Let's talk about how to handle pending review applications.

I know those AI-powered watch face bots can upload thousands of watch faces a day, and your review team simply cannot keep up.

I’ve been developing watch faces for three years, so I’m very familiar with the process. If I wanted to, I could use GPT’s image generation to create the designs, connect that to an automated workflow, and build a fully automated watch face creation and upload bot in just three hours. It could then continuously produce and upload a new watch face every 15 minutes.

But why aren’t you considering an automated review process? Use AI to fight AI, or ban the accounts abusing the system.

I know you have a lot on your plate, but is there no one with the technical expertise to address this? This could be done in half a day using GPT or Claude, or even a Jev decision model.

Alternatively, give each account one priority review slot per week. Reviewers could prioritize those submissions and have the authority to ban AI-driven accounts that abuse the system.

Under the current system, more than 95% of the review workload goes toward submissions from automated accounts.

Perhaps you feel that you cannot reliably identify automated accounts and that taking away someone’s right to upload would be unfair.

But judging by the outcome, you have effectively taken away everyone’s ability to upload




  • I would be nice to at least get an estimation about the approval time window. Pretty bad experience so far. 

  • I saw new accounts uploading hundreds of apps in matter of weeks!

    Garmin needs to take measures to protect its developers community and their customers!

    why am I getting charged every year with a huge fee and also a percentage for each sale? To not be able to upload an app that took 4-6 weeks of developing, designing process, just because some people found AI tools producing slop? 

  • I couldn't agree more. I spend a lot of time and effort to make my watch faces really nice and is frustrating when I can't get them uploaded. Of course, the second layer of frustration is with all the slop and noise, it is hard to get visibility but first step is getting past the delays of getting them into the marketplace.

  • Most developers create watch faces slower than Garmin releases new devices. Yet they bear the brunt of the approval backlog.

  • Yet, it makes sense for them to not wait so long for an approval. 
    Garmin releases new devices each year, which is flooding the market with new models and stop software support of new features very early. 

  • I hope the Garmin team fixes this issue soon. My apps have been waiting for approval for over two weeks now. How much longer will it take? A month? Longer? What did I pay for? This is insane.

    I also created an app for Garmin bike computers and wanted to charge for it, but Garmin told me that paid apps aren’t supported on those devices. WTF?

  • t one thing to use LLM to get better products and another to protect this pile of garbage these ppl are releasing. Garmin should protect the devs who want to release good software. Some guy just crying that his watch is bricked by installing a Rosso X WF. 

  • I pay $100 + VAT a year for a seller account, yet my watch face has been pending review since October 4. I spend weeks for polishing eaahc watch face, and most of my published ones have 5 star ratings. I don't think it's fair that developers who focus on qulity have to wait this long. I believe accounts like mine should get some priority over those flooding the store with dozens or hundreds of nearly identical watch faces. At this point, I'm honestly wondering wheter it's worth working on anything new if it might just sit in the review queue for weeks or even months?

  • I totally agree, yet garmin is treating us bad. Not to mention that they also take a share of every sale! 

  • I'm NOT the developer for Rosso X but looking at their watch faces home page they have about 14 watch faces all very different and all look good, so I doubt this Dev is in the slop category. Maybe the User has other issues and they should contact the Dev to try and get some help.