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How To Upload Your Garmin Workout During the Outage

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For the last 18 or so hours, Garmin.com has been unavailable. And, if we know anything about endurance sports – it’s that if a workout isn’t uploaded to Strava, it definitely didn’t happen. So, I’m here to help you get the Kudos you deserve.

Now of course, there’s rumors and speculation out there on the cause of Garmin’s outage, none of it is concrete (and none of it from Garmin, except to say they’re down – totally down). What is concrete though is the fact that Garmin and the entire platform is down. Dead-down. Totally unresponsive like your legs the day after a marathon. Ultimately, every company out there has their ‘Oh snap’ sized outage. No matter how big or small, it eventually happens. For Garmin, today was eventually.

The good news though is that if there’s one thing to give Garmin credit for here, it’s that *EVERY* Garmin wearable, bike computer, hiking handheld, and so on, can be plugged into any computer and easily uploaded to any site you want. Be it Strava, TrainingPeaks, Myspace, or even MapMyRun. And, if you were around this block a few years ago before Bluetooth in watches – you might even still remember how to do it.

I note this because not all wearables actually support using a computer during an outage. In fact, surprisingly few do (such as not Polar, Suunto, Fitbit, COROS, and more). Whereas most bike computers do (including Wahoo, Lezyne, Stages, Sigma, and Hammerhead). I’ve never really understood why wearable companies are so against it, whereas bike computer companies do it just fine.

In any case, like Garmin.com, that’s neither here nor there. So, let’s get your workout up to Strava.

Note: For those with much older FR310XT, FR910XT, and some of the FR405/410 models, you can still do things locally, but you need slightly different instructions. See this comment here in the comments section, which outlines the steps. There’s a few variants of how you can do this, none of which is hard. Both variants are outlined below.

Update: Unrelated to this post (but in case people are ending up here looking for a solution), some people have reported issues where their Garmin won’t save activities anymore. This is both related and unrelated to the outage issue. Essentially the pattern is all those people had 199 activities on their units. and it turns out that behind the scenes Garmin Connect was clearing out the older activities to make room for the next one when it synced. But with that piece not online, the garbage man didn’t clear it out. To remedy this, simply move a chunk (or all) of the files in the ‘Activities’ folder to your computer. It’s the same folder this entire post is about down below in each section, so you can just follow those steps and simply remove the older activities (which have undoubtedly synced long ago).

From a Windows PC:

First, find the cable. Undoubtedly you know where that is, since it’s what you charge your Garmin with. However, if you have a Garmin Edge device which uses micro-USB (if newer) or mini-USB (if older), just be sure that if it’s not the Garmin cable (which are literally labeled with ‘Garmin’ at the end), that it’s a data transfer cable and not just a charging-only cable. I’ve got plenty of micro-USB cables that are charge-only, and they won’t work. In short, if the device doesn’t show up in your computer, then you’ve got a charge-only cable.

Step 1: Plug the device in: This is simple. It’ll automatically turn on, wait a few seconds.

Step 2A: (non-Music devices) Open Windows Explorer: For this step, I’m just showing you where the file is, before we actually upload it. It’s a practice run. Once your Garmin device shows up, it’ll usually have a Garmin icon and a drive letter. Inside that, you’ll find a folder called ‘Garmin’, and then another folder called ‘Activities’. Within that, if you sort by date modified, you’ll find a bunch of files. Your file is the one dated today, or, if not dated like a normal file, then it’ll be the most recent one.

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Step 2B: (Music devices) Open Windows Explorer: In the case of music-enabled devices (like a Garmin Forerunner 245/645 Music, Forerunner 945, Fenix 5 Plus Series, Fenix 6 Pro Series, Vivoactive 3 Music, Vivoactive 4, Venu, etc…), these will show up slightly differently. You’ll see them listed by their full name without a drive letter, and then below that, you’ll need to go into the ‘Primary’ folder, and then the ‘Garmin’, then ‘Activity’ folders to find your activity file.

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Step 3: Upload the file: Now, navigate over to your platform of choice, and choose the file to upload. For this example, I’ll use Strava.  In the upper right corner, select the drop-down “+” icon, and then choose ‘Upload activity’.

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Step 4: Choose to Upload File: Now, simply hit ‘Choose Files’:

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Step 5: Upload the file: That’ll pop-open a dialog box, which allows you to choose the file. Navigate back to the same place as before. Pro Tip: If you still have that Windows Explorer window open from before, then you can click on your file and select ‘Copy’, and then paste it into the File Name spot below and it’ll find it automatically. Either way, hit ‘Open’.

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And with that – you’re done! Your workout is now available and good to go and available on Strava! In a few seconds you’ll be able to edit all the usual fields and save it:

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Rinse, repeat for any other workouts during the outage (especially if this thing lasts a while).

From a Mac:

First, find the cable. Undoubtedly you know where that is, since it’s what you charge your Garmin with. However, if you have a Garmin Edge device which uses micro-USB (if newer) or mini-USB (if older), just be sure that if it’s not the Garmin cable (which are literally labeled with ‘Garmin’ at the end), that it’s a data transfer cable and not just a charging-only cable. I’ve got plenty of micro-USB cables that are charge-only, and they won’t work. In short, if the device doesn’t show up in your computer, then you’ve got a charge-only cable.

And, if you need a dongle to connect to USB-C, then undoubtedly you know where that is. It’s probably attached to your Mac, because you still need that thing every day.

Step 1: Plug the device in (unless it’s a music-enabled watch, then skip to Step 2B): This is simple. It’ll automatically turn on, wait a few seconds.

Step 2A: (non-Music device) Open Finder: For this step, I’m just showing you where the file is, before we actually upload it. It’s a practice run. Once your Garmin device shows up, it’ll usually be under ‘Locations’ and just say ‘GARMIN’. Inside that, you’ll find a folder also called ‘Garmin’, and then another folder called ‘Activities’. Within that, if you sort by date modified, you’ll find a bunch of files. Your file is the one dated today, or, if not dated like a normal file, then it’ll be the most recent one.

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Step 2B: (Music devices only) Install Android File Transfer: In the case of music-enabled devices (like a Garmin Forerunner 245/645 Music, Forerunner 945, Fenix 5 Plus Series, Fenix 6 Pro Series, Vivoactive 3 Music, Vivoactive 4, Venu, etc…), these will show up slightly differently.

That’s because the Garmin wearables are in MTP mode, which is great for music, but sucky for accessing the normal files. You’ll need to install a little (and crazy-widely used) utility called ‘Android File Transfer’, as well, and then close/quit Garmin Express if you have it installed/running on your Mac (it’ll block access otherwise). Normally this utility is used to allow Macs to connect to Android phones. But works here well.

Once you’ve got it installed, open it up (again, remember to fully close Garmin Express first), and then plug in your Garmin device. It’ll show up just like below. Then, simply navigate to the Garmin > Activities folder within that to find the file.

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Step 3: Upload the file: Now, navigate over to your platform of choice, and choose the file to upload. For this example, I’ll use Strava.  In the upper right corner, select the drop-down “+” icon, and then choose ‘Upload activity’.

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Step 4: Choose to Upload File: Now, simply hit ‘Choose Files’ (you may need to first select ‘File’ from the left side):

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Step 5: Upload the file: That’ll pop-open a dialog box, which allows you to choose the file. Navigate back to the same place as before. Again, you’re going to Garmin > Activities, and looking for the most recent file, updated today, hit ‘Open’.

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And with that – you’re done! Your workout is now available and good to go and available on Strava! In a few seconds you’ll be able to edit all the usual fields and save it:

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Rinse, repeat for any other workouts during the outage (especially if this thing lasts a while).

Wrap up!

