What is the point of adding the option to disable the gesture (note that this option is in the display section so it only applies to the light, I checked with the off option the watch face goes to high power, so the setting applies to the light)?
The real name of this option is: don't switch the light on by gesture but I you can still use the buttons to do it. Do you see any use for this option? Who would resign the very convenient option of turning on the light when they want to see something on the watch?
> You don't have to persuade me to your point of view.
You're right, I don't. I did spend a lot of time and effort trying to test your bug for you and trying to figure out / explain why I think it works that way.
But don't be surprised if Garmin never changes this behaviour. I just tried to explain why I think things are the way they are, and you're refusing to even consider a different POV, which is fine. Doesn't matter how much evidence or logic I provide, which is ok. Actually not the first time it's happened.
My POV happens to correspond the reality of how the watch works, so there is that. Your POV revolves around some functionality that you wish to have but doesn't actually exist (ability to turn off gesture for activity screens, but leave gesture on when viewing a non-activity screen during an activity).
I even suggested some settings which could fulfill your use case (Keys & Touch = On, Gesture = Off) -- assuming I understand your use case -- but you ignored that, which is cool. I really don't understand why those settings wouldn't work for you, since in order to view a non-activity screen, you have to use keys/touch, which means the light would come on in that case.
And your arguments really don't address your actual complaint in this bug report. e.g. you said: if light is so important, why is there a setting to turn off the gesture but not the light button? You realize that Garmin could add a setting to turn off the light button, and it still wouldn't address the complaint of this bug report, right?
I also don't get where "if light is so important" is coming from, in the context of this bug report and discussion. Garmin's current implementation of display settings doesn't imply that they think light (control) is more important than you do. As a matter of fact it seems you want more finer-grained control of light than Garmin currently provides, so maybe light is even more important to you than it is to Garmin.
If I'm right, this functionality has always worked this way, and it's intentional, which means it's very unlikely Garmin would change it because you see things differently. If they changed how "During Activity" works, that would also run the risk of annoying other people who like it the way it is. If they add more granular settings (idk "During Activity (foreground)" and "During Activity (background)"), that might give you what you want, but it would add more complexity for Garmin and its users.
> Nobody knows what was the cause to add such functionality so it's not impossible to know if it's implemented for or notrequirement.
Garmin probably knows why it works the way it does. The real question is whether they will bother explaining it to us in black and white. I don't think Garmin even understands the complaint you are making tbh.
And I think it's fairly obvious why the general Display mode functionality was added. The idea is that the user wants different behaviour for the backlight during an activity, during sleep and in all other cases (general use).
- During Sleep: obviously users want to pay less attention (or no attention) to their watch while they are sleeping, so it makes sense to disable the gesture (for example) in this mode
- During Activity: I can't speak for you or anyone else, but when I am doing an activity, I pay *more* attention to my watch than at other times, so in this case (for me personally only), I turn off the gesture timeout and set the gesture to "after sunset", so that when there's no sunlight, the backlight stays on for the whole activity after the 1st time I turn it on.
- General Use: Again I can't speak for you, but I pay less attention to my watch when I'm not in an activity, so in this case I use a normal timeout for the gesture (which is also set to "after sunset").
Seems pretty simple to me, and it seems that the behaviour you want is more complex. Let's say Garmin is convinced by your arguments and decides that "during activity" should only mean "when activity is in foreground" or "when I am looking at an activity screen".
- Does activity settings count as "during activity"? How about system settings?
- how about the music player?
- what about people who have the gesture enabled during activity but disabled for general use (the opposite of what you have, if I understand your use case correctly)? If Garmin does things the way you want, they will be very annoyed because they will have the opposite problem as you: when they go back to watchface during an activity, the gesture won't work even though they have it enabled for During Activity.
I still don't understand why you think it's such a mystery that settings in a menu called "During Activity" will apply during an activity and/or why you think that when you switch to another screen during an activity it necessarily no longer counts as "during an activity".
I might agree with you if it was a general purpose device like Apple Watch or iPhone, but for a watch where the core functionality revolves around timed activities, this implementation makes sense to me.
You don't have to persuade me to your point of view. Nobody knows what was the cause to add such functionality so it's not impossible to know if it's implemented for or notrequirement.
> the point of the settings is to control what the gesture does, not to control whether the light can be turned on at all.
