Audio Prompts broken since 19.18

Since upgrading to 19.18, audio prompts while on a run seem completely broken.

I usually have lap alerts on, along with 5min alerts on average pace, heart rate and power.  That combination has worked fine up to now (despite ongoing glitches with Audible that Garmin and Amazon have not bothered to even look at for several years now).'

Upgrading to 19.18 though and now none of that works.  The settings in the app are fine, and it's not the connection (sometimes the watch/phone get unconnected but rebooting both fixes the issue - been that way since my 245) - indeed when setting out I get an audio prompt of "Time started" (which is new?) and even the first 5 min set of alerts, but then nothing.... no lap alerts, no further 5min alerts.  It sems clear that something in 19.18 has broken this pretty important functionality for me.

Is anyone else suffering this issue and/or have a fix/workaround?

  • I no longer seem able to listen to Spotify from my phone AND receive audio prompts from my watch at the same time. I have a vivoactive 5. I have to download music to the watch to listen to both music and prompts which is a bummer.

  • This isn't fixed for me either.  Fenix 7 and Samsung Galaxy S22. Audio prompts are off in garmin connect (5.4.1) and on phone. No headphones in use. Audio prompts coming from phone. I've discovered that turning down the media volume on my phone is a workaround but when audio prompts are off they should actually be off! Been going on for months now and very annoying.

  • Not exactly same issue, but partly related. As I wrote in another post, the lap number is not spoken when using auto lap. I later found out that this only happens when running a planned workout, it doesn't happen when I dismiss a planned workout. This will be very irritating winter time when my watch is hidden under gloves and layers of clothes and I thus can't look at it (without stopping and stripping in -20 Celsius...). How can I know how many laps (= kilometers) I have run without looking at the watch?

  • Is anyone at Garmin still lokking into this issue? It's not resolved!