Forerunner 945 - Recent Threads

Garmin Pay In Canada - list out of date

amlsmith — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:51:51 GMT

Garmin Pay is no longer supported by Manulife Bank VISA. The list of Canadian card that can be loaded to Garmin Pay are very very few.

RE: Garmin Pay In Canada - list out of date

6071194 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 23:28:16 GMT

Interestingly, it appears the Scotiabank cards work with Garmin Pay .. in the Turks and Caicos?!?

RE: Garmin Pay In Canada - list out of date

amlsmith — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:22:38 GMT

Agree!! I'll be cancelling the Manulife shortly. I have a Brim Financial now, and just loaded it. I'll try it the weekend and report back if it fails! lol (Brim is actually CWB, so, yeah, there is also that)

RE: Garmin Pay In Canada - list out of date

DoctorCool — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:14:54 GMT

This really pisses me off. I did not want a new credit card from Manulife. The whole reason I obtained the Manulife CC is because I wanted to be able to use Garmin Pay. Now Manulife/Garmin has broken this functionality. Enshitification indeed.

How to change activities from swim to swim/bike/run as it was https://drive.google.com/file/d/19pfTgkwMr28QTZExDw2LVMV5vtqTaXIx/view?usp=drive_link

7350573 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:14:55 GMT

How to change activities from swim to swim/bike/run as it was

drive.google.com/.../view

RE: Garmin Pay In Canada - list out of date

mguaylam — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:41:04 GMT

I can confirm the same issue — Manulife Bank (Visa) has dropped Garmin Pay support.

What's ironic is that Manulife recently switched their credit card infrastructure to Brim Financial's PaaS (Payments-as-a-Service) platform. So the card is now Canadian-issued through Brim's stack — and Brim's own Mastercard does support Garmin Pay. But somehow the Manulife Visa running on that same platform lost Garmin Pay in the transition. Go figure.

I contacted Garmin about updating the participating banks page, but while we're at it, here's the real state of the Canadian list as of March 2026:

No longer valid options:

Manulife Bank (Visa) — Garmin Pay support lost after migration to Brim's platform
STACK (Mastercard) — shut down entirely in September 2023
CWB (Mastercard) — acquired by National Bank of Canada in March 2025, no longer exists as a separate entity, National Bank does not support Garmin Pay
Aura (Mastercard) — prepaid card built on the STACK platform, not a real credit card

Geographically restricted:

ATB Financial (Mastercard) — Alberta residents only (provincial Crown corporation)
Affinity Credit Union (Mastercard) — likely restricted to Saskatchewan members

Remaining options that actually work Canada-wide:

Brim Financial (Mastercard) — free, no annual fee, available to all Canadians. Main downside: no automatic full-balance payment from an external bank. You have to add Brim as a bill payee and pay manually or set a fixed recurring amount.
Questrade, U.S. Bank Canada, Zoomer — niche products, not practical for most people

So for most Canadians outside Alberta, Brim is essentially the only viable option for Garmin Pay right now. The participating banks page seriously needs a cleanup.

RE: GPS fix time increased / GPS firmware downgrade

Bembel75 — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 07:33:11 GMT

Thanks for your reply - I know, worked on this 945 for years. And no, I don't live in the city centre of Bembeltown (nice touch with the city name though 😊) but have had these issues with the high buildings at all events as well.

With my new 970 I already get a GPS fix inside the house going down the stairs but I wanted to continue using the 945 and give it to one of my kids...

GPS fix time increased / GPS firmware downgrade

Bembel75 — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:30:55 GMT

For my FR945 to get a proper GPS fix (green GPS notification), it takes at least 15, usually 30+ minutes. For a few months I have ignored it and just adjusted the distance when running or cycling, but eventually I got annoyed by it.

So I dug deeper into the watch and found the ephemeris data (CPE.bin file in the Garmin/RemoteSW) present, but it seems the software doesn't pick it up ("CPE : Missing" in System/Info).
Deleting the file, the folder, synchronising with Garmin Connect, by WiFi and Garmin Express always brought back a fresh copy of the CPE.bin file, but did not change anything in the behaviour above.
Factory resetting the watch a dozen times (with different firmware versions), deleting the device's xml file or anything else I found in the forum did not help either.

So I have started to downgrade the firmware, hoping a legacy version of the firmware would downgrade the GPS firmware as well. Though I have tested a lot, the only firmware that does not get downgraded is the GPS - it keeps its version at 6.60 - if the main software is lower than its respective GPS version, the GPS version shows up with an exclamation mark like this "GPS : 6.60 (!)".

