Return to watch face from activity?

Try the back button when the screen with just display the current time is selected in the activity. It works at 245, maybe it will work at 165?

Thanks - but no that does not work either.

9885849 said:

Surely this is a basic function and should be possible without a workaround?

You'd think so but lots of Forerunners new and old don't have this feature.

I don't like it either but Garmin often reserves the "little things" (quality of life features) for the most expensive watches.

9885849 said:

The workaround is holding down the UP button, going into the Settings and through to reapplying the current watch face...

If it's anything like 955, you should also be able to go to the stopwatch, press UP and select "Go To Watchface" (although this is probably even more of a pain unless you have the stopwatch in the controls menu as the last used item.)

At least there's workarounds. I'm pretty sure that on 235 (which some ppl still use today), you can't return to the watchface at all during an activity.

You can't put the activity into the background on a 255 either. You'd have to pause it with "resume later".

But isn't the more basic workaround just to customize the activity and add a data screen with the kind of information you would be looking for? Then you can just scroll to that screen instead during the activity.

I know it won't have exactly the same visual aesthetics as the watchface, but can show most metrics, There is also a clock/watchface like screen you can add, but I don't see an option to customize it very much.

For a CIQ watchface, I think a technical issue is that most models don't have enough memory (RAM) to support an activity and watchface running at the same time. There's a reason CIQ data screens have more severe limits imposed on them than watchface apps.

On the really old Forerunners (2015 / FR230 era) you couldn’t even add the clock as a data page — either that or you were limited to 2 data pages, so nobody would waste a whole page on that (iirc there was no clock data field either). It was actually super embarassing bc I’d be on a run and some passerby would ask me what time it is, but I couldn’t answer haha. So for those watches, having the ability to return to the watch face during an activity would’ve been nice. (Keep in mind some runners still use a 235, including some pretty fast guys I know, like someone who won a 5 miler.).

For the newer Forerunners, some people may want to look at a widget/glance, native watchface or activity history while they’re waiting at a red light or something. Sometimes I want to see my steps or body battery during a run. (Yeah I know it’s not important and I know steps is available as a data field.)

6125703 said:

For a CIQ watchface, I think a technical issue is that most models don't have enough memory (RAM) to support an activity and watchface running at the same time. There's a reason CIQ data screens have more severe limits imposed on them than watchface apps.

That is true but it’s unrelated to having the ability to return to the watchface during an activity. Any watch with that ability simply displays a native watchface instead of the currently selected CIQ watchface, while an activity is currently active.

(Once you’ve returned to the watchface, you can also do almost anything you could normally do from there, like scrolling through glances, with the exception of opening certain CIQ apps.)

Have you tried the touchscreen swipe (right)?