Ok, with that – good luck! Note, there’s no method available to get things like steps, distance walked, or anything else onto other platforms (never really was, save some corporate wellness programs). That data is actually sitting on your watch in little .FIT files, but by itself it won’t sync without Garmin Connect being online. And given that’s not online, you’re not getting that data.

Fear not though – once Garmin.com is back up, that data will simply flow over to your account.

Also – don’t worry about duplicates on Strava. It’s smart enough to easily detect a duplicate file, and so when Garmin eventually syncs your workouts behind the scenes, it just discards duplicate files. This is a feature I ‘test’ every single day. So it works pretty darn well.

With that – thanks for reading!

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439 Comments

  1. Emily Wymer

    Hey, was waiting for your post on this! Me and my mum have tried to connect ours – her 645 connected to the ipad fine but my 945 didn’t even show up. Is that COs it’s an iPad not laptop or is there a way for me to get my runs up? I don’t have access to any other tech for the next few days. Thanks!

    • Florian

      Unfortunately you’re out of luck with the 945. It’s because Garmin changed how the watches communicate when connected via cable. Even on a Mac you need extra software to access the file system on the 945.

    • Fabio

      On Windows you don’t need any extra software to access forerunner 945. The procedure discussed in the article worked for me

    • Phil Stone

      You can upload from an IPad Pro – I’ve just tested it and can fully browse my Edge 830 from the Files app without any third party support.

    • Florian

      That’s because the Edge devices still support access as a Mass Storage Mode (acts like a USB stick). This isn’t the case for watches that support music (like the 945). These only use the Media Transfer Protocol. That’s why you can’t access them via iOS and need extra software on MacOS (Windows has the MTP built in, so nothing extra is required).

    • Kay

      Saw the comment about the 945 – is that the same for the 935?

    • dirtwolf

      935 connects as a mass storage device so this method will work, 945 may work differently as someone else said but i believe the MTP instead of mass storage thing is only for the newer watches that are music enabled but others probably can confirm that.

  2. Hi,

    greetings from Germany. While we recorded our velohome podcast we were asking ourselves, who is better preparde for this kind of attack, Wahoo or Garmin? Or in other words, if you got the workaround for an upload, would the same work for wahoo as well?
    And generally spoken, which one to choose in this kind of infrastructure apocalypse…

    • In this case, both would be equal.

    • This is what i thought so as well.
      Cheers
      Christian

    • Fabio

      Actually I was always under the impression that Wahoo is offloading the user credentials for the third party site to the device itself, so your device would upload to Strava and the other configured third party sites directly. If that’s the case, Wahoo devices would just work in an equivalent situation.

      Could you drop them the question? It’s an interesting design decision.

    • Simon

      My Wahoo would continue to work just fine even if they went out of business tomorrow. The only thing I would lose out on would be updates.

      Now you should be questioning whether it’s a good idea to own a product that a company can choose to end support for at a whim and you’d be out of luck.

      This is coming from a former Garmin owner who got fed up with their dumpster fire of an ecosystem and has never been happier to ditch an expensive piece of tech.

  3. Le cycliste

    Thanks for the proactive help.

    I am using a mac and Fenix 6 Pro Solar.

    Closed Garmin Express. Installed android file transfer. Watch is plugged in via USB.

    I receive pop up message “No android device found”

    Any thoughts?

    cheers.

  4. JP

    Thanks for the post. I don’t see how to do this with the Garmin Forerunner 920XT though. It syncs to Garmin Connect with an ANT+ connector in the USB port and it doesn’t show up in Windows Explorer. And the charger seems to be just a charger with the two pin clip on it. Thanks.

    • The 920XT comes with a cable that you can download direct from. Are you thinking of the 910XT?

    • Oh, and if it’s a 910XT, then those are actually local as well in a directory:

      On Windows:
      ProgramData\Garmin\GarminConnect\\FIT_TYPE_4

    • JP

      Oh yes my bad, it’s the 910XT. The file are in that ProgramData folder, but only files that have already been synced to Connect. Todays run insn’t there. The watch tries to sync, but Garmin Express gives a communication error with their server and doesn’t retrieve the fit file from the watch.

    • Bob F

      Hi … I’m experiencing the same issue as JP, except with a 310XT (yeah, I know it’s old, but it’s been a great device for me). Today’s run is not showing up in \ProgramData\Garmin\GarminConnect\\FIT_TYPE_4. I guess I’m not sure if the watch syncing is failing or the FIT_TYPE_4 folder only shows the FIT files that have been uploaded to GarminConnect. Any suggestions welcome.

    • Leo

      As others have pointed out, there’s no way to upload 910XT files to your computer right now, as the USB cable is just a charger and Garmin Express needs internet access & working servers to download activities from your 910XT to your computer. Now it just gives a “Request Error. Sorry, we are having problems communicating with our servers” message. Files in the directory above are just old activities from before this armageddon. Good to know that there seem to be third party apps to transfer 910XT files, according to comments below.

    • Duncan Tindall

      There’s an app you can use for androd phones that have an ANT+ chip built in. Uploader for garmin. This gives you the *.fit file that then you can manually upload to strave, TP, etc.

    • Dionne DeGourville

      Hi when I plug 920xt into iPad I don’t see it.. does that mean its only a charging cable and wont work? Thank you

    • TMJ

      910xt user here, no recent files in that location(seems to need a connection to Garmin Servers before uploading a local copy of the data?), but I found a workaround using Ant Agent. I added the steps I took in Reply to a message from FOO in the thread…

  5. chris

    The fact that this fully-offline data transfer is possible is the primary reason I switched back to garmin from suunto. Online services will always have outages, sometimes permanently. I don’t want to be beholden to a single service to use my hardware.

    Do you know if the other manufacturers support offline data transfer like this? Coros? Polar?

    • Jeffrey F.

      Bryton, like Garmin, can be used completely locally, with no Internet. Connect via USB and copy FIT file over.

      Polar, on the other hand, even though it can be connected to your computer via USB, offers no local access. If you don’t have an Internet connection, or their servers are down, it’s a little brick.

    • Florian

      In the realm of bike computers I know that Wahoo files can be offloaded in the same way to Garmin (via MTP).

  6. Justin

    For anyone still using a 310XT or similar devices, you cannot connect via a cable but I’ve had good luck using ANTFS-CLI (for Mac/Linux). It uses the ANT+ stick to bypass Garmin’s servers and download a FIT file directly to your computer. Using it does require a little knowledge of the command prompt.

    • Garmin Express (and ANT Agent) before it, keeps a copy locally. With Garmin express it should be at:

      ProgramData\Garmin\GarminConnect\\FIT_TYPE_4

      Or, for all platforms this article shows exactly where for the much older devices:

      link to runalyze.com

    • Jon-Erik

      Hi, I have a 910XT, but I have no knowledge of the command prompt. Do you have a walkthrough or step-by-step instructions on how to do this?

  7. RSTL13

    Oh the humanity! I can only view my steps and body battery on my tiny little watch face for a while…

    Serious question for you though…

    Because Wahoo hasn’t implemented broadcasting on their flagship product (yet), I have to give Zwift permission to upload to Garmin to get Zwift workouts in the Garmin logs. With Garmin being down, will these activities be able to be manually pushed later when Garmin is back up? And how would that work?

    Of course I chose today of all days to do another FTP test and wanted to compare my power curve…

    • RSTL13

      Nevermind. I think I recall… you can open the Zwift file on your PC and go to connect’s website to upload the file. Crisis averted!

  8. Sam

    This outage is longer than usual. I hope little Bobby Tables didnt try to register an account 😉 link to xkcd.com

  9. Mike S.

    I did a run last night. I saw the activity on the Connect home screen but couldn’t see any details. But the run showed up on Strava just fine. I wonder if I got it in right when the outage started.

