Please bring back USB mass storage

If you use Android smartphone you can install gexporter app from Google play to your phone. After that you have to install gimporter app from Connect IQ to your Garmin device. 

By this way you can transfer gpx files from your phone to your Garmin device via Bluetooth.

+1, please bring back USB mass storage. MTP apps available for MacOS either don’t work at all or have buggy implementations and complex UX. Managing contents through mass storage was a breeze, removing it was a massive hit on customer experience. 

Hello ekhagman,

thank you for your answer. I used gexporter/gimporter but it didn't work without garmin connect installed and connected to the edge 1040. Garmin connect will sync as soon as you connect the edge eating up data volume.

Complain to Apple for their limited support of MTP in macOS. It would help if macOS would show MTP devices as volumes in Finder.

Apple could have integrated MTP support into their operating system, but they didn’t. Garmin can also launch devices without mass storage device support, and they also didn’t. Instead, they chose to remove the support later. From my perspective, I purchased a device that functioned well on macOS despite its limitations. However, the device manufacturer deliberately chose to break macOS compatibility without offering a reasonable alternative. This decision erodes customers’ trust. What’s next? Will they remove compatibility with any of my sensors? Perhaps my speed sensor, since it’s from Wahoo. 

Most recent Garmin devices from the last 2 years use MTP only. So MTP is not something new to Garmin.

Breaking macOS compatibility is a bit of a stretch IMO, because the device will work perfectly fine for most users on macOS with Garmin Express. And it is still possible to access files on the device, albeit with 3rd party tools. Personally I use Commander One and it works quite well.

I can imagine that It's indeed an unfortunate change for a specific group of users (like OP). But from Garmin's point of view I can kind of understand it: simpler in support (no chance of data corruption when disconnecting the device, no problems when users format the internal storage), and simpler in software development because code between 1050 (already MTP-only), 1040/840/540 and Edge Explore 2 is largely shared (easy to see from the changelogs for all devices).

I totally understand their point of view. And personally I would not care much about the change if not for a one use-case: from time to time garmin express sync will just stop working, it freezes midway. To fix the situation online troubleshooting guides suggesting deleting files both on computer’s end (Garmin Express) and on the device side, not having mass storage support when that happens sucks. I really hope they bring it back or fix the frequent sync issues. Another instance is the device generating buggy for files when it glitches, that completely breaks any sync until the 0 byte (or too small, can’t remember) .fit file is removed from the device. 

This is a big regression for macOS users. They could have chosen to keep mass storage and ditch MTP. Or they could at least fix Garmin Express so sync doesn’t break so frequently, ideally building MTP support in Garmin Express itself. Right now I completely gave up on Garmin Express syncing, this includes map updates, etc. it’s just way too much work to fix syncing issues every single time especially with no mass storage support. 

Can't you use something like holafly? they provide unlimited data access for very cheap prices.

Apple users, you can download  " open MTP app"  it is free, safe and works great to transfer files to your Garmin (edge **40series and 1050)

I again installed connect on my andorid device along with the gimporter/gexporter apps. But connect refuses to download the gpx files with gimporter/gexporter when there is no internet connection. On the developers connectIQ site i found the following comment:

Since 2019 the Garmin Connect App just refuses the connection from gimporter to gexporter, if the phone has no internet access (although none is needed).

Please bug Garmin with reports about: "`makeWebRequest` not working to `localhost`, if the phone has no internet access."

So it worked offline 5 years ago. It would be nice if that would work again but i don't think that will ever happen.