cant save position when in activity on 19.18

From time to time over the years when spotting a nice cluster of chanterelles during sprawling runs, I've contemplated trying out the "Save Location" function on Garmin watches. Today you prompted me to such an experiment on the FR955 (FW 19.18) Non-Solar.

Started a regular Run activity. After a fair distance, a couple of hundred metres before an automatic KM-Lap, I long-pressed the upper left "Light" button. The option carousel sprang forth and I clicked down to "Save Location" and pressed the "Start/Stop" button. An info screen appeared with numbers galore and the prompting text "START to Save". I pressed that button again, and a brief text about 'Saved' flashed by before the watch suggested I rename the position. Not gonna happen, so I just pressed the "Back" button until I once again could see the Run data screens.

Now, at home, by using the "Map" 'activity'/option, I see a blue flag at the position where the operation was performed. It is named "5 Aug 11:38"... Don't know where I can change that caption or erase the location flag entirely.

Going to Menu -> System -> Hot Keys I see that we can choose "Save Location" as an action, but my mind never remembers which/what button combination or long-press does what...

soptunna said:

Now, at home, by using the "Map" 'activity'/option, I see a blue flag at the position where the operation was performed. It is named "5 Aug 11:38"... Don't know where I can change that caption or erase the location flag entirely.

- Open any activity which supports navigation (like Run)

- Long press UP for the activity settings menu (if the activity hasn't started yet, you can short-press UP from the initial activity screen)

- Select Navigation > Saved Locations

- Select the location you want to edit. A menu will be shown with options including Delete, Name, Icon and Position. Select Name, Icon, or Position to edit any of those things. Before you edit the name, you may want to connect your watch to your phone with bluetooth (and open the Connect app), so you can use your phone's keyboard instead of the watch's onscreen keyboard

Thanks for the detailed answer - benefiting more than myself. Yeah, had a hunch that a 'Navigation' entry had to be accessed. And I presume that they still haven't supplied a 'Delete All' option for the locations.

On the original Fenix 5X I used to put flags - through the clunky button system - on the map prior to running in unknown terrain, like right before and after junctions, instead of drawing proper routes. The result: Hundreds of blue flags cluttering up the map. Though, a good reminder that I had been in the area before.

When wanting to clean up that mess before passing the watch on to a friend, I found no 'Delete All' menu entry. Was forced to delete the on watch Locations.fit file instead.

soptunna said:

I presume that they still haven't supplied a 'Delete All' option for the locations.

No, unfortunately not. I don't think I've seen a "Delete All" button in a Garmin watch UI, ever. The new Garmin Share app has the ability to select multiple (but not all) items to share, and it's the first time I've seen "select multiple items" on a Garmin watch.

So i t is working on your FR955. Strange. When i press start to save, nothing happens :( 

Yeah, that is very strange. You know, after having written about how I used to set flags through the Map activity on the Fenix 5X I began to wonder if by "pressing start to save" you meant directly on a map screen in a Run activity. So I decided to test that scenario on a run today. With:

Menu -> System -> Hot Keys -> Hold START None

Clicking Start/Stop -> Run, but without actually starting the activity I could page down to a map screen I always have in the loop and long-press UP button which presents Pan/Zoom as usual. Pressing Start to switch from Zoom to a Pan menu and then Up or Down button brings forth a cross-hair. Long-pressing Start/Stop will then present a menu with Go or Save Location options, unless it is a named spot or road that you first have to click through.

There was no problem in saving such a location.

Then I began the actual run and could not make it work. Nothing happened with the long-press of Start/Stop in the Pan/Zoom view. But... Now afterwards I realize that I forgot to press Up or Down to get a cross-hair. Doing a 'dry-run' now with correct button presses also saves a flag during a running activity. Though, that path is too complicated and error prone, as I just experienced. And long-pressing Start/Stop on the map screen without going into Pan/Zoom stops the timer as on any other screen.

Perhaps Menu -> System -> Hot Keys -> Hold START set to Save Location would be the best option for frequent users of this function.

'I don't think I've seen a "Delete All" button in a Garmin watch UI, ever'

You're forgetting Menu -> History -> Options -> Delete All Activities | Reset Totals

So, there is 'prior art' present...

i have save location as a hotkey already. 

MikeDozer said:

i have save location as a hotkey already. 

Soooo when you say "pressing start to save does nothing", do you mean that your "Hold START" hotkey which you configured as "Save Location" doesn't work? Bc obviously not everyone will have that hotkey set, and they wouldn't know exactly what you meant unless you told them.

Or do you mean that holding START from the map screen doesn't work?

I tried saving my location several different ways, and they all worked for me:

1) Assigning Save Location to a hotkey (long-press START), and using the hotkey

2) Using the controls menu

3) Selecting the map page in an activity, holding UP, and selecting Save Location

4) Selecting the map page in an activity, switching to pan/zoom mode, panning the map so I get a crosshair, and holding START (*)

(*) 4) was the only way I could save a location without having a recent GPS fix tho. All the others methods ask me to "Wait for GPS" if I haven't had a GPS fix in a while. This makes sense, since 4) saves an arbitrary location on the map, but the other methods are supposed to save your current location.

I'm on beta firmware 20.21 if it matters.