    I assume we can continue to record activities as normal.

  10. MR JOHN AIREY

    I have worked in IT long enough to know that it is not true that every company will have total failure like the one that has happened to Garmin.

    Things like this happen because of either a lack of due diligence (eg no backups and backups not tested), putting all your eggs in one IT basket (to save money) or making skilled staff redundant (again to save money). It could even be all three.

    Any decent company would avoid these things.

    • I didn’t say a total failure – I said a major outage.

      (Assuming this isn’t ransomware)

      There’s plenty of cases that don’t fit into the items in your second line. And any of the biggest and smartest/best tech and otherwise companies in the world can demonstrate it. When systems get big and complex enough, eventually there’s edge cases or combinations of scenarios that simply can’t be fathomed until they happen.

      And having worked in IT in some of the most complex systems in the world at some of the largest scale in the world, it’s inaccurate to say it’s just a case of having more backups or testing more.

    • dan

      I believe the total failure comment refers to the fact they lost voice, email, and web services. That is nuts.

    • Matthias

      I read somewhere[tm] that it’s indeed ransomware. Critical infrastructure on Windows does that to you.
      Then again, you only need to take a look at their FIT SDK – if this is the quality of code they release to the public, I don’t want to know what their shameful dusty corners (that indeed every company older than a few years has) look like.

    • Pete

      Fully agree with you DC. Security Analyst here and can tell you that this kind of outage can happen to ANY company.

    • Dan G

      I think Garmin turned off their support channels because they would just be overwhelmed, when there’s no support to offer anyway.

    • Miz

      Losing phone, chat, email for multiple days makes this look incredibly serious.

    • Simon

      There are no skilled staff at Garmin, trust me.

      Unless you count execs finding ways to release completely beta software and hardware to meet a deadline so they get a bonus a skill, then I guess there’s some.

    • CaveSAR

      John, I also work Tier 3 IT. I am the one who often finds the other side of 6 Sigma. 6 Sigma is 99.9999% reliable. Which mean that 0.0001% of the time stuff will fail.
      I am aware of one company that was hit by a firmware bug in their storage arrays that caused complete data loss. The array vendor couldn’t even recover these storage arrays – 100s of TB of data. It took this company a number of white knuckle 24 hr days to get their systems stablized. Nigel

    • davep

      Ransomware can corrupt the backups.

    • Not always. If the backups are on the same network then, yes, they can be corrupted just as easily as other servers on the network. But if the backups are offsite then the chances of that happening are pretty slim. If Garmin was smart then they kept all user data backed up daily offsite with intermittent hourly backups on top of that. I do that myself with websites I manage. So easy to compile a backup and push it someplace like Amazon S3. Just no excuse to not do it. From there, Garmin can reconstruct their servers using images of the server, code from offsite code repositories, and backups from offsite backup sources. My guess is that’s exactly what they had to do. And, with multiple servers running multiple services, they had to work to get all of them wiped and backup up at the same time. With ransomware like this, you can’t just do it server by server. Have to do it all at once. Probably effected a lot of workstations as well, which further complicates things.

  11. Andrew Weyl

    Polar watches like the Vantage M and M4xx series will sync via computer with Polar’s FlowSync. They wouldn’t sync if Polar’s system went down, but to say they’re Bluetooth only is incorrect

    • I didn’t say they were Bluetooth only, I specifically said: “not all wearables actually support using a computer during an outage”.

      As both Suunto and Polar have proven many times before, that breaks when there’s a Polar/Suunto site outage.

  12. Rui Pereira

    Any confirmation about what is the problem? Getting worried about possible data theft, card information for example…

    • Ron

      Ransomware

    • Nighthawk700

      Unofficially, seems to be ransomware. No official word from Garmin though. Source: link to zdnet.com

    • Neil Jones

      If you look at status.strava.com, uploads from Garmin dropped but were still happening intermittently, then there was a spike where it looked like it was working again before it totally flatlined. Wouldn’t this pattern contradict the ransomware theory? (Genuine question)

    • Eli

      Ransom ware might not have reached all the computers in the cluster and guessing Garmin has multiple clusters. Or they might have tried to restore a backup and then that failed

    • Eli

      Previous ZDNet link seems to not work.
      link to zdnet.com

    • usr

      “Wouldn’t this pattern contradict the ransomware theory? “

      I’d say that it perfectly matches a ransomware situation: first you try to clean it out with minimal interruption, system by system, then you lose a few rounds of whack-a-mole because it spreads back from still-compromised parts of your network to the parts you have just restored and eventually you accept that you won’t be able to recover without a full shutdown.

  13. giorgitd

    Ray…after I reported this to you many hours ago I decided to Google ‘Garmin outage’. Yikes! I had no idea at the time…

  14. Finlay

    I have connected my Garmin 735xt with cable to my MacBook Air. Watch is charging but “GARMIN” does not pop up under ‘Locations’ in the Finder. Any tips?

  15. Jarda

    “Fear not though – once Garmin.com is back up, that data will simply flow over to your account.”

    My experience from being offline for a while before (not Garmin’s fault, just being away from any signal) is that some data will get lost. It doesn’t seem that Fenix keeps more than one night of sleep tracking for example, so once it goes beyond the second day, there’s no coming back.

    Not a major loss. But it really makes me wonder why they can’t at least save the data to connect app locally.

    • Rob Wilkinson

      That’s a good point.

      @DC Rainmaker Do you know what the thresholds for different types of data, e.g. sleep tracking or steps, are in general? It seems like the primary assumption would be that the thresholds are dependent upon the storage space available in an individual device. However, are there some arbitrary thresholds like only storing a single night of sleep tracking data which @Jarda mentioned?

    • B. Meur

      What you say just tickles my mind. I went on vacation with my garmin watch and did not connect it to my phone until I went home (2 weeks later). I only had the cable to charge it. When I connected it to my phone, every activity (swimming, running, hiking, sleeping) was there on connect, even the hike at the middle of which my watch battery died (not the part after it was off, obviously). My understanding is that the watch hard drive stores the activities and garmin connect is only the smartphone app allowing to read the data and store it into Garmin’s servers. But maybe I have it wrong.

  16. Mark

    Imagine if Strava had this kind of outage…

  17. Christopher Campbell

    What is the maximum number of activities a fenix or edge will keep? In other words do I need to backup after each run or can I wait a few days/weeks?
    Thanks,
    Christopher

    • Paul S.

      Activities themselves are kept in individual FIT files in the Activities folder. You can have as many as the device will hold, which in the case of an Edge or Fenix that has maps is a lot, since they seem to require roughly 200-300k per hour. I’ve never removed an activity file from my Edge 830, so there’s a year+ worth of files (about 350), and plenty of room left. I occasionally back my 830 up, but only because I back everything up, not out of any real need (they’re all on Strava and Garmin Connect if it returns intact).

  18. Todd D Giorgio

    What happens if (speculation alert) this is really a ransomware attack, as some have suggested? Maybe all of your past data is … poof? Unless Garmin transfers some bitcoin… Must be … err … interesting in Olathe tonight.

    • Jarda

      I would really assume Garmin has backups they can use. But restoring data from backup is a huge hassle and they may be somehow out of date. I would not expect all historic data to be lost, though there may be some loss.

    • giorgitd

      Well, sure, but unless the backups are firewalled from the rest of the network, the hackers control those, too. Why would anyone pay the ransom if the backups were accessible? Many victimized institutions have paid up because their computers and backups were under the control of the ransomware burgers.

    • Jarda

      I meant off-site backups. Why pay? Because backups don’t always include most recent data. Because it’s a PITA to restore them and can take days and if you’re ie. a bank, this could be a huge issue to go offline for a week. Downtime may easily cost more than the ransom. It’s a huge issue for Garmin too, but even if they have to be down for a week, they’ll probably survive.

