Auto upload Strava activities but manually make them Live

What's the difference between the old way and #2?

FWIW , I use the RunGap App . I don't like anything automatically in Strava (or elsewhere) from Garmin before I edit it (name etc , possibly trim, swim stroke change etc) in Garmin and then upload it.  What's also nice about RunGap is that you can filter across activities and upload in batches if you want . Additionally if you delete something in Strava (for whatever reason) its very easy to re-upload to Strava . Also you can upload as far back as you like.

I guess some will say its an extra step but I prefer this level of flexibility and control and the ability to redo things easily if I would like.

It works across multiple platforms also. 

Run gap seems to be iOS only.

#2 involves an extra step of having to mark the activity as 'For Everyone' (changing from 'Only Me'

These are more of a garmin connect <-> strava integration concern rather than something specific to Forerunner 965. Your watch isn't uploading directly to strava, it syncs to garmin connect and then to strava from there.

I've done option #2 for years as I didn't want junk recordings just appearing on strava, and at the time strava privacy features were a bit lacking. The privacy features are now much better.

I don't believe Strava has a concept of "uploaded but unpublished" as you reference. Activities are uploaded/syned/imported into Strava and are immediately either Public, Followers only, or Only Me on visibility, depending on your settings in Strava. You're probably describing something your Apple Fitness app was doing.

I suspect most people use Strava as their public activity stream and don't care about how their activities appear in garmin connect, nor will they care if the activity names match between those 2 systems.

I guess some Pros probably do option 3, as they want to very carefully control what goes into the platform and how their public activities appear.

8378206 said:

#2 involves an extra step of having to mark the activity as 'For Everyone' (changing from 'Only Me'

8378206 said:

On my Apple Watch (connected to Strava), when I completed an activity recording in the Fitness app, the activity would upload to Strava and remain unpublished until I manually clicked Import. This was good as it allowed me to Import and edit the activity at a later more convenient time. 

So with Apple Watch, you have to click Import, but with Garmin you don’t.

With Garmin (#2) you have to change the audience/visibility to “For Everyone”, with Apple Watch you don’t.

Given that you’re going to probably edit the activity in most cases (as you mentioned), perhaps to edit the activity title and description at the very least (as most people do), don’t the two methods come out fairly even in most cases?

Seems like it’s only the case where you’re not planning to edit the activity at all that the Garmin way (#2) is slightly more annoying. But isn’t even this case mitigated by the new Strava feature which automatically displays a quick edit popover for the latest imported Garmin activity, so you can change the audience with two quick taps?

Without the quick edit popover you’d have to:

- scroll to the activity if necessary

- tap on the activity to open it

- tap on the 3 dots menu

- tap Edit Activity

- tap the Visibility > Who Can View dropdown

- tap Everyone

- tap Update Activity

That’s up to 7 actions (at least 6 taps) just to update the visibility, which I agree is annoying if you weren’t planning on editing anything else.

But with the quick edit popover, it’s only two taps. (Yeah, I realize this doesn’t help if you upload more than 1 activity at time, like I do when split up a workout into warmup, the actual workout, and cooldown. In my case I always edit the workout but keep the warmup and cooldown private. I recognize that others may have a different workflow for multiple activities tho.)

8378206 said:

3. Unlink the account and manually add Strava activities using a Garmin FIT file

This seems much more onerous than #2.

I’ll echo that I’ve been using method #2 pretty much from the start, too. That way I can carefully control what I make public and avoiding spamming my friends with every little activity I record on my Garmin.