in 2015, when most or all Garmin watches had tiny amounts of storage (a few megabytes), but they don't really make sense (to me) for watches that have gigs of storage available for maps and music.

jim_m_58 said:
While there can be much more space on a device than is available to CIQ, the space is set such that CIQ doesn't impact other thing - like have plenty of room for music, activities, firmware updates, etc.

So why doesn't Garmin artificially cap the amount of storage used for maps and music (as far as I know)?

By the same logic, users could cause problems on their watch by installing too many maps or syncing too much music.

Unless you're implying that CIQ is somehow a second-class citizen in the Garmin ecosystem, which is absolutely the case.

jim_m_58 said:
Back when CIQ started, if you contacted Garmin Support with an issue, the first thing they would have you try was to uninstall all of your CIQ apps. It's much better now days, but the reality is Garmin Support knows very little about what a CIQ app does and it's impact.

In 2023, I see posts all the time from users who say that Garmin Support discourages them from using CIQ apps. If a user has a problem, apparently the first thing support asks is whether any apps are installed.

The same users also seem to feel that CIQ apps are usually the culprit when they see unexpected battery drain on their devices.

jim_m_58 said:
You can see the info in the Connect Mobile App, as far as how many apps are installed/can be installed, as far as memory used and total available.

This is something that needs to be considered when deciding what devices your app supports. And it's not only old devices, as things like the Instinct2 also have a small amount of storage for CIQ apps.

You're missing the point.

- OP is a user of CIQ apps, not a dev

- OP clearly understands that there are storage limits for CIQ, they wrote half a dozen paragraphs about it. Their point is that they disagree with these limits.

OP, you could always submit an idea here:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/ideas/

Personally I hate that page because it's a one-way form. You can't get feedback from Garmin and nobody else can see your idea, vote on it or discuss it. I submitted an idea on the same page for Garmin to adopt something similar to Spotify's community ideas page (which has everything I mentioned above), but I don't expect it to happen.

0 litetaker over 1 year ago in reply to FlowState

I did develop some CIQ apps in the past for personal use, but yes, I made this post more as a app user than an app developer. However, I am sure many devs are also frustrated by these strict limitations of the CIQ platform and I do hope Garmin revamps this system to allow for more flexibility in the future.

I will submit my idea using that link you provided. However, I too am not very optimistic that Garmin will do anything about it. But if they here more feedback about this, they may finally look into it and see what can be done. Who knows, maybe the way they implemented the OS on these watches, the OS is limited by how big the binary can be or something like that and they may need to re-engineer their software significantly. Or maybe it is just a matter of removing some of these limits.

0 jim_m_58 over 1 year ago in reply to FlowState

If the OP thinks there is a around a 1mb limit, they must be seeing something when that's exceeded. That could be a message/error of some sort, the app not getting installed, etc, so I asked.

It could also be something that happens at runtime (like trying to put too much in Storage)

0 litetaker over 1 year ago in reply to jim_m_58

No no, you misunderstand. This is not because of an issue or error when developing my own app, but I made this post after learning from a dev I was emailing that the reason they have not implemented some useful features such as enabling offline maps for their mapping app is because they simply cannot do so due to the roughly 1MB limit they have to work within for app and data size. Hence I was posting this here as I found this to be inconsistent with Garmin's own claim on an FAQ page that makes it sound like apps can take up more space for storing app-specific data.

I did develop some apps for CIQ in the past as a personal project, but this post is not due to running into any issues with my own projects. Sorry if this led to any confusion. I posted it here as I felt like the CIQ developer forum may be the most relevant to ask this question and hopefully someone from Garmin will relay this feedback to their dev team.

0 jim_m_58 over 1 year ago in reply to litetaker

Sounds like you ran into an issue with the memory at runtime, and not the size of the prg files themselves. It wasn't clear to me. The 32mb/32 apps thing is about the total size of all prg files. (or 1mb/16 apps on the va3).

As far as runtime memory, that varies quite a bit based on the device.

0 Scarecrow123 over 1 year ago in reply to litetaker

Speaking of maps I have developed an offline map app that covers the entirety of Europes highways and major roads, the data is permanently stored on the watch and is 600kb in size. I’m in the process of working out if I can go more detailed for closer zooms but it is perfectly possible to store just simplified data (in my case the data is just coordinates to draw lines, no road names but there is routing) for maps. Course because of the simplicity my app is mainly I guess for knowing where you are relative to major roads rather than a full and proper map I guess. Still its pretty neat.