Since I see various reports of problems that users experience after a software update, I am a little reluctant to allow the software to be updated automatically. Especially since I see that people see excessive battery drains after the update. My philosofy is: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". So my question is how to disable automatic software updates. It so happens that while I am writing this, the Vivoactive watch that I bought today (with software version 14.18) automatically restarted and is apparently downloading a software update. I hope I will be able to prevent it from installing the downloaded software, but I have my doubts. And I was right! The watch does not bother to ask me for permssion to install the update! After another restart I checked the software version, and as I feared, it is now 17.01. And of course there is now way back! Thank you Garmin, but no thanks.
Needlsess to say that the first thing that I did when starting up the watch is to check for a setting: "automatic software update", which is common for most products I have come across (apart from Garmins). But I could not find it. Why? It is my watch and it is up to me to allow it to be (possibly) corrupted. I am really disappointed about this.