And also to control whether Keys & Touch turn on the light, and to control the length of timeout. Basically the settings are all about the *automatic* / implicit behaviour of the light.
It might be a nice feature request to be able to disable the light button, too.
I've just checked. CIQ and stock widgets run the same during activity,
Yeah that's exactly what I said before (I did extensive tests and made a whole table for you but I guess you ignored all of that).
The fact that CIQ and stock widgets (and every other screen) all act the same way point to the fact that this is not a bug, but it's by design.
In my opinion - when I switch to the widgets, watch face, etc I do it because I want to see something out of the activity screen but in the night its impossible without light on. If light is so important why I can press the light button? So gesture is bad and pressing good? No consequences...
Why I switched off the gesture during activity. Because there is another bug, during running the screen is all the time on, every move of my hand is treated as the gesture and it consumes a lot of battery.
Yeah so we've come full circle and my understanding of your issue was correct after all, after all the comments that have been posted back and forth.
That's your opinion but I explained why Garmin's During Activity literally means "during activity" and not "while activity is in foreground". "During Activity" is a very simple phrase whose meaning should be clear. If I say that my kitchen fan should be on "during cooking" that doesn't mean that I will turn the fan off just because I take a 30 second break from cooking to do something else (like look at my phone). In the same way, if certain display mode settings apply "During Activity", just because I switch to another screen *during an activity* doesn't mean that the watch is no longer in the "during an activity" state.
From my pov, in practical and real-world terms, an activity is a session of some exercise like running or basketball. If I temporarily switch to the watchface during a run, it doesn't necessarily mean I stopped running. Even if I stopped running temporarily, it doesn't mean that I'm no longer in the middle of a run.
Same goes for basketball. It's a little different because I don't wear my watch on my wrist during basketball, but I just use wear an HR strap (although I do know some people who wear an apple watch during games). Even if I check my watch in between games, it doesn't mean I'm no longer in the middle of a basketball activity. If someone texts me at this point, I will say "I'm playing basketball" even if I'm not literally in the act of playing basketball at that instant.
but in the night its impossible without light on
It's not impossible at all. Just:
- turn on the gesture in Display > During Activity settings
or
- press the light button.
or
- turn on Keys & Touch in the During Activity Settings
I'm still struggling to understand why you apparently want both of the following things to be true:
- at night, during an activity, the light should not turn on when you look at an activity screen
- at night, during an activity, the light should turn on when you look at a non-activity screen
Is there something magic about activity screens where you don't need a light, as opposed to non-activity screens?
If I am running outdoors at night, I need the backlight to be on when I look at the watch, period. It seems that you don't want to look at activity screens at all? So you want to avoid accidentally lighting up the screen with a gesture while an activity screen is displayed, but when you display a non-activity screen, all of a sudden you want the watch to understand that you need to see the display.
Well, that's what the light button is for.
"If light is so important why I can press the light button? So gesture is bad and pressing good?"
This doesn't make any sense to me. We also already discussed this previously, but the point of the settings is to control what the gesture does, not to control whether the light can be turned on at all. Nobody is saying "gesture is bad and pressing is good" and even if they were, that's a different argument from saying that "During Activity" should not always apply during an activity.
Nobody is saying "light is so important", Garmin is just following the settings that *you* set. It's not Garmin's fault that you think those settings should do something other than they actually do.
As I said before, the point of the gesture setting is to control what the gesturedoes, not to control whether the light can turn on at all. Obviously it's much easier to accidentally trigger a gesture than it is to accidentally press the light button. In fact, just to look at your watch you normally have to trigger the gesture. You don't have to press the light button to look at your watch. So the light button and the gesture are not comparable at all.
You have a very niche use case where you want the gesture to be disabled for activity screens, but not for non-activity screens (during an activity), because you want to avoid triggering the backlight by accident at night, but only when you're deliberately looking at a non-activity screen during an activity. That's a feature request, not a bug report. I doubt Garmin will ever implement it, unfortunately.
btw, a very simple way to address your use case is to set Display Mode > During Activity > Keys & Touch to On, but set Gesture to Off. This should cover all the bases, if I understand what you want:
- While you do an activity at night, the gesture won't accidentally turn on the light
- When you take *deliberate* action to view another screen (whether it's another activity or a non-activity screen), you have to either use the buttons or touch. In this case, the display will light up
I don't really see any downsides to this, unless I'm not understanding your use case.