    • giorgitd

      The physical location is irrelevant here. If they own the primary computers and those are connection to the ”remote” backups, the hackers own those, too. The only way the backups could be protected from this attack (assuming ransomware) is if there is no login info for the backup machines on the main computers. Unlikely. The only hope is that the backup logins are encrypted in a way that makes them inaccessible to a rooted device (very unlikely) or the backups are somehow completely disconnected from the main network. Think about this…suppose that I could login to your computer as you. If have the save access to the backup as you do. And you do have access to your own backup, right?

    • giorgitd

      Ugh *I have the same access to the backups as you do.* Stupid autocorrect.

    • Jarda

      Off-site also because there’s no direct connection to them. You create snapshot of your data that cannot be modified from the primary network in any way. These were traditionally done on tapes and then physically moved away. Today, you could use something like AWS or different provider that’s still internet connected, but it’s separated by its own firewalls and technology, so ransomware infestation would not be able to spread there. I mean, the whole point of backup is to make sure not only natural disaster, but also human disaster cannot wipe all your data. If everything is connected to one network and can be just wiped out or encrypted directly, that’s not a backup.

  19. Cindy Weisenfelder

    Thank you for always being the voice of reason and showing us the way. You are appreciated!

  20. Robert R Champion

    This is a great column

    • Robert Lerner

      I hope they recover soon, and that the data is intact, I would hope they offer a tool to export all of the data, so i can have a copy locally.

      In addition, i hope they have a solid Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plan.

    • The ability to download all your data from Garmin has been there for some time. Well, before yesterday, but you get what I mean. Have a poke around when they’re back up and running.

  21. roland howard

    I wonder how Strava feel about it? Garmin is an important automated feed just when they have gone out on a limb and started charging. On the other hand, they are a competitor.

  22. KW

    Just curious if Garmin Pay is also affected or can it work offline – I don’t have device that supports it. On that note, does Garmin store financial details associated with this service on their server?

    • Rob Wilkinson

      I can confirm that Garmin Pay – in my case, from a Fenix 5 Plus – continues to work.

    • Mandy

      Me not. That’s why I‘m back using my Apple Watch.
      I should have never trusted a easy watch company about security. Apple has much more experience than Garmin

    • Chris Cooper

      I had a few nefarious charges on my account today. I deactivated my card on Garmin Pay through my bank and am getting a new card. May be overkill but hopefully this way I don’t have to add to my worries. It seems like NFC payment systems like Garmin Pay should be OK, but I’m only going on what I’ve read and am not an expert on what info can/can’t be pulled by a hack. Curious to know if anyone else has experienced similar; could be completely unrelated.

    • I wouldn’t expect any tie-in there. The card details aren’t stored on the device or on Garmin servers. They’re stored with the payment processor company and then your device only (not Garmin Connect), has a token.

    • Chris Cooper

      Thanks for following up, even though my concern was way outside the scope of the original conversation! Very helpful to get feedback from those who know much more than I. I don’t want to cause any unnecessary trouble for Garmin as they’re already in enough as it is.

  23. Sam

    A common reaction to malware/ransomware on a corporate network is to pull the plug, either figuratively with firewalls or often literally pulling the power and/or network cables. If the computer/server is off it cant get infected, or if it’s isolated it cant spread. Once a point of entry is located and fixed a team comes through and one at a time has to bring each system back online isolated, verify clean or rebuild, fix/restore whatever is broken, then put it back in production. If ransomware did in fact take out Garmin then I have two new devices still in the return period going back, but I suspect/hope they preemptively shut themselves down to deal with the issue. This is the time when offline backups and good documentation will save you. Test your backups and someone buy those people some coffee!

  24. Jakub Rehacek

    Make sure you do not open Garmin Express before connecting the Garmin to your PC.
    On my Mac I did that. All activities, custom watch faces, and custom apps were deleted from my 935.
    Folders are empty.
    My todays run was definitely saved and was there in the history, before I connected to the PC.
    🙁

    • Garmin Express shouldn’t have done that. Please update your antivirus software and perform a thorough scan. It’s probably nothing, but I live in fear of the day when somebody finds a way to use cloud-connected devices for an effective supply chain attack.

    • Sev Roberts

      Same thing happened to my 735XT on Windows with Garmin Express running ? – although luckily for me I had managed to copy my recent unsync’d activities from the activity folder and upload to Strava before Express stomped all over it.
      But yes, it cleared out my activities folder, and removed all my Connect IQ custom widgets, data fields and Clock Face, so as far as I can see I’m stuck with the out of the box clock face and data fields until/unless Garmin services are restored.

    • Lonely unicron

      I tried to find these fit files with a recovery software but the .fit file was corrupted.

      Has anyone else had similar issues? Is there a way to fix the corrupt .fit file?

    • Matthew

      Unfortunately I had garmin express open on Thursday morning UK time and my fenix 3 was wiped completely – including the system software. Taking it out of the charge cradle, it was bricked. The only thing it does now is to boot to a diagnostic mode with unresponsive buttons. I can reboot but not reset and the PC will no longer see it as a drive.

  25. tom

    Nice of you to do this. Thank you.

  26. Art

    Does anyone have the issue when a lot of your .fit files are just 0 bytes?
    Any ideas on how to fix it?

  27. Chrisgg

    That’s brilliant DC! I didn’t realise I could upload the file from my PC straight to Strava without needing the Garmin website. Problem solved.

  28. Pawel

    For anyone using legend, I mean 310XT, if you have Android smartphone with ANT+ on board, you don’t need cable. In fact there’s no data cable for this Forerunner ;-). However you can use ST Uploader (from Google Play Store) and then export your workout almost anywhere.

  29. I’m riding every day of 2020 so thanks for the reminder of how to get it onto Strava….otherwise it never happened!

  30. Kevin

    If you’re not near a desktop/laptop, and you have a USB On-The-Go adaptor, you can transfer the .fit file directly to your Android phone. From here you just manually upload it to the Strava website.

  31. Foo

    Any suggestions how to download from a 910XT? I can’t get my PC to recognize it as an external device, only seems to charge by USB.

    • Pawel

      Foo, 910XT is supported by ST Uploader. If you can, try this method.

    • Foo

      Thanks for the link. Looks like it is possible to retreive the 910xt’s files with mobile phone, OTG connector and the ST Uploader app, I will wait and let this play out before buying connecter and app, but very good to see that it is possible and the 910xt is not bricked should connect not return. Still wish Garmin would allow to browse the watch, drag and drop, like many of their other products, to not have this is ridiculous.

    • TMJ

      I had this problem but managed to get into the 910xt data the following way using windows:-

      1. Forget Garmin Express

      2. Download ‘Ant Agent’ application (I think this is legacy unsupported Garmin software, which was the precursor to Garmin Express) from:-
      link to garmin-ant-agent.informer.com
      **This is at your risk, it is not an official Garmin site** – I ran it though virus checking software & it passed, but I am not a geek.

      3. I used the original dongle that came with the 910xt, just in case the newer / smaller dongle I have might cause compatibility problems

      4. Make sure your 910xt is set-up to pair:-
      – > Settings
      – > System
      – > Data Transfer
      – > Enabled = ‘Yes’ & Pairing = ‘On’

      5. Open Ant Agent (it is fiddly) – look for the icon that looks like mickey mouse in the icon tray (see screenshot)

      – > RIGHT CLICK on it
      – > Devices settings, the DESELECT the checkbox ‘Send my data to Garmin Connect’
      – > Click ok (box will close)
      – > Right click again on the mickey mouse icon, this time click the top option ‘Open ANT AGENT’

      Mine started pairing at this point, the files on the watch were saved to the following place:-
      – Copy & paste the below into an explorer window:

      %appdata%\Garmin\Devices

      I could then see my device name (a 10 digit number), I only have one device, I guess if you have more there would be one folder per device.

