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Garmin Express won't recognise my FR245 music

nigelchatterjee
over 3 years ago

I have a FR245 music watch, probably a couple of years old now.

Recently I'm having difficulty in connecting my FR245 music watch with Garmin Express on my computer in order to change music files.

When I plug my watch into the computer it shows that it is charging, but when I open up Garmin Express I get a Garmin Express Message asking me to connect my watch.

Previously when connecting my watch to a power source I used to get the whole screen turning green with a % charge showing. Now all I get is a tiny charge % indicator on the regular black watchface.

Garmin Express simply doesn't connect with my watch. I've tried different USB ports and even tried different cables. The contacts on my watch look clean. I'm using Mac OS 11.6 Big Sur and the Garmin Express Version is 7.10.0. 

I've even tried deleting Garmin Express from my computer and reinstalling.

The software version on my watch is 7.8 (fca 3556). Data syncs to my computer via wi-fi and my watch charges and functions ok.

The only issue is that I can't connect to Garmin Express.

Other than using Garmin Express is there any other way of changing the music on my watch?

Is anyone else having these connectivity issues? Any help or suggestions will be gratefully received.

Thanks and kind regards,

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I had the same problem and was determined to fix it now that I'm out doing races again and needed race-specific playlists.

    By any chance do you have a ton of songs currently on your FR245M?  I did and found some old posts that say Garmin Express simply can't handle either 80-90% memory capacity or playlists with hundreds of songs.

    I will preface this by saying I am using Windows so I don't know if MacOS has the same problem.  It took me a number of tried to delete the files out of my FR245M in Windows Explorer since Garmin Express wouldn't let me get that far into the manage music section.  But once I had them deleted then Garmin Express worked fine.  You can also reset your FR245M back to factory settings which obviously deletes all the music but it's a pain to get it back to how you like it (yep, did that too in the past before I knew what the real issue was).

    I totally understand the frustration with different cables (not cheap especially if bought directly from Garmin), different ports, uninstalling, reinstalling.  Heck, when I got a new laptop I was convinced that would fix it.  But nothing did until I spent a day or so researching those old posts.

    Good luck

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Hi Scicco,

    Thanks for your suggestion re the number of songs on my watch. It isn't particularly full, maybe half a dozen albums if that.

    Anyway, all sorted now - it was the darnedest thing - After I posted my message, I noticed that my i-Phone wan't being recognised by the computer either - a new M1 iMac.

    I shut down my Mac, and re-started it again. Everything was recognised, included my Garmin - So all good now.

    I'm running my peripherals though a Dock, and suspect that this may well be the culprit.

    My wife has just got a new Apple Watch, and I must say I like the connectivity of that much better - no cables to plug in for either file transfer or charging! However for me the Garmin Connect web-site for tracking my runs is much better, so until my Garmin Watch gives up the ghost I'll probably stay with that. Not looked at Strava yet, so that might be a possibility.

    Not a great fan of Garmin Express - it seems a bit clunky and simply being able to drag and drop songs from Apple's Music (previously iTunes) would be a step in the right direction.

    Thanks for the tip about the amount of songs being loaded onto the watch, I'll keep an eye on that.

    Kind Regards,