It was rather challenging to get legacy versions of the FR945, did not get them from Garmin, but have tested these:

Main software: 2.80, 6.20, 6.85 beta, 9.00, 9.56 beta, 9.58 beta, 10.40, 11.03 beta and of course 13.70

Firmware versions of other aspects of the FR945 get downgraded, like ANT/Bluetooth, WiFi, SensorHub and CIQ - just GPS stays on 6.60.
Is this maybe the firmware versions I have tested, do not come with a GPS firmware portion? I have also created a "force.tmp" file in the Garmin folder...

As the watch's hardware works perfectly well, getting a manual GPS fix without using the ephemeris data after approx. 30 minutes and the activity is flawlessly recorded, I assume the latest GPS update might have bricked the ephemeris data file to be picked up and used for speeding up the GPS fix.

Has anyone had this issue, too, and found a way to fix it? Or does anyone have other firmware versions or knows how to (temporarily) downgrade the GPS part of the watch's firmware?

I would lilke to reprogramm the GPS part of the watch's firmware - or downgrade and test - to make sure I can continue to use this really expensive piece of hardware.

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

RE: GPS fix time increased / GPS firmware downgrade

andorsn — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 18:55:59 GMT

This works just fine on my 945 with FW 13.70 and GPS 6.60. CPE is shown as “current” and it gets a fix almost instantly.

The watch used to have problems in the past, but I’m not entirely sure if they were due to the CPE file not being updated or not getting picked up. It worked better the more sky was visible, e.g. starting between the highrises of Bembeltown would not be ideal.

RE: GPS fix time increased / GPS firmware downgrade

Bembel75 — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:09:21 GMT

If you read this - I still haven't been able to solve the issues.

Whoever owns a FR945, I would really appreciate if you could take a look at this folder on your PC - it is where Garmin Express for Windows caches firmware updates:

C:\ProgramData\Garmin\CoreService\Downloads\PrimaryFirmware

On my Windows machine I can only find the "PrimaryFirmware_PrimaryFirmware.006-B3113-00.13.70.0" (= firmware 13.70) folder which doesn't help, but if you have older versions, it would really help me.

Thanks so much in advance!

Watch connected to Gramin Express but not recognized

Changry — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:32:55 GMT

I have an interesting problem with two contradictory messages ---> green light indicates the watch is connected, but Garmin Express is asking for the device to be plugged in.

Has anyone here experienced this before and able to offer a solution?

chronic training load has stopped

Wayne C — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 02:50:07 GMT

chronic training load has stopped updating, I only get acute training load. Is it just me? or is it a more widespread issue?

Screen damaged and won't switch on

9804555 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 22:36:05 GMT

Hi,

Recently, my Garmin Forerunner 945 screen started to show signs like delamination around the edges. Apart from that problem, the watch continued functioning ok but now while swimming it died and won’t switch back. It was almost fully charged at the time.

I followed all the steps in the “My Forerunner 945 Will No Longer Turn On” help page but nothing worked.

Is this a common problem with the Forerunner 945? Up until now it had been very reliable.

RE: Screen damaged and won't switch on

9804555 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 21:54:25 GMT

I opted to go with the garmin exchange where I return the watch and receive a refurbished model for £135.

RE: Screen damaged and won't switch on

Bit — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 20:24:42 GMT

I don't know when you bought it, but this model is almost 7 years old and your only option will be out-of-warrantly replacement from Garmin which may not even be possible.
That said, I guess water got inside. You can try to just let it dry (in rice or in a jar with a sachet of silica gel, but both don't speed it up in my experience), put it someplace warm but not much warmer than room temperature. Wait a long time, two weeks. Don't try to charge it. After the two weeks, try switching it on, if it's dead, charge it for a few seconds, see if the screen turns on. If still dead, try again next week. If it displays no signs of life after six weeks, it is properly deceased. I have had water ingress in phones, pedometers and watches and some came back to life after a month or more of drying.
The only way to speed it up is opening the watch, washing it in isopropyl alcohol and then it dries in an hour. Unfortunately Forerunners can't be opened easily at all.

BT does not work

5553690 — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:51:37 GMT

I updated my FR 945 a week ago via Garmin Express to 13.7. Since it lost its pairing with my iphone and unable to repair. Mobile connect find the watch but it does not get pairing code.

Any help in this case?

