Can't get touchscreen to work with maps on Forerunner 970

I think it's possible this could be related to a 955 -> 970 migration. The 955 used to have a setting that turned off Touch for all activities and I wonder if that is still lingering on the 970 but not actually accessible from the 970 menus.

Support told me that it's probably related to the 955 migration. So now I have to decide between do I want to wipe my watch and start from scratch and lose all my data fields and preferences or do I want touch on maps to be broken with the 970.

Just got an 970 coming from a 955. I didn't risk trying to use backup since they are different watches. 

I would reset all and start from scratch.

I always use the backup option when i switch between different watches, have been doing it for years

otherwise you lose all your data pages which are such a pain to build up from scratch

Agreed, like getting a new computer. Better to start from scratch than bring any legacy issues across. I have a list of my screen setups , widgets etc in an excel sheet and whilst it takes some time, at least its a clean base.

Sounds like you're saying this is literally for the Map activity only, and it doesn't affect other activities, right?

If so, I can understand that, since:

- It sounds like you are saying that the Map activity *itself* (on the device) apparently does not have an option to enable/disable touch in its own menus 

- On FR955, the System > Touch menu does have a way to enable/disable touch for individual activities (including Map), and it sounds like this option was removed for FR970, like you said.

I have a couple of possible suggestions that might allow you to fix this, while keeping your other settings:

1) Add the Touch control to the controls menu (accessed by holding LIGHT). If it's like FR955, this control becomes specific to the current activity (when you are in an activity), including the Map activity. On my FR955, I can use this to turn touch on and off for the Map activity

2) Open the watch settings in the Connect phone app. Navigate to Activities & Apps > Map. See if the Touch setting is available 

3) Access the actual Map activity settings on the watch (if possible). Even on FR955, this is not obvious to do, as they are not available by holding UP in the Map activity or via the map hamburger menu, so it's easy to mistakenly assume they don't exist. The only way to open them on FR955 is to:

- Scroll to Map in the activity list (but don't open it)

- Hold UP

- Select Map Settings

- Here you will see a list of activity-ish settings, like Satellites and Touch. Note that these 2 menu items are *not* available once you actually open the Map activity (which is terrible imo). You will also see *another* Map Settings item here, which is the same as the Map Settings in the hamburger menu (including the "Use Sys. Settings" item - i.e. it's the "non-activity-specific" map settings)

If you are able to access this Map activity settings menu this way, you should be able to turn off touch.

tbh I find this very user-unfriendly. It seems that Map is the only "activity" which has its "activity-specific" settings hidden away like this (i.e. unavailable via hold UP or some other button press / swipe after you open the activity). 

No idea if the situation is exactly the same on FR970. For what you said, either these settings are either completely unavailable on FR970, or hidden away like on FR955

If all of that fails, you can post the FIT file for the Map activity settings here, and I can try to fix it for you. Let me know if none of those other approaches worked, and I can give you instructions.

Thank you for taking the time and for the help! Unfortunately all failed. I did try toggling every touch setting on the 970 now from ON,  to MAPS ONLY, to OFF just to see if cycling them would change anything and the issue persists.

I also tried going back to my 955, making sure I had all the touch options set to ON (so anywhere in the 955 where you can set touch, I set it to ON); and then I did a full reset and restore on the 970 using the new 955 backup and the issue persists.

Some replies to your bullets

- yeah exactly. on the 970 things are a little different, when you click start you can choose from 3 pinned-sport-profiles, then there's a menu btn to take you to all the other sport profiles, and then there's a bunch of apps (maps included, but also music, phone, messenger). The issue I have is that as soon as I open the maps app, the touch doesn't work. And within that settings menu for that app, there are no touch settings.

- yeah they are gone now, instead we have a general touch settings menu, and then we have "focus mode" settings, which are bundles of settings that can get activated together. I only have a sleep mode (touch off, screen red, AOD off), and an activity mode (AOD on, touch on, etc).

- Ok just tried the touch control, didn't work unfortunately
- No touch setting for maps in Connect phone app
- Map activity settings don't have touch, there's over stuff like map detail, map layers, but no touch

Do you know where the .fit files for the maps activity are stored?

There's an Apps/SETTTINGS/ folder with a single .SET file
I also see a Generic Settings/Settings.fit and a Settings/FocusSettings.fit
There's a Sports/ folder that has GenericMap.fit

One thing I'm wondering...
Is it pretty straight forward to save my activity settings (like the data pages for Run, Cycle, etc)? If I just copy my Sports/ folder (which has all the sport profiles) to my local machine, would it be safe to do a hard reset on the 970 and just drag that folder back over?

Yes the SPORTS folder contains activity profile settings. Yes you can make a backup and copy the profiles you want to keep back to the watch after doing a factory reset / reset to default.

The only difference from what you said is that the profiles have to be copied back to NEWFILES, not SPORTS. This is the case for most files that can be copied to the watch manually.

 I also find it interesting that the Map activity has no “reset to defaults” button, unlike any of the others. Weird choices from Garmin all around. 

If you don’t want to lose other settings in the factory reset I’d be happy to edit the generic map fit file for you if you can post it here. You have to ZIP it first if you want to attach it directly.