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Wrist gesture doesn't work in 18.22 if watch worn over a sleeve

Bitti
6 months ago

Just letting people know that the following bug reported in late January hasn't yet been fixed in the just published 18.22, and it's bound to affect a lot of winter sports enthusiasts:

https://forums.garmin.com/beta-program/forerunner-965/forerunner-965---public-beta-bug-reports/i/public-beta-version-18-xx/wake-on-gesture-goes-dead-if-watch-is-worn-on-top-of-sleeve

If you wear your watch over the sleeve while doing an activity (and use a HRM strap to record your HR), wrist gestures to wake up the screen don't work.

As a temporary workaround you can disable wrist HR while doing the activity. Let's hope Garmin fixes this soon in another update, the bug/regression has been acknowledged and a ticket has been created (, it would be nice to hear if there's any update on this).

(BTW, this seems to be a good example of how fixing something may break something else. People have been complaining on these forums that when you stop your activity while wearing a HR strap, it takes a moment for the wrist HR to lock onto your HR again and give correct results. Now Garmin has improved this by keeping the wrist HR on while wearing a HR strap. But that has caused the watch to think it's not being worn when it doesn't detect optical HR while worn over the sleeve...)

  • 0 6 months ago in reply to S.M.R.

    So I tried this today (being more diligent) with interesting results.

    I prepared for my run by doing the following:

    I put on the HRM strap

    I dressed (had long T and rain jacket), placed watch over the rainjacket sleeve (thus rain jacket sleeve plus long T sleeve)

    Checked that the HRM was connected, and it was.

    Tried to gesture , no gesture.  (I have AOD off as I use gesture normally always)

    Started Yoga Activity ( I do 7 min yoga as warmup before run) indoors . HRM notice received , no gesture . I have touch off in YOGA . 

    I the went outside and started Run activity (has touch enabled) , I noticed I had gesture working . During teh run I stopped and changed the setting to Touch off in the activity to see if that changed anything , but it had no effect gesture still worked.

    I got home stopped and saved activity . Went to watch face , and gesture still worked.

    So it seems dependant on something ...not sure what!

  • 0 6 months ago in reply to S.M.R.

    After my today's run I might have found a workaround until Garmin has provided a real fix:

    I ran with a merino shirt and a black running jacket. On my previous run, gestures didn't work when I wore the watch over the jacket. This time I put on my HR strap (just like before), but then entered the run activity (but didn't start it) while still wearing the watch directly on my wrist. Only then I moved to watch over my jacket. This way to gestures continued to work, and they also worked during the whole run when I actually started it.

    What's interesting is that after I ended my run, the gestures continued to work, but also the watch kept showing HR from the strap on the watch face, something it hasn't done before (I remember it starting to show -- a couple of seconds after entering the watch face, when connection to the HR strap was closed). The watch kept the connection to the HR strap alive until I actually removed the watch, then it clearly noticed that it's not worn (probably because of lots of external light entering the sensor).

    So after the gesture detection is fixed, this is clearly an improvement (just like Garmin has hinted), since the watch seems to keep the connection to the HR strap active even in normal mode if it doesn't detect wrist HR. (And Garmin has said that when worn directly on wrist, it will switch to wrist HR if connection to the HR strap is broken.)

  • 0 6 months ago in reply to Bitti

    Will try that tomorrow, but it sucks we need a workaround for this… so frustrating.

    i chat with the support and they wont open a ticket, it seems this is intended…

    From another Thread Garmin-Sierra mentioned (just can laugh about this workarounds, they must be kidding…)

    1. We are aware that the change to keep the OHR lights on during activities, even with a chest-strap paired, is not allowing Gesture to work if your skin is not detected by the wrist-based sensor. As a current workaround, you will need to turn the wrist-heart rate sensor off before activities with a chest strap if you are wearing the watch over a thick sleeve.
  • 0 6 months ago in reply to chrixmll

    If you check from the beta forums, a ticket for this gesture problem has already been created a couple of weeks ago, and has been acknowledged by Garmin (as your quote shows). But the way wrist HR stays active while HR strap is connected is intentional.

  • +1 6 months ago

    All, 

    We are currently still looking into this, and I apologize for the unwanted change. I will update you when I know more, but for now please follow the current workaround that mentioned. 

  • 0 5 months ago

    My epic and 695 have been doing this I thought maybe the watches were broke I don't wear a sleeve but what I do have is full tattooed sleeve on both arms with a lot of black ink , I wear a HR chest strap because if I don't the watch can't find a pulse 

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to 4597607

    Well, if your tattoos prevent the wrist hr from working, just disable the wrist hr and keep it disabled.

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to Garmin-Sierra

    If garmin developers are unable to fix te problem maybe they should revert the change? That should be simple IF (and that is a very large IF) garmin got it's software development process in order (and it all looks like it hasn't for ages)

    The solution is o so very simple. If in activity conclude that the watch is worn. There is no need to disable the gesture when in activity, even if it can't detect a heartbeat via the optical sensor. 

    Simple, right?

    But as I said before, I don't get the impression garmin management allows developers to spent time on bug fixing.