      – Click on the device folder, then the ‘Activities’ folder, in there were all the files (including any that had previously been imported via express)

      Note the file name is prefix by date ‘yyyymmdd’ meaning I could find my file from yesterday and import into Strava via the file upload!

      Good luck.

    • Foo

      Thanks for the detailed reply!

    • c-three

      Thanks a bunch for figuring this out and sharing! The internet at its best.

    • Matt King

      @TMJ – you’re my hero! Thanks mate!

    • Michael W Dodson

      Great job TMJ!!!
      I worked perfectly with my 910XT and Windows 10 once I followed your instructions correctly… Also,I used the newer dongle without any issue.

  32. Marc S

    Hi,

    If I dit a multisport activity (ie a swimrun in my case), how does it works?

    I don’t know if is related to the poor implementation of multisport activity in Strava, but I’ve only one fit file which once uploaded corresponds only to the first part of the activity. Is there any way to have other swim/run segments?

    • Marc S.

      I correct myself. It seems than only uploads the very first segment of the activity, but it actually uploads the whole thing in the right way.

  33. Leo

    “Also – don’t worry about duplicates on Strava.”

    Great, you’ve answered my question even before I asked it!

  34. Rick

    “So, I’m here to help you get the Kudos you deserve.” – Rainmaker – a hero we do not deserve 😀

  35. If you’re a Mac user and have access to a Windows VM then that can be used in place of Android File Transfer to access data on a music enabled Garmin device. I went that way when I became suspicious of AFT – why does it need to auto-start each time I reboot my Mac, and why does it keep running when I tell it to quit?

    • Neil Jones

      Also, if you’re using Mac OS11 (Big Sur) beta, I previously found that AFT was no longer working properly on the first beta. I’m not sure if this is still the case on later betas though. I hope there’s no compatibility issue with AFT/Big Sur going forward as Google stopped development on it years ago.

    • Paul S.

      That’s not good news. We know that there’s about to be a giant change, to Apple Silicon, and who knows how well the new Rosetta will work? It’s about time Apple natively supports MTP in the Finder.

    • Neil Jones

      Just tried Android File Transfer again with beta 3 of Big Sur, and it’s still not detecting my Marq. I’ve killed any potentially conflicting processes (including GC) as far as I can tell but still no dice. It would be interesting to hear if anyone has had any luck with AFT and Big Sur.

  36. ReHMn

    …I think there was a 10pt badge for hacking Garmin main site “What a heck”, 20pt badge for Connect “Dis-Connect” and 30pt for disabling any call center “Burning bridges”…Somebody needed those points to step one level up.

  37. Drew Holt

    Awesome, thanks DC

  38. Miro

    Should we expect duplicates ones Garmin is up & running and is sending waves of data to third parties?

  39. Kurt

    Thanks for the instructions. Appreciated.

  40. Esteban

    Oh back to the good old days…. Btw does trainingpeaks also check for double uploads? Cheers

  41. Sharon

    This is a helpful article – thank you!
    Sadly, I can’t get my MacBook to see my Fenix 5s when connected by cable. I get an error saying that the USB device can’t be seen because it is draining the battery (even though it is fully charged).
    Has anyone seen this and know a fix?

  42. Neil Jones

    I wonder if there’s ever been a post-incident review following a customer-facing IT outage anywhere where one of the top three findings for “Things we must do better next time” hasn’t been customer communication? Yet here we are again…

    • Kayode

      Hey @Neil, I work as a UX Designer and from my experience most companies do comprehensive reviews when outages happen, but as you noted, where they fail is keeping the customers informed and up to date. I first noticed a Gamin outage on Fri 18 Jul and tweeted Garmin with a screenshot, they replied Wed 22 (they didn’t apologise). I worked for a dog food company a year ago, they had an error on their website and contacted over 50,000 affected customers by email or phone within 48hrs (the majority within 24hrs). They didn’t wait for the customers to complain or notice the error, needless to say the customers were really impressed.

    • Craig Powell

      Could not agree more. Our household are long time Garmin users (seven devices over time – ETREX, various watches, EDGE 520) and, despite all the moaning and criticism I have seen on the web over many years, I generally find the devices and software pretty reliable. I suspect that the rumours that this was some kind of attack on Garmin will likely turn out to be true and I feel bad for their technical teams who have to identify and correct whatever it is that has gone so badly wrong. However, the basic failure in communication is a pretty abysmal example of corporate clumsiness. It is really not that hard to do this properly and yet no, it seems beyond whoever is in charge of this at Garmin.

    • Andrew Cushen

      I agree in principal and yet…Garmin’s *entire network* seems to be down, including their phone systems. So how do they call customers from broken phones? Or send emails when the email servers are down? When they can’t access their customer records so they don’t know what phone numbers to call or email addresses to send to? Clearly they could have done a better job on Twitter, though. “we’re down, try back soon” is really not enough.

    • Andrew Cushen

      ugh. Auto-incorrect strikes again. ‘principle”, not “principal”

    • @Andrew Cushen – They can release a proper statement on Twitter, they can use TV News… I don’t want to belabour the point listing every means available to them. The challenge with most companies (from my experience) is they feel admitting a problem is a sign of weakness and try to use more palatable language which confuses the customers (what is an outage? when will services be back online etc). I actually think people may be more undersanding if they admit they were attacked by hackers (ransomeware) and are doing everything to restore services and post alternative ways to continue with their service. Every Financial company I’ve worked for has an emmergency plan for such, including complete loss of computing.

  43. Great help.. thanks for sharing.

  44. Nigel Scott

    Thanks Ray for hsaring – its easy when you know or remember how 🙂

  45. Lukasz

    What I struggle with is the structure trainings. I set them up in the web and transfer them to the bike computer/watch. Any idea for the workaround here?

  46. Thach Huynh

    Thanks for this. I’ve uploaded my runs from my watch but haven’t been able to upload my ride, on the Edge 520. When I connect the unit to the PC the directory for the Garmin unit doesn’t come up. I’ve tried different cables and also tried my wife’s 130 but no luck. Do you know why this happens? Tom

  47. Sukhpreet

    Hi, the activity folder on my computer is empty and I have lost all the activities stored on my Garmin Forerunner 235. The records, steps is still there but have lost all the data wrt activities. Any inputs ?

    • Kaspars

      I have same situation with my FR 235. I noted that Garmin Express always uploads FIT files to Garmin Connect and afterwards delete from FR 235 device. So I uninstalled Garmin Express. I future I will afraid about new issues and plan do this job manually without Garmin Express. Also, if Garmin Express is opened in my PC (Win8) more than 5 minutes, it can hang up PC or make a restart.

      I hope after outage Garmin cleans mess with Garmin Express.

  48. Rolf-Arne

    If you have multiple FIT-files you need to upload, you can, at least in Strava, hold the ctrl-button on your keyboard and select all the files you want to sync.

  49. Nigel Taylor

    In reverse, how/where do I upload a course to the watch so that I don’t get lost when I hit a planned new trail route in the morning!?

    • Kevin

      Generate the course in your tool of choice and then export the gpx. Place the gpx file into the NEWFILES folder on your watch and restart you watch.

    • Kevin

      *your watch.

    • Jarda

      I had a good luck using Garmin Explore phone app with my Fenix. It will open GPX file and you can then add it to collection that is synchronized to the watch via Bluetooth. Unlike Garmin Connect, Garmin Explore is designed to work offline, though I am not sure if you can set it up without Garmin Connect being up. I had it installed from before. It’s also a bit non-intuitive – it’s using Routes/Tracks paradigm from inReach devices, but those then synchronize as Courses to Garmin watch.

