Instinct 2 Series - Recent Threads

When will Tai Chi be added as a workout option?

jay-dubb — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:39:29 GMT

It doesn't fit any other option and customising one is not practical, in fact I can't do it

Block a notification.

A11ang — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:50:16 GMT

My watch keeps coming up with a notification, "500 old photos will be removed nuffsaidstore.shop Photos taken 6 years ago are scheduled for deletion." It only shows up on my watch and not on my phone. How can I block this notification?

Fast battery drain on Garmin instinct solar

MxGx — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 06:39:13 GMT

Garmin Inexplicably ended the last thread on this topic without explanation. Watch went from 28 days to holding no more than 5-7 days, charged yesterday and its already down 25%. Latest firmware. Any solutions available?

More support for indoor gym activity

8987435 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:12:36 GMT

I've just moved from an old Fitbit charge 2 that I've had since before covid, to an Instinct 2S and have also got a Polar H10 last week too. Literally just moved - it arrived last Thursday. I'm still at the 'wow, and it also does that!, but can I remember the button sequence' stage. However, I am little disappointed at the provision for things done in the gym. I've had to give up parkrun - the knees just weren't happy. So I've replaced it walking on an incline on my treadmill, and there is the problem. Garmin don't seem to have provided for people that want to walk in a gym, esp. up an incline. Yet I would have thought it was simple enough to accomodate. Provide the user with a screen for say 'walk, indoor' a few user entry boxes, for expected speed, time and average incline (which could also be zero, for those without incline treadmills), and surely you have something that is useable. The expectation seems to be that if use a treadmill you run on it. Also, for the VO2 calculations this overarching requirement that the work be done outside and linked to distance - again surely with a little added provision to enter data you should be able to use a treadmill. There seem loads of different activities to select from yet the ones I want - treadmill walking and karate are not explicitly included. This is a slight shame, as I really love the gadget - it's small enough on my wrist, robust enough for my lifestyle and apart from those omissions appears to do most other things - just ironic that I what I do it aren't included. Has anyone found ways around any of these things please?

Oh, yes, the last niggle why on earth was it not provided with a longer wrist strap - I am not overweight in that area, but I have a 7.5" wrist (I am big boned) and the strap on the watch is just not big enough I was rather disappointed in that. I am waiting for the post over easter to try and get a larger one delivered, but I'm sorry I wasn't blowing another £27 on the official Garmin one.

turn off prompts and audio prompts phone garmin

8523363 — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 09:19:52 GMT

I can't find the awnser anywhere. When I create a custom map, there are voice promts coming from my phone.
Around 6 hours of testing and all I find is nothing.

- I have disabled every notification from garmin connect app
- Restarted phone
- Reinstalled app
- Turned off all notifications and sounds on my watch (not that it has anything to do with my phone, but still)
- Having the app closed (still voice promts)

I'm about to give up on Garmin. It's unaccapteable that there is not button in like the garmin app that says "Audio > Voice promts > off". And why is this on by default?
Is there anything that can be done about this please? Or a third party app I can use that has similar functions.

I think it's insane that one person has had this issue 2 years ago, and it still has not been fixed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/tt5tr7/hello_i_have_a_instinct_2_solar_i_cant_turn_off/

forums.garmin.com/.../turn-off-voice-prompts-from-phone-when-navigating

Kitesurf activity not tracking me.

Luciano — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 14:06:04 GMT

The distance and speed are stuck at zero during the activity, and after, there are no position stats or map. This despite the fact I can see altitude changes in stats.

When I start the activity the gps lock shows a tick.

I've also checked gps is working by long pressing the top right button to save my location, and it's accurate, with both GLONASS and Galileo.

Power mode is normal, with location tracking enabled.

Any idea what might be causing this?

Como se ganan las medallas de buceo en un Instinct 2 Solar

Marceloblach — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:33:33 GMT

No se que actividad registre inmersiones con el Instinct, pero en la parte de medallas esta disponible para hacer con este reloj.

How to manually set location for tides?

5451378 — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:07:42 GMT

I've had a 2X tactical solar forca couple of weeks now.

I'd like to set a few locations, manually, for tide information, for when I go away.

In the "enter location" I see a xxx WD and MGRS numbers.

How do I set these values for multiple UK locations?

The instruction manual is quite poor in this regard. A few examples would help.

