How to show distance to the next course point instead of waypoint?

Awesome, works flawlessly. The course is so well marked and I am not going to podium, knowing how far the next AS is helps a lot. Thanks!

Great, glad it worked for you.  This is definitely a bit obscure and I've sent a request that they either change this for trail running or give an option.  See if anything ever comes of it.

I used this during a 50k this summer and it was so nice having the distance to the next AS rather than the next sharp turn.

I'm so thankful that I found this forum and now know how to get the 'next waypoint' and 'distance to next' data fields to work on my Fenix 6X Pro Sapphire.  It's taken me 9 months of scratching my head to now finally be able to use the watch to its full potential when I'm out hiking.  As a side note, I just submitted the following development request to Garmin so that they can hopefully address this issue:

There is a common issue with users of Garmin Connect and the watch community (I am using a Garmin Fenix 6X Pro Sapphire) that I wanted to bring up. Many people who are into serious hiking, trail running, mountain biking, or other similar sports often want to use the 'next waypoint' and 'distance to next' data fields on their watch. There is a current limitation with Garmin Connect and GPX files. When you wirelessly transfer a course and waypoints plotted in Garmin Connect to your watch, GC automatically adds in turn-by-turn directions and many sub course points. When you go to navigate the course on the watch, the 'next waypoint' and 'distance to next' data fields do not work. Often, the 'next waypoint' field will be blank, and the 'distance to next' calculates the distance to the next turn, or to some other "unknown?" point along the course.

As a hiker, I often want to add a waypoint to a summit that I'm hiking. If for instance my hike includes 2 or 3 mountains as part of the hike, I want to know how far until the next waypoint (aka summit) on my course. The same can be said for runners who want to calculate the distance to aid / water stations. When you transfer a course to the watch via GC, the turn-by-turn directions interfere with the watch's ability to effectively calculate these important data fields.

A workaround that a few people have discovered, is that you can download the course from Garmin Connect as a FIT file. If you then manually transfer that FIT file to the "New Files" folder of the watch via USB cable, you can navigate that course as you would any other. The difference, is that the FIT file which you transferred via USB cable does not include all the turn-by-turn directions and sub-course points. The watch will then be able to accurate show the next waypoint, and distance to that next point as you navigate. As a Garmin Fenix user, it has taken me 9 months to finally learn this obscure workaround by meticulously searching the web and finding posts from other people who are struggling with the same problem.

Could you add a video or help document to the Garmin site which clearly shows this workflow for people who want to use these waypoint data fields when navigating a course? This is clearly a common issue people are struggling with (the majority just never report it), and many do not know about the FIT file workaround.

From a development standpoint, is there anything you can do to address these issues?
1) Is it possible to add an option to transfer a FIT file wirelessly from Garmin Connect without including the TBT directions? Right now it looks like you can only wirelessly transfer a GPX file?
2) Is it possible to create a setting where you can transfer a GPX file WITHOUT including the TBT directions and sub-course points?
3) Can the watch itself have a setting where you can disable turn-by-turn directions?

I wanted to throw out some of these ideas in case they were things you could consider. For folks using the Fenix 6X or other watches for navigation, I think that a resolution to this common issue would really increase the usability of the watch and make many end-users happy.

Or even better, have the turn by turn and create a new data field ... named distance to next point (or POI). How difficult can it be?

For me, personally, this is one of the most negative issues with Garmin software on my Fenix 6X.

Not only Garmin Connect forces turn-by-turn waypoints on my watch during a course transfer, but these turn-by-turn directions don't even work properly when running on trails. It is obvious that these directions are based SOLELY ON THE SHAPE OF THE COURSE rather than actual map data. What that means is that I get tons of useless turn notifications for every sharp bend of a trail even though there are no other trails on the map. At the same time it often misses real turns if the turn angle is not sharp enough. That happens all the time, and I missed actual turns countless times. Furthermore, on some runs I get these useless turn notifications hundreds of times. It is so annoying that I ended turning turn directions notification off completely. It is just plain broken as far as I am concerned!

I think, at a minimum, Garmin should introduce an option either in Garmin Connect or on the watch, whether to show turn notifications. Doing that on the watch might be a bit more tricky because turn-by-turn directions are the same course points as user defined course points. But perhaps Garmin could distinguish them by their specific names.

This would make the course points feature actually useful for advanced users, especially hikers, trail runners, ultrarunners, etc. As of now this feature is utterly broken, at least for anyone who uses Garmin Connect to transfer courses. A workaround exists but it is not documented anywhere in the Garmin documentation.