    • Jarda

      This works great too, thanks!

    • Marcel

      Nope. You need to login, doesn’t work.

  50. Kristof

    Hi Ray, my forerunner 735xt doesn’t show up in my windows 10 explorer. It’s like it’s not there. Used the USB cable that came with the forerunner. My garmin edge 520 shows no problem. Anything I’m missing here?

    • Brian Frost

      Same thing for me, but with fenix 5 plus. Does not show up on Windows or Mac. Just doesn’t show up! Super frustrating!

    • Susan V Brooks

      I believe the issue is that the cable between my Garmin 235 and computer is a “charge only” cable. So I find nothing to download activities. IF anyone knows where I could find a cable that would work (it has to have the clip to attach to my watch and the other end is a USB thingy.) I’d love to be able to download my activity for a virtual race. And Virtual Boston is coming up! Must I buy a new non Garmin watch for this event???????

    • Phil

      Same for me, but the really strange thing is that I got it to work ONCE yesterday. I believe what I did yesterday was shut down the watch by holding the Light button for 10 seconds or so, then I plugged it in and it shows a little USB mass storage device icon. I’m doing the same thing today and even though I see the icon, the device is missing in Windows Explorer. I know it’s possible, but it seems to fail almost every time (or there’s some nuance I’m missing).

  51. Ivana

    I had no doubt that Ray would be here for us, to assuage our anxieties and answer any questions before we even posed them (yay for the reply on duplicates!). Thank you for always being by our side!

  52. Peter

    2020 need screenshots how to connect a USB drive and copy *.fit files from Activities folder. Feels like a car driver, who need instructions how to power on a car…

    • Neil Jones

      I think you’re overestimating the overlap of fitness device users and techy people. Many of my Strava connections’ knowledge of computers goes about as for as WWW, MS Office and email.

    • Paul S.

      You’ve never rented a late model car, have you. Figuring out how to get the damn thing started isn’t always easy…

  53. Jeffrey Meade

    #2020problems….remember when this was the standard upload procedure for all devices? Or still is for those rocking the Edge 500 ?

  54. Tom Kaufman

    When I saw the system was down, I didn’t even bother with the interwebs — of course Ray has the story and solution. Thanks as always, very much appreciated. Sixty seconds later, everything uploaded as needed. Perfect.

    This is such a perfect complement to 2020. The world is ending, and we’re back to plugging in cables — micro USB at that! — and playing with file paths. Talk about primitive, that’s almost back to nature. Lovin’ the old school cool.

  55. Juan

    Hi DC, thanks for sheding a light on this.

    I was wondering if our passwords are safe and if we have to take some action and change them before it’s too late.
    The site isn’t working so no idea if this can be done or what…
    Maybe changing them as soon as the site comes back up?

    • You should only worry about your Garmin password(s) if you use the same password everywhere else. And you wouldn’t do that … would you?

  56. William Fields Jr

    Hmmm given the fact that China has been ramping up there cyber attacks against the US i some how feel that this will come out to being an attack by them yet again and they need to be put in their place.

    • Paul S.

      That was my first thought as well, since Garmin is a US/Taiwan company. But there are plenty of script kiddies in the world, so who knows at this point.

    • Matthias

      If this was some piece of essential public infrastructure, the feeling would deserve a second look, but Garmin, srsly? Don’t go by your feelz.

  57. Ladislav Malek

    Did Garmin ever hear about concepts such as BACKUP and REDUNDANCY? I thought they were involved in aviation industry … OMG!!!

    • Andrew Cushen

      If this is truly a ransomware attack as reported, then those redundant systems and online backups are also encrypted by the attackers, and inaccessible to Garmin. First you must clean the affected systems, unless you have recent images of the entire system plus data. Offline backups—and even online backups, if they are available and not encrypted–take time to restore. Offline takes more, as you have to access them which may mean transporting a physical copy from the secure offline site to the data center(s). And very few companies can afford to keep a large enough technical staff to simultaneously work on all servers. Garmin is not alone in this, some of the biggest companies in the world have had outages like this. Hospitals have had to pay ransom to get back their patient records etc.

  58. Daniel

    You can upload activities from Coros watch too using a computer, albeit not directly. From the Coros app on your phone you can export activities in eg .fit files, without being connected to the Coros site. If you then want to upload that activity manually to Strava et all that works basically the same as described in this article, but of course you need at least local network/wifi to get the file to your computer first, eg via email or whatevs means you prefer as export option from the app (using “Files” on iOS for instance), in a similar scenario where Coros.com cloud would be down as Garmin.com is now.

    If you want to upload an activity from your computer to Coros cloud that option exists too. There is a login at Coros.com -> Support -> User login, then browse to Product (your watch) and a big red button “Workout History”, that take you to the final red button “Import data”, see picture. I’ve used it once or twice so it does work.

  59. Sarah J.

    Good Morning,
    I have a Garmin 645 music and use a Mac
    I have tried to use the android file transfer but keep getting the message no android device found
    Have any suggestions on how to make this work?
    Thank you

  60. mark wheeler

    It makes sense to me that this should get significant coverage. But why, when something similar happened to Wiggle just a few months back was this not discussed or worthy of an article?

    • Paul S.

      Because Wiggle isn’t a giant sports tech company with a site like Garmin Connect that lots of people reading here use daily? That’d be my guess. (I had to do a search to remind myself what Wiggle is.)

    • What Wiggle outage that took down tens of millions of devices?

      Sorry, I never heard about such an outage, nor have I heard about anyone complain about such a Wiggle outage. Nor can I found any article written anywhere about such an outage, or even a tweet about such an outage.

      I’m pretty sure if/when Wiggle had an issue, it didn’t take down what is likely tens of millions of devices. Seems a little bit different than what’s going on here.

      Unless I’m missing something?

    • mark wheeler

      This article may help from June 16, 2020: “No Wiggle room: Two weeks after angry bike shop customers report mystery orders on their accounts, firm confirms payment cards delinked”
      link to theregister.com

      Unlike the Garmin situation, real money was involved…

    • But that wasn’t a Wiggle outage, or even a Wiggle hack? It was people who had their credentials stolen outside of Wiggle, and the attackers simply grouped those peoples account details together to buy things all at once.

      In other words, while it’s unfortunate that people’s own computers were compromised, there was nothing hacked/etc on Wiggle.

  61. If we upload manually and Connect comes back online, will it duplicate our uploads to Strava and/or Map My Run?

  62. JT

    Same. I have a a Fenix 5 Plus and , even with Garmin Express closed – Android File Transfer will not find my watch no matter how many restarts of watch or computer.

    • Paul S.

      What else do you have running on your Mac that might interfere? Any “cleaners” or “anti-virus” software?

    • JT

      Nothing that I am aware of. Dug through security and privacy settings to see if something was blocking it, but every time I plug in the usb with my watch, AFT just pops up that it cannot connect to my device.

    • Paul S.

      Is Garmin Express running? Can Garmin Express see it? If GE can’t, something is wrong with the cable/USB port. If GE can, next thing I’d try is to quit Garmin Express entirely, including the background app. The easiest way is to select Quit using the little Garmin Express delta (triangle) in the menu bar and then tell it to quit entirely. Then try AFT again. My 5+ works fine with AFT on both my MacPro running something ancient I can’t remember at the moment (Sierra?) and my MacBook Pro running Catalina.

    • JT

      That was it! I had Express still running in the background even though I had quit the app. Thanks Paul. Appreciate the help!