Incredible loss of battery life

Twowheeledgent — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:30:03 GMT

My Garmin Instinct 2X solar tactical is only a month and a half old. When I first charged it the watch face showed a 40D life. I recharged it recently when it got down to around 8 days. After charging it showed 40d again. I accidentally hit the GPS button, and immediately backed out (as I've done dozens of times) and the battery life changed to 28h. I cannot seem to shut down GPS running as Activities and Apps does not appear on my settings list, which is what every website seems to say to use when this happens. I also cannot find it in Garmin Connect. Help, it's where I'm about to return the watch, it's useless with a one day battery life. This should be easier to do.

I've tried turning off Bluetooth, backlighting, and tons of other things like oxygen and pulse monitoring, longest battery life setting, etc. etc. and it's made at most 2 hours of battery life difference.

indoor bike

7764697 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 10:35:38 GMT

ive started an indoor bike session. added a cadence sensor to my bike & all is good, apart from garmin doesnt show any calories burned? Thoughts please

Indoor Skating activity tracking

9453839 — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:37:51 GMT

I was ice skating using the activity tracking for "Indoor Skating" and can someone help me with how to use it? Laps didn't match, the distance wasn't seeming to track, and it seems to be a count-down and not a stopwatch/track what I am doing, sort of thing. I found it once a while ago, so I know that there are ways to edit the activity types and make custom ones even though it is hard to find. Can someone here who does indoor roller or ice skating share the settings they use or activity type?

install the Chinese language library on the European/American version of Instinct 2.

2685966 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:08:04 GMT

I'd like to ask how to install the Chinese language library on the European/American version of Instinct 2.

I purchased Instinct 2 in Canada, but it can't display Chinese characters, causing Chinese message notifications to not appear on my phone. I tried copying CHINESE.LN4 to G:\GARMIN\TEXT and performing translation testing, but that didn't work. Software Version: 17.08. express Optional Updates also not worked.

Thanks

Battery acting completely weird since last update

7599746 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:19:41 GMT

I guess I have everyone's problem.
On my side the % values of remaining battery seem completely messed up.

Sometimes, I have 50% remaining and the watch suddenly stops and can't restart without a recharge (suddenly at 0%).
Other times I'm charging it, it shows 17% but if I unplug it suddenly it displays something like 50%.

Either way, my watch lasts 2 or 3 days without activity or shutdown during 2/3 hours of activity...

I did try to roll back to 16.11 with a factory reset, it did not change the issue.
Did 17.08 burnt our watches?

As everybody, I contacted support and I've been told to buy the new Instinct 3 ..

top-left button action "Dial" or "Call Back" awkward location!

6028092 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 18:40:06 GMT

Hello Garmin team and fellow Instinct 2 users,

I've been loving my Garmin watch, but there's one recurring frustration with notifications that I'd like to raise as a potential improvement or feature request.

The issue: When viewing the notifications glance (UP/DOWN to the widget, then GPS to enter), I can scroll through multiple notifications with UP/DOWN. For regular texts, emails, app alerts, etc., pressing the top-left button (LIGHT/CTRL) reliably clears/dismisses the selected notification — which is great for quickly going through a bunch.

However, when the notification is a missed call, the same top-left button action changes to "Dial" or "Call Back" — it immediately initiates a return call from my paired phone. This creates a serious problem: if I have a mix of notifications (common after a busy period), I instinctively press the top-left button repeatedly to clear them one by one. As soon as I hit a missed call in the list, boom — accidental dial to that person (often someone I don't want to call back right away, or worse, a spam/missed call I ignored on purpose).

This has happened to me multiple times, leading to awkward "sorry, butt-dialed you from my watch" situations. It's especially risky during activities, driving, or when hands are busy/gloved.

What I've checked/tried:

No setting in the watch menu (Phone > Smart Notifications) or Garmin Connect app allows customizing or disabling the "Dial" action specifically for missed calls while keeping clear for other notifications.
Button remapping or context-sensitive changes aren't available for the notifications screen.
The manual describes viewing notifications and options (press GPS for more), but the primary action (top-left) is fixed this way.
Workarounds like clearing everything from the phone first work, but they're inconvenient when I'm relying on the watch glance. Disabling call notifications entirely removes useful missed call alerts too.

Suggested improvements (pick any or all):

Make the "Dial" action optional or require a longer press/confirmation for missed calls.
Use a different button (e.g., top-right or GPS) for "Dial," and keep top-left strictly as "Clear/Dismiss" across all notification types.
Add a setting to disable call-back from the watch entirely (while still showing missed call notifications).
Or, add a bulk "Clear All" option in the notifications glance to avoid button-mashing through the list.

This seems like a common UX pain point for button-only watches like the Instinct series (I've seen similar complaints on Reddit/forums about accidental actions). A small tweak here would make clearing notifications much safer and faster without losing functionality.

Thanks for considering this

Rowing activity not recording pace

7293351 — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:59:09 GMT

My instinct 2 was working well for outdoor rowing, but now although it measures pace on the watch during the activity, it mostly doesnt transfer to the app. In a 60 min row, it will show the pace for a few brief periods during the hour

There is no problem with other metrics, rate, distance per stroke etc

any suggestions?

Battery drop and blank screen. Are they connected?

2985317 — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:45:24 GMT

Hey. As for many others I started experiencing issue with heavy battery drain on my Instinct 2 Solar Tactical on firmware 17.8. The watch was working fine one day and then it started draining heavily while sleeping. I charged it, used it for multiple activities. Apart from the heavy drain it worked fine.
As the issue was annoying at some point I tried to hard reset it (unfortunately at a low battery level) and as a result the screen started to disappear.
For 99% of the time, the screen is not visible, however sometimes it pops back (sometimes looks fine, sometimes a bit faded). I tried to factory reset, but the issue didn't go away. If I charge the watch, it can still connect to my phone, record activity, get notifications and it can also take screenshots.
I tried to reach out to Garmin Support, but as my device is out of warranty, all I got was an offer for a replacement at a rather higher price.

Can it be that something got messed up in the firmware on the hard reset while on low battery? Anyone else experienced issues with the screen?

Instinct 2 solar charging works again after factory reset

4420842 — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:37:46 GMT

On my first watch, the solar charging stopped working and it was replaced under warranty.

On the second watch, the solar charging stopped working again after 1 year. It started working again after I performed a factory reset.

Now it has stopped working once more, and a factory reset fixed it again. Has anyone else experienced a similar issue with solar charging?

Loading Courses

johnsommo — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:34:48 GMT

How do I load GPX files into Courses? How big of a file can I load?

Instinct 2 Solar battery is dropping like a rock.

Wizardling — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:48:25 GMT

I see the previous most popular thread on this issue has been locked. But my Instinct 2 Solar just updated after disconnecting it from my PC, and is now showing at v17.08 (d3b282d). It was then at 97% battery, and I began a stopwatch. 13 minutes later when I happened to next check, it was already at 95% battery.

So it is just as broken as before whatever update that was.

a sensor of a rowing machine is connected to my §Instinct 2 when I do a cycling activity in the sport center

Ze_Cat_^^ — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:58:11 GMT

Hello,

I am experiencing a problem when working out at the sport center: I regularly connect to a Concept 2 rowing machine, which allows me to record my results (power in watts, cadence, etc.) on my watch. But the problem is that when I use an indoor bike that doesn't have a sensor and that someone else is using the rowing machine at the same time : the watch connects to the rowing machine's sensor and then displays incorrect results for my cycling activity, particularly in terms of minutes of activity. How can I fix this problem?

Instinct 2 Map Issues

3423228 — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:36:09 GMT

My Instrict 2 has stopped uploading maps of my hikes, although all the distance and elevation data is there. I gave resorted my phone and watch, and reinstalled the Garmin Connect app. Any ideas?

Activities not saving

3305267 — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:59:51 GMT

The last 7 days, for every activity I try to save (with Stop->Save) it seems like it's saved correctly but it actually shows stats from a very old activity I had done about a month ago! Obviously nothing is synced to Garmin Connect.

Anyone noticed something similar?

Sleep tracking errors

Maxed Out — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 19:41:33 GMT

I have an instinct 2 and this month I have had several issues with sleep tracking. This month it tracked no sleep data at all 5x and I had to manually enter the sleep time (but no other data).

3x it told me I slept 30+ hours straight. And when I click Edit for the sleep it shows the correct time and all I need to do is hit save. But because the duration was off I don't know if the metrics are correct.

I don't pay a lot of attention to tracking sleep so I am not concerned, just curious more than anything.

Watch updates are current with nothing pending.tried a few different watch faces, default and from 3rd parties. No other apps, widgets etc. Pulse Ox is set to manual. Heart Rate is always on. No issues syncing.

Sleep watch face behaviour

Jacquers — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 04:29:25 GMT

I'm used to how Forerunner models work and on those the sleep watch face shows when the sleep schedule starts, even if I'm still awake. On my I2 Solar it doesn't show the sleep watch face when the schedule starts, only later once I've been sleeping. Is this normal?

17.08 Gone from 20ish days of battery to 3 (at best) - Overnight

5551881 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:40:18 GMT

My instinct 2 has always had fantastic battery life. 20+ days.

In the last week or so it appears to have upgraded to 17.08 and now I am lucky if I get 3 days.

It appears that the 17.08 firmware update continues to have the battery issues that plagued 17.07