Navigation in cities

I've done that on several occasions. I mean not Oslo specifically, but other european cities. Possible, although definitely not optimal, especially in densely built-up areas. I'd use it as a last resort only.

Its pretty much fine if you want to find nearest POI - but if you are planning to use to find a sepecific adress its not as easy. You might want to install explorer on your phone and then use that to set a saved POI based on an address and then sync that to the watch and then its pretty easy.

jaamgans said:

Its pretty much fine if you want to find nearest POI

I have a totally different experience. I live in a large european capital (over 2 million people), although I'm aware that this might be region-specific. If I look for some specific POI, then I never seem to be able to find it. Either I get something with a similar name that is hundreds of kilometers away, or I get nothing. And when I look for something more generic, like for example nearest restaurant, then in most cases I get a very long list of places that do not exist. Generally the city map is cluttered with a staggering amount of totally irrelevant and uninteresting POIs, so browsing the map is pointless. For example I get the impression, that every single car parking spot is placed on the map, while some large hotels are missing.

Check out the Sendpoints CIQ app.  You install it on the watch and then find the address/POI on a webpage.  This gives you a 4 digit hash to enter on the watch and adds the destination as a saved location.  You can then navigate to it on the watch using the Navigate app and selecting the saved location as your destination.

I have no association with the Sendpoints app or the developer.  I’m just a user.

I am regularly using in the UK, but also more recently in the Germany (missed a couple of hiking attractions that I covered by pulling the POI from komoot which did have them - but was fine re city/town/village POI) and South Africa.

How I use:

If looking for nearest option then I use Around me option - though you need to open map first and then set map scale, then use around me option (otherwise it tends to default the distance to map scale which I usually have 200m or less - so pretty pointless). Note that generally this option is only really good for out to 1km.

Otherwise I use my POI opitons - if no name i.e. nearest coffee shop then will use POI categories i.e Food & Drink in this case / if hotel then Lodging.- then generally use the near option (as around me will be too limiting unless I know its really close), then use current location.. Just done it while sitting at my desk - Navigate - POI - lodging - near me: Its picked up all the ones I know except for one (and that is possibly correct as not sure that place is still an option). Just done for food and drink and its picked up most of the places within my town that I know of - it has missed a reasonably close pub which has been there for years - so while not perfect its very good (I notice that looking at the map itself the POI for this pub is missing too - Google maps does include it so not sure why not available on Garmin maps).

But I also do agree that it would be awesome if we could have a filter on POI to enable what we can/can't see on the map as that would also be a great/quick easy way to identify POI and could help to remove a lot of the clutter.

Install Garmin Explore on your smartphone. The app interacts with navigation on the watch in real time, allowing you to search for points on the map, create routes, etc., which are then carried out directly on the watch.

Thanks guys ! One of the most responsive and helpful community forums I have been on!

Still find it strange that with Garmin having a range of navigation products on the market (non watch related) that they haven't chosen to incorporate a more streamlined user friendly walking navigation app on their watches?

Maybe it's in the pipeline?

Thanks again!

Explore works really well, once you discover it and give it a try you'll never go back to trying to use your watch's UI to generate and modify routing.

6905570 said:

hey haven't chosen to incorporate a more streamlined user friendly walking navigation app on their watches?

Its not designed with what you have in mind - and not sure they ever will - how acheivable that could even be. Using wear os and google maps with what you wanted to do it wasn't feasible - not sure if that has since changed - the only way you could search for an adress was via the phone, select and start, then open on the watch (maybe it has since changed). Trying to remember from apple watch - where if I remember correctly you can sort of do it, but was from voice assistant. Maybe that has changed to. Just not sure the garmin watches have the necessary power resources built in to handle that type of serach functionality.

As others have pointed out, the Garmin watch navigation is not really designed for your use case.

But if you don't need offline navigation on the watch, but just don't want to walk with your Android phone in your hand, there are third party Connect IQ apps which allow you to get phone's navigation instructions to the watch: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/ac9022d5-274b-4515-a1e5-1c2164c05202

(There are several similar apps, but this is the only one I've tried.)