RE: Running Dynamics question

colinbycroft — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 23:34:01 GMT

Thank you for taking the time to provide such a brilliant answer!
I haven't come across fitfileviewer before but will download it and check it out. I do have runalyze synced already but haven't really delved into it very deeply but will do now.
Thank you once again 😁

Running Dynamics question

colinbycroft — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 12:07:48 GMT

Hi all, I've searched the forum and manual but can't find an answer so hope someone can answer for me.
I'm currently doing Couch to 5K after an injury stopped me running for a couple of years. I'm using the NHS app to plan each workout and using my 945 to track it, just manually triggering laps when changing from walk to run, and I wondered if the 'Running Dynamics', e.g. Average Stride Length, Vertical Ratio etc, consider BOTH the walking and running laps or just the running laps as the 'Auto Run Detection' knows what I was doing and logs it correctly in Connect.

Thanks in advance :)

RE: Running Dynamics question

flowstate — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 17:37:00 GMT

No, running dynamics - despite the name - do not exclude periods of walking. Some metrics, like cadence, will exclude periods of standing still (i.e. 0s are not included in the cadence average, if I'm not mistaken).

So if you walk during your activity (while the timer is running), this will be reflected with a lower average cadence and stride length (for example).

The run/walk detection feature only affects the total times displayed for running, walking and standing still (as well as the corresponding graph). Furthermore, the moving time feature is completely separate from run/walk detection, which means that moving time may not be exactly equal to run time + walk time (due to a slightly different threshold for what's considered "movement" compared to what's considered "walking").

Some possible solutions:

1) Since you did separate periods of walking and running by taking laps, I guess you could try to determine the "running averages" and "walking averages" yourself, by taking averages of lap averages, weighted by either distance or time. Ofc this isn't a perfect solution, for various reasons.

2) You could also export activity FIT files and view them in fitfileviewer.com, so you could get the raw data for each data point (with a resolution of up to 1 point per second), so you could average the individual points yourself, and avoid some of the problems that might be associated with the previous solution.

3) For a more automated solution, you could use runalyze.com, a free site which syncs with Garmin Connect. It allows you to classify laps as work or rest intervals. If you tag all your run laps as work intervals and all your walk laps as rest intervals, then it will show the averages for the work intervals, including running dynamic metrics. The only problem I've seen with this approach is that runalyze does calculate averages in a slightly different way than Connect (so that even the plain activity average cadence and stride length are slightly different than what Connect displays). I've noticed that Strava also calculates average cadence slightly differently than Connect.

garmin connect : temps de déplacement erroné

8907437 — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 16:11:19 GMT

j'utilise ma forerunner 945 pour la randonnée. La montre affiche correctement le temps totalede la randonnée et le temps de déplacement . lorsque que j'envoie les données à garmin connect le temps de déplacement devient faux (il passe par exemple de 5 h à 2 h) . le temps total de la randonnée reste exact . Quelqu'un peut il m'aider ?

My measurement for the 2025 NYC marathon was 44.8km, could this be an error with the Garmin??

cachin84 — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 21:57:21 GMT

RE: My measurement for the 2025 NYC marathon was 44.8km, could this be an error with the Garmin??

cachin84 — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 20:26:03 GMT

44.8 km !!! Could be ? I run with se Garmin Forerunner 945 ..

RE: My measurement for the 2025 NYC marathon was 44.8km, could this be an error with the Garmin??

eliobell — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 20:21:45 GMT

Sorry, but 44,8km or 42,8km ??

RE: Forerunner 945 - Disconnects from Connect App on Samsung Galaxy s24 ultra

6564649 — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:11:08 GMT

Same here... tried to reconnect. The BT challenge code appears but disappears quickly.
Did a factory reset on the watch. Did reset all BT connections on my phone (S25 Ultra) and still the same behavior.
The Connect App recognizes the Watch but the challenge request vanishes to fast or doesn't show up and the app tells me the pairing failed.

I remember that I had the problem in the past... but not sure how I fixed it or if it was a different watch/phone.
Kinda sick of it and not sure if I should stop buying a Samsung phone or a Garmin device.

Forerunner 945 - Disconnects from Connect App on Samsung Galaxy s24 ultra

beuford — Mon, 26 May 2025 18:42:19 GMT

Every time I pick up the watch after being away (not home) even for just 20 minutes, the Garmin Connect app shows the device as no longer connected and I have to re-connect the device with the PIN and the entire setup process as if I was connecting it for the first time. The app shows the watch under devices as Registered to Garmin Connect, just not registered/connected to the phone.

This is frustrating as it also drains the watch battery and I can't rely on being able to pick up the watch and go for a run/ride/swim without planning to make sure I re-connect/register and charge the watch.