Copyright question

Long story short, I hate the timer function on the Vivoactive 5 and want to build an app that will mimic the interface of the one on the 4. I’m not familiar with Monkey C and have only a rudimentary knowledge of Python, so I want to hire a freelancer to do it for me. Someone is telling me this will be a violation of Garmin’s copyright policies if I post it to the store, which is the only way I know of to put it on my watch. I read through Garmin’s policies and can’t figure out what the guy is talking about. Can someone shed light on whether or not this would violate copyright policies? I’m not looking to sell the app if that’s the issue, but I’m not against it, either. 

  • Garmin changed Connect IQ app approval rules a while ago to not allow apps that mimic/copy Garmin watchface designs.  They might reject apps that mimic their apps as well (or not). There are other timer/stopwatch apps already in the store.  Have you looked at them?  One example is apps.garmin.com/.../7d2d6802-fe4d-4ba5-b598-e323fbb007aa

  • Yes, there are a thousand timers on the Garmin store, but I don’t see the point of any of them since they all use a scroll function for the time input just like the watch does. I honestly don’t care what the app looks like as long as I can type in a time versus scrolling through three columns of 60 values each. I don’t understand how something so generic could be an IP violation.

    Why they changed to a scroll input in the first place is beyond me. It’s both inefficient and annoying, and the fact that all watches use it makes no sense to me. It probably sounds nit-picky, but I have memory issues and use the timer function at least a dozen times every day to help me complete tasks. If it takes too long to set a timer, I lose my train of thought and forget what I’m doing.