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Garmin Fenix 8 registers steps while driving and cycling

Emotional Damage
3 months ago

Hello,I am a taxi driver, and I’ve noticed that my Garmin Fenix 8 records a significant number of steps while I am driving. Even when my hands are mostly still, the watch continues to count steps, which inflates my daily activity stats.

Additionally, I’ve observed that it also tracks steps during cycling, which seems incorrect since I am not walking at all.The steps count is not so big when i cycling but in fact they affect my activity score

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  • +1 3 months ago

    ….“

    I Am Getting Too Many Steps

    Some activities may cause irregular arm movement, resulting in the watch recording too many steps. These may include, but are not limited to: 

    • Driving a vehicle (usually due to vibrations caused by rough terrain)

    • Taking a shower

    • A restless night of sleep

    • Brushing your teeth

    “….

    https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=z1TfJCqajl8ZEZey72gg98 

  • 0 3 months ago
    Emotional Damage said:
    Additionally, I’ve observed that it also tracks steps during cycling, which seems incorrect since I am not walking at all.The steps count is not so big when i cycling but in fact they affect my activity score

    Do you start the Bike activity when you ride? Normally, any type of cycling activity suppresses the steps counting. Besides the cycling, you could use that feature to suppress the steps counting when driving a car too - it is enough to start one of the activities disabling the steps counter, and keep it running in the background while you drive. More details on that feature can be found at Why am I Not Gaining Steps During Certain Activities | Garmin Customer Support 

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to trux

    Hello, yes, I started a bike activity, and I will check the steps next time when I'm cycling to see if they change. Maybe the mistake is mine regarding cycling and steps, but I will recheck this.

    As for the car, the number of steps counted is quite high, and I think the first comment explains very well what really happened. I will try the tips from the first comment and recheck the cycling activity in the next few days to see if anything change

    Thanks for the answer

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to bluefish

    Thank you for this answer i will try the tips in the link 

  • 0 3 days ago

    Hi, i have the same problem. I was in a car for 4 hours and it registered i made more than 4000 steps!  I was sitting behind and my friend had apple watch with no additional steps counting. Its terrible. Can i somehow fix it?

  • 0 2 days ago in reply to Runneraddict
    Runneraddict said:
    Can i somehow fix it?

    You cannot fix the already recorded data, but the next time you can avoid it the way I mentioned previously.

  • 0 2 days ago in reply to trux
    trux said:
    Besides the cycling, you could use that feature to suppress the steps counting when driving a car too - it is enough to start one of the activities disabling the steps counter, and keep it running in the background while you drive.

    One slight problem I can see with this workaround is if Fenix 8 is anything like Forerunner 935 through 965, discarded activities still count towards training metrics like training load and recovery time. I gather that Fenix 8 has a huge amount of software differences compared to the previous generation (Fenix 7 / FR965 / etc.), so I guess it's possible it doesn't work like this, but I'm not sure either way.

    Meaning that if you record a fake cycling activity while you drive, it may skew your training metrics slightly, even if you discard the activity and even if your HR is lower than it would be during a real activity. Idk maybe you could get around this by disabling wrist HR (and GPS) during the fake activity, to try to ensure the least possible impact 

    It's too bad that Garmin no longer allows users to disable Activity Tracking (meaning tracking of "all-day" / non-timed activity such as steps), since that feature seems like it was tailor made to get around this kind of problem.

    Ofc the ideal solution that most users are looking for is for Garmin watches to just avoid counting non-existent steps (easier said than done, I know)

  • 0 2 days ago in reply to FlowState

    On Fenix 8, unlike on some other models, you can use one of the Motorsport activity profiles, in order to prevent the steps counting. Besides that, Training Load, Recovery Time and similar metrics are primarily based on the heart rate, so they should not influence the stats more than the real load induced by the driving.

  • 0 2 days ago in reply to trux
    trux said:
    Besides that, Training Load, Recovery Time and similar metrics are primarily based on the heart rate, so they should not influence the stats more than the real load induced by the driving.

    I understand this line of reasoning (and sort of anticipated it), but at the same time, we know that Garmin doesn't calculate training load (and related metrics) outside of timed activities. So whatever the "real" load is, it normally wouldn't be taken into account, as most people don't record an activity while they drive. Is it possible that recording (and optionally discarding) an activity where you don't do anything while be equivalent (or nearly equivalent) to not recording it at all? Maybe, but I can't say for sure.

    I guess my point is that, in general, starting and discarding a timed activity is not necessarily equivalent to not starting an activity at all. It may have a negligible effect or it may be noticeable, I can't say for sure either way. For example, I've never tried to record a 2-hour activity while I just sit around and literally do nothing, to see if it significantly moves the needle on my training stats. All I know is that on my FR955, if I start a Run activity (for example) and discard it, the watch still gives me a recovery time, which suggests to me that discarding a timed activity doesn't prevent it from being used for certain training stats.

    I think the workaround you suggested is good, just wanted to point out that it *may* affect training stats.

    I still think it's too bad that Garmin actually used to have a feature which addresses the problem more or less directly, and they chose to get rid of it. This isn't the first thread I've seen where people complain about steps being recorded when they shouldn't be.

  • 0 1 day ago in reply to FlowState
    FlowState said:
    I've never tried to record a 2-hour activity while I just sit around and literally do nothing, to see if it significantly moves the needle on my training stats. All I know is that on my FR955, if I start a Run activity (for example) and discard it, the watch still gives me a recovery time

    I did it on my Instinct 3. I recorded 2 hours long Indoor Bike activity, while sitting and up and then walking around the house, then discarded it, and it had absolutely no impact on Training Load, Recovery Time, Training Readiness, etc., and of course no steps were logged:

    Instinct 3  0:00 2:01
    Steps 1104 1104
    Acute Training Load 605 605
    Recovery Time 0 0

    And similarly, I tested it also with a Motorsport activity that I did not discard, saving it normally - it had also absolutely no impact on the mentioned metrics, and did not count any steps:

    Instinct 3  0:00 2:04
    Steps 2184 2184
    Acute Training Load 868 868
    Recovery Time 0 0

    I'd bet it behaves in the same way on all recent Garmin watches.