What is your workflow for planning routes

I've been all over the map ():

• BaseCamp - Still use it for at home planning and routes/waypoints organization
• Ploutearoute - Was my primary planning tool before the expanded Course Point support in GC (all the icons now show up on the Instinct 2 w/ latest beta)
• Strava - When I want to embed Segments into my Run/Bike route
• GC - This is my current go to just because it is convenient and does 90% of what I need it to do.
• Explore - Not so much.  I use it mostly for waypoint management  

GC as in Geocaching?

Garmin Connect

Yeti said:

Explore

Yeti said:

no turn-by-turn navigation

This is wrong. I have just planned a track in Explore. TBT is available.

For hikes/trail runs - Garmin Explore. Their trail maps are not as good as Locus, however they work quite well on trails and work offline (when  there is no cellular internet available). Also - bear in mind - you can modify the route *during activity* with Garmin Explore without exiting activity. Just modify the route (or create new one) on Garmin Explore in your phone and hit 'navigate' - it will be immediately loaded into watch and navigation will start. I absolutely dig this feature - no other app allows that.

For city runs or bike rides - I use Garmin Connect app or Strava. Both work really good for me when it comes to autoplanning routes. When I'm in new city I often try both - sometimes one outperforms the other. They use Garmin/Strava popularity heatmap and will point you to popular running/biking locations and I love discovering nice places ;) 

Unfortunately there is not 'upcoming ahead' feature in Instinct and adding points to Garmin Connect courses is useless. There is no way to see that next water station is 3.2km ahead (data field 'next navigation point' is even more useless since it's the distance to closest navigation point, that might be your custom location or just a 'turn left' point...). However! I use Garmin Explore and add points with icons to the watch. I have a setting that always displays user uploaded locations icons on breadcrumb map. This way the map shows more context (I don't use it for stuff that is directly on route, rather to depict that in a particular point you can see a hill to the left or a shop to the right etc). 

I recall that with some export settings from Locus you could upload points with labels. I did it several times on Instinct 1 - they are barely legible but a nice feature (you have to tinker with gpx export options to do this). Right now I'm on iOS and there is no Locus there - this map app is definitely best hiking map out there.

If I just want to get somewhere, I use Garmin connect directly.

But when I want to plan a hike or a run, I use Locus and directly sync with the locus app on the watch. It is very convenient, the name stays, don't need to open any other app, just tap share in locus and select export to garmin.

However, if you don't want to pay for it (though I don't remember which features are free and which need payment, maybe it is in the free tier), there's an easy method to export from locus to Garmin connect:

1.: Download this app: https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager

2.: Install and open it once

3.: Select the route in locus and click on share -> share as gpx

4.: Select "Intercept" with the icon of the downloaded app

5.: On the new screen, change "Action" from "android.intent.action.SEND" to "android.intent.action.VIEW"

6.: Scroll down and tap the open icon next to Garmin connect

That's it!

This way you don't need to clutter your memory with single-use gpx files, don't have to mess around with file names and folders to open it with GC, simply share with it!

Btw I really don't understand why Garmin didn't implement SEND intent receiving, it would be so much easier that way