activated inReach Freedom plan and some settings changed

The intent of the Link with Recording setting is (when it is "on") to link iR "sent point sending" with "logged point recording" (aka activity recording) in such a way that they both start and stop together. This is supposed to occur no matter which "side" you start/stop from. That is, starting/stopping activity recording should start/stop iR track sending automatically. Conversely, starting/stopping iR sending should start/stop activity recording automatically. There should not be any extra "warnings" or other UI activity.

I don't think anybody knows about corner cases such as "auto pause" on the recording side.

Personally, whenever I make a change from one side, I always check the other side to make sure it is doing what I want.

I would not have expected reactivating a suspended plan to make any changes to settings on the device. Are you sure they actually changed? Maybe you changed profiles (although I am not sure those two things are even stored with the profile)?

Turning on Link with Recording might help me not forget to start Tracking.  Especially since I do not always have an active subscription.  Not sure which way I will go as I tend to agree with you about checking both.

I appreciate such a quick reply.

After activating I did open Recorded Activities and while current activity was open my finger drifted to the pancake menu and I inadvertently switched activities from hiking to cycling.  When I realized what happened I switched back to hiking. 

I duplicated that to see if the settings I mentioned changed and they did not.

I know they changed because I had settled into a comfortable routine with a suspended plan in which nothing started unless I started it.  When I went to sync today turning on the Montana started activity recording without any input on my part, the same with Tracking.  Then checking both setting showed them to be on when they had both been off for some time.

Sometimes Garmin has odd "Garmin knows best" ideas which don't necessarily make sense to us mere mortals. This could be a bug, or it could be what Big Brother Garmin intends.

Particularly if the settings do not STAY off when you turn them off, I would consider opening a support ticket.

Interesting feedback from talking with support.  I happened to have Garmin Express open during the small window where version 7.13.0.0 was available.  That may be related. 

Garmin has since pulled 7.13 due to issues it was causing and is recommending that anyone with 7.13 installed take the following steps:  a) uninstall 7.13  b) download and install the latest available version which at the moment is 7.12.1.0.

It is possible that 7.13 did a reset on my Montana; however, I don't remember all the settings that I changed so I cannont tell if more than these two (auto start tracking and auto start recording) were changed back to defaults.  I may have changed backlight timeout; it was set to the 15 second default.  I also think I had changed battery save to on (it was now off)