    • Marcel

      I had no luck on two different macbooks, GE was not running, not even in the background, but then I used the ‘force stop’ screen to restart Finder, and suddenly there it is! 😀

  63. usr

    Some observations during the outage: tacx.com and thisisant.com (“Garmin Canada”) remain online. Minor insight into the state of subsidiary integration.

  64. Neil P

    You can connect some Suunto devices using an OTG cable and Ambit Connect on Android.
    I have been using this since Suunto’s own bluetooth app was so unreliable, took ages to download and crashed during important (long activity) downloads.

    Via OTG cable the download is 10 x quicker and reliable.
    Automatically syncs to Strava once you’ve given it permission.

  65. Ollie

    I find it absolutely incredible that a company of Garmin’s size aren’t giving updates about what has happened and when it will be resolved. A terse statement at the start and then no followups at all (that I’ve seen at least) beggars belief really.

    Even small companies that have been in similar situations have communicated better than this in my experience. Do Garmin not realise that it isn’t just the device that people are paying for when they purchase, it is the whole ecosystem? Certainly makes me wonder whether I really want to buy the Garmin 1030 head unit I’d been considering.

    Outage 101 is keep your customers informed!

    • Unfortunately, in an attack scenario – Outage 101 is ‘Don’t say anything’. This is done for lots of reasons, most notably not upsetting your attackers (or giving them hints about your next move), as well as for law enforcement reasons.

    • Ollie

      Thanks for the reply Ray.

      I’ve dealt with lots of these situations (I work in the field) and although I agree to a certain degree with what you are saying we have always gone with as full of a disclosure as we possibly can.

      I guess if you are as public as Garmin that may have some bearing on the situation but even so, a 12 hourly update saying yes there is still a problem and we anticipate it might go on for X amount longer is a bare minimum really IMO. Maybe it is because I don’t deal with companies who have a virtual monopoly in their sector and so are more worried about annoying their customers than their attackers!

    • Robert

      “The whole ecosystem” includes a USB cable, as far as I’m concerned. And that works just fine.

    • Gordon Freeman

      As a user I would appreciate some more information but I expect anything else that “yep it’s still going on” (which is what’s on their front page) would probably be vague or bs. A ransomware attack is essentially a virtual hostage situation, and when there’s a hostage crisis you don’t hear the police update you with “now we’re going to see if they accept 1M$” or “we expect this hostage situation is going to last until tomorrow 2pm”. You just know that they’re dealing with it and hope it goes well… I believe when Garmin has figured out with the attackers what they’re going to pay them then they’ll still have to figure out what they lost so they know how long it’s going to take to put everything back online.

      Actually I’m not too impressed by how the fact that it’s a ransomware got out – on social media! If my company was attacked in such a way I’d expect them to enforce very clear guidelines about who inside is meant to know what’s going on and how we’re expected to communicate to the outside world about it (I full expect private and public transparency after the crisis is over though).

    • Ollie

      I’m unable to look at thing such as my live heart beat in my GC app on my phone (my eyes aren’t good enough to see the tiny text on my Fenix screen!), I can’t see sleep from last night, I can’t see my historical health stuff etc. etc. None of that is going to be helped by a USB cable. It might be good enough for you but it isn’t for most users.

      I don’t care about Strava integration at all, as you say I can upload stuff manually if I really want, but at it stands the GC app is effectively useless without the back end cloud tier.

    • Neil Jones

      Even if they can get away with ignoring their customers, I’m surprised that shareholders haven’t demanded more communication, regardless of the reasons for Garmin’s silence. That said, GRMN stock doesn’t seem to reflect any market concerns over this yet.

    • DontGetTheCheese

      I’ve never been through one of these but it’s kind of a nightmare for me because I know we’re not ready where I work.

      But, a few thoughts. I’m sure law enforcement is there, I’m just not sure what value they actually add. They won’t catch the bad guys. They probably have limited advice and experience, c’mon, the FBI is the same organization that wants to weaken encryption. I guess, maybe, they’ve done these before?

      And, on the other end, this is an unmitigated disaster for Garmin. Forgot us, we’re just data, data we lived fine without even 10 years ago. Where the problem lies is in their flight segment. That’s scary as F if their whole system goes down. What about some poor bastard in the middle of nowhere whose in trouble frantically pushing the get-help-now button on his satellite device.

      Garmin is pretty half-assed in a lot of ways. Things don’t work, or work well, they get added to the software before it’s ready so the feature is there. Honestly, even the app is kind of meh in how it works in a lot of places. My experience with MARQ Athlete was absolutely miserable, so bad that I sold it.

      If this is what they’ve got behind the scenes, look out.

      I guess one last, last thought. For the first time in awhile, I’m wishing I had my AW. Their eco-system faces dozens of weak points like this, because everything you need is an app, and who knows what they do with your information (hi, MyFitnessPal) but this is could be an opening to sell more AW’s at the expense of Garmin.

    • DontGetTheCheese

      Crikey, one more.

      If this really is ransomware, they might be down for weeks depending on what they do. We’ve had cities be F’d up for months when they fought or didn’t pay. I can’t imagine Garmin doesn’t pay, they have to get things running, but I’d love to know how much they pay.

    • Great Expectations

      If your company was attacked, you would “expect” them to enforce clear guidelines…

      Your expectations will not line up with reality.

      In reality, “your company” is made up of people, and some of those people will want to share what’s going on.

      I’m not sure how big “your company” is, but a company as large as Garmin, which has a major presence in Taiwan, is certainly going to have at least one employee spilling the beans, which is exactly how we found out it is (likely) ransomware.

      “Your expectations” don’t matter in a situation like this. I “expect” that I will win the lottery and become a billionaire, but my “expectations” don’t matter.

  66. Akiva Wasser

    The Anker Micro-USB cables usually work.

    Also, you can browse your folders directly from the Strave Website without opening file explorer first.

  67. Kael Lucha

    I can’t seem to find Garmin>Activities anywhere on my MAC. I added a file called “ZXTRGEWX” which should be easy to find and it can not be found either. Any ideas?

    • Kael Lucha

      oops, forgot to say I’m using a MAC and have a 945. I really was trying to copy the data but that doesn’t work either…..

    • Kael

      OK, i tried moving the files to my computer in another folder and that worked fine. This copied the files for me and I was able to locate them and upload easily.

  68. John Field

    Thank you so much.
    As a Mac user with a music watch, the Android File Transfer was the key information.
    In the UK, even national news sources have overlooked this step… so kudos to you.
    … and thanks once again.

  69. Thomas Dyer

    I have activities from the past three weeks not showing up when I plug my Forerunner 935 in? Is there a way to get these files to appear when I plug my 935 in to my PC?

  70. B. Meu

    Hi,

    Thank you for your very useful article.

    I would simply like to add that if you have a music garmin device (Vivoactive 3 music in my case) you can go directly on your watch to settings>system>usb mode and select “Garmin” instead of “MTP Mode”.

    This way you don’t have to install the utility and once you plug your watch it will appear just like a “non-music” watch.

    Take care of yourselves among these horrendous times of manual uploading.

  71. Jim Rosen

    You are the man! Thanks!

  72. Rich Downing

    Real men use Linux. 🙂

  73. Jörg G.

    Today i am not even able to save my run.
    Even on discarding an activity my fenix 6X hangs on “Discarding” and shows that nice animated circle.
    Yesterday there was no problem and i was able to save my run and copy the fit-File.
    My running partner has the same behaviour with her fenix 6S.
    Is there anybody else seeing this?

    • GLT

      FR945 is working normally aside from the obvious sync up to GC.

      I wouldn’t expect Garmin Connect Mobile to interfere with saving or discarding activities on the device, but if you have that active you may as well exit that app until the all-clear is announced.

    • Jörg G.

      Thanks for the idea.
      I even switched off the connection to the mobile phone in the watch. The problem remains the same.
      If I save an activity, the watch hangs up when I save it. Discarding does not work either.
      I have no idea what else should go wrong, except maybe a bug in the current firmware 10.10.
      But since everything worked fine yesterday, I’m really at a loss right now.

    • GLT

      The only other suggestion that comes to mind is reviewing the on-device History and deleting a few activities from before the GC outage. Perhaps available space on the device is an issue.

    • Jörg G.

      ? Thanks for the push in that direction. Deleting some fit files actually helped.
      I could have thought of that myself. I already had it with the 310xt. ?

    • Edo Vonk

      Yes, I have the same. Fenix 6 pro does not record with gps anymore and cannot save onto the watch even.

    • Scott

      Yes, fenix 6X pro solar owner here.
      Also so doesn’t record distance, although get GPS reception.

      When saving it hangs on the animated circle screen.
      I have to force shutdown the watch.

      Sever Reddit users of different models are reporting the same issue

    • Sid

      Yes, I has a Vivoactive 4s and as of Sunday, there is now no gps, distance, or calories in activities and cannot save any activities at all! It is only 4 months old, but I still tried the “delete some older activities” that worked for some people and NOTHING. It drained 70% overnight and turned off. My activities from Saturday did sync this morning, but are only visible from “my profile” in the connect app, so at first I thought the notifications were just random garbage. Why won’t my watch save to itself now? All the advice of “don’t worry, everything will save to your watch and sync when everything is up and running” is completely false for some of us.

    • +1 for this happening with fenix 6 pro. Just started today after everything synced up. Went for a run, gps synced, no distance. Tried to save at end and got the save circle for 30 minutes and just reset. Did not save. Also tried a weight training which does not require gps. Timed out after first set and wouldn’t go any further. Tried it twice both saving and discarding and both hung up. Bummer. Hope it fixes soon . Dont want to do hard reset.

    • Kyle Shaw

      Just adding one more reply to this comment. I have a Fenix 6 pro. The same issue started for me today. GPS locks on, but distance is not recorded. The watch freezes if I try to save or discard the activity.

  74. Dan Tarr

    thanks – very helpful

  75. ajg

    Not All Heroes Wear Capes.

  76. adolfo bernal

    Thank you! This was very helpful.

  77. BC

    Maybe now Garmin will see the light and let you at least download your watch data to your phone app using bluetooth only, without an internet connection. The app can send it to their servers later next time it’s connected.

    I really dislike that you cannot download from the watch without a connection.

  78. Carli OSullivan

    This is life saving!!!!

  79. Michael H.

    OMG – it’s like the old Sport Tracks days. How did we survive??

  80. Ronald Ng

    OMG, this is hilarious! It’s a sad state of affairs when you actually had to post this.

  81. MAGNUS BODIN

    Thanks for this hero post. By a hero.

  82. Thanks for the nice post!!
    I also upload to my Garmin Fenix 5 my training from TrainasOne site the opposite way. I downloaded my training FIT file to my computer and then put it in the folder training in to my watch. And now I have my training ready to start

  83. I also upload to my Garmin Fenix 5 my training from TrainasOne site the opposite way. I downloaded my training FIT file to my computer and then put it in the folder training in to my watch. And now I have my training ready to start

  84. Julie

    You are my Strava kudos hero, Ray!
    My sunshine during cloudy Garmin days.
    And we damn already have too many cloudy days in Belgium without poor Garmin adding some more.

    Love from the south!

    Julie

  85. Hank Koerner

    Hi Ray. Thanks for the post. Very helpful. My need was a little different. Instead of posting to Strava, I needed to upload a course to my Fenix 6 that I’d created on ridewithgps. I used your Android File Transfer tip, which I already had on my Macbook Air. In case it’s of interest, here are the steps that worked for me. Hank

    Macbook Air > Activity Monitor > Garmin Express Background Service > Force Quit (like other commenters, Android File Transfer couldn’t see my Fenix when plugged in, so I went hunting for a background service and killed it)

    ridewithgps > export as .fit course file (Downloads directory of Macbook)
    Android File Transfer > Fenix6 > Garmin > Courses
    Finder > drag-and-drop .fit course file from Downloads to Android Fille Transfer: Fenix6/Garmin/Courses

    I opened the uploaded course on the Fenix, checked the map, previewed the climbs, everything showed as expected. Hopefully the turn-by-turn will also work as expected.

  86. Bob van Boven

    I wasn’t aware of the outage before I went out for a ride yesterday afternoon. Getting back and after syncing my Edge 830 with my phone, not just yesterday’s ride disappeared, but all my history rides on the Garmin Edge are gone (somehow my 830 just shows runs, recorded with my Forerunner). Anyone else having the same or similar issues?

  87. Keith

    Received the following email from TrainingPeaks. Do they know / suspect that Garmin’s outage is a result of a deliberate attack?

    “Garmin is currently experiencing an outage that prevents us from syncing data with Garmin Connect, including structured and completed workouts. We are unsure of the extent of this issue or when this will be resolved, but we will share an update when we know more.”

    “As a precaution, we always recommend using different passwords across platforms. If you think you may be using the same login credentials for both TrainingPeaks and Garmin, we recommend updating your password.”

  88. I think we’ve passed the 24-hour mark in downtime. Not sure how Garmin will bounce back from this. Honestly, this puts into question the disaster recovery of their servers. I have a feeling a lot of users are gonna jump ship.

    • DontGetTheCheese

      Well, if it’s Ransomware, it’s a ton of work to clean it up. You have to do a forensic exam of everything. Like I said above, days, weeks, even months. You may not even be able to trust your backups depending on what’s happened.

      As far as losing people, I’m amazed how often something bad happens and people go on like nothing happened. Anthem has had its information stolen three times with no significant affect except some relatively minor fines, to them at least.

    • GLT

      Possibly.

      The readers of Ray’s blog are definitely more likely to be constant users of GC than most consumers though. People that don’t train or aren’t interested in the various metrics may not have a strong reaction to the downtime. Like AW, there is probably some percentage of users that just use their device as a watch.

      Not loving the current situation, but the data I need is mostly on my devices.

    • Jarda

      Actually, we’re just 3 or so hours away from 48 hour mark and counting.

    • Oh, yikes! Didn’t know it was longer than 24 hours already.

      Honestly, at this point, they might be better off just wiping the damn servers and start from scratch. Surely they have a build of all the software they can load from a code repository. Honestly don’t think it’s worth it to have the servers down for days at a time. Even if all user data is lost…well…that’s better than people not being able to use their products. Sure, diehard Garmin users will know all the workarounds…but what about those who don’t? I would imagine there’s a huge user base of people who simply want things to just work and be easy to use. With this outage, those people will seek solutions elsewhere.

  89. Paul Powers

    DCR, why are you always do gentle on Garmin? Their software has been a dumpster fire for years, their navigation is painful. Plus every time I plug in my my 520 plus it turns on, and it does the same thing every time I unplug it! Why would anyone want it to do that! It’s just bad design. The whole interface smack of a 90s Nokia! They are lazy, uncreative, and poor designers. But you never take them to task! Why are you such a Garmin Apologist?

    • Andrew

      Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?

    • Actually, virtually every fitness device out there has problems. Garmin may appear like the poster child of problematic fitness devices but there’s design issues with competitors too. Just feels like Garmin has more problems due to their sheer size and market cap.

    • Jill

      Not sure what is meant here. I think users are feeding Garmin, not the other way around. I’m highly suspicious of call centres, emails and forums etc being down as a result of server issues. They just don’t want to deal with the barrage of complaints!

    • Neil Jones

      @Paul Powers and @Andrew. Either you’re new around here or you’ve been reading the site with your confirmation bias glasses on. Just about every