Unreliable gestures in Watch Mode?

I use the GearMin watch face and the gesture works to activate the seconds every time. And just to do a little test, I downloaded the No Frills watch face and set it for seconds in high power mode and it works every time too. Not sure why yours isn't working. Is the light coming on with your gesture?

I use the GearMin watch face and the gesture works to activate the seconds every time. And just to do a little test, I downloaded the No Frills watch face and set it for seconds in high power mode and it works every time too. Not sure why yours isn't working. Is the light coming on with your gesture?

Good question. If I have the backlight on for gestures, it works everytime. However if the backlight is off, it seems that after some time, the gestures stop working. Its almost as if the watch forces itself into a low powered mode permanently.

Thanks for testing this out on your watch.

The only thing I can think of is that you are in Do Not Disturb mode. Gestures are turned off if the watch goes into Do Not Disturb mode and it goes into that mode automatically during your sleep hours which are set in the app or GC. Are you sure you are not in DND mode when you are noticing gestures are not working?

The only thing I can think of is that you are in Do Not Disturb mode. Gestures are turned off if the watch goes into Do Not Disturb mode and it goes into that mode automatically during your sleep hours which are set in the app or GC. Are you sure you are not in DND mode when you are noticing gestures are not working?

thanks for the thought, but the plot thickens.

it works fine in the following scenarios:
- Watch mode: backlight -> Gestures -> ON
- Watch mode: backlight -> Gestures -> After Sunset

moreover, in either of the scenarios above, i still get the second hands even when DND mode activates later in the evening in spite of the light not going off.

yet if Gestures is OFF, some time after having been on the "watch screen": the gestures to active the seconds stops working. it can be as long as an hour, but it eventually happens. very odd. i may have to post this to the ConnectIQ developer forums.

so, is anyone able to confirm they can use Backlight -> Gestures (Watch mode) -> OFFt hat seconds always pops up on ConnectIQ watch faces even after a long time (of not using widgets or an activity)?

the good news, the kludgy fix is to use the second setting above. in essence, the backlight only comes on right now between 8-10pm and the seconds works all the time. this seems a bug in the firmware, rather than any hardware issue, it seems as gestures works fine in this scenario to activate seconds being displayed in high power mode.

thanks in advance for anyone willing to rigorously repeat my problem (again, backlight OFF for watch mode in all circumstances and keep their watch idle for a while (maybe an hour) to see if they can get failure of high powered mode (seconds) to activate.

I just tested for you. Turned gestures off in watch mode then put my watch on the charger sitting idle for about 90 minutes. Put the watch back on (gestures still off in watch mode) and I still got the seconds to show in high power mode (no light).

Linda: thanks for experimenting. i appreciate your time and effort.

so, i'm closer the source of the problem, but no closer to a solution.

one more thing i discovered: if my watch isn't connected to my phone (via bluetooth), the problem goes away too.

so, it seems that there is something weird going on software wise here where the bluetooth connection to the Garmin Connect app (if i force quite the Garmin Connect app, the problem is gone too), it somehow, at some point, locks up the "high powered mode" seconds gesture.

i guess i'll have to report this to garmin, but it's a very strange issue which i wonder if i have some weird/corrupted connection or file sitting on my watch. one thing i may try to do is reinstall garmin connect on my phone and see if that helps any (iOS Garmin Connect, latest version)

thanks again. would love to hear others experiences, but i am convinced that this is a software issue that might be somehow due to the particular connection between my phone and my watch. hopefully this can be resolved. (i don't really want to do a hard reset of my watch and lose all my VO2Max, and other settings/data that are irretrievable.

My last Fenix, the gesture light also didn't work. A hard reset fixed it. I know you don't want to do it, but you may have few other options.

My last Fenix, the gesture light also didn't work. A hard reset fixed it. I know you don't want to do it, but you may have few other options.

thanks for sharing the experience Cycleguy. yes, i'm reluctant to do a hard reset.

i confess: this is mostly an exercise in wanting things to work properly. i have never been a fan of the seconds only showing up for 10 seconds in high power mode and have historically kept them "off" on my 735XT.

nevertheless, recently, i worked with a developer on a new watch face (Big and Lean, and revising VSWF) and i liked his implementation of keeping a large HH MM font and having a secondary location for the seconds. so, it's in the testing of this out, i noticed this problem. in reality, i could just forget about it, especially with the soon to be released CIQ2.3 which will support always on watch faces, and presumably the seconds will stay on without gesture.

anyway, i'm going to do the GC re-install on my iPhone, and then maybe muck around with deleting settings files on the watch (which i was instructed to do initially to help Garmin Support debug the ongoing alarm issue, so i know i can do that safely). we'll see if those two options yield any results. if not, then i'll have to evaluate how important it really is for me to have the seconds showing until CIQ2.3 SDK becomes an official release.

i'd love to hear about someone else having this problem (misery loves company :p )

On a somewhat related matter I've found that the nice "LINE" watchface stays in "high power mode", i.e. displays seconds at all times, anyone else notice this ? Is it now an option for the developer like for the native watchfaces ?

On a somewhat related matter I've found that the nice "LINE" watchface stays in "high power mode", i.e. displays seconds at all times, anyone else notice this ? Is it now an option for the developer like for the native watchfaces ?

Actually, it's not really high power mode (CIQ high power mode is different than the firmware's high power mode BTW - a watchface runs in the firmware's low power mode all the time if the current generation of watches is like the last one in this reguard)

With the new functionality, every second, a watchface can update part of the screen if the watchface in in CIQ's low power or not, and the rule is, over a minute, it can execute for a max of an avg of 30 milliseconds each second.

When more watch faces get the 1hz code, you won't really need to worry about the gesture on devices that support 1hz (f5,f5x,f5s,935,q5). It's cool. Been testing my watchfaces that do 1hz for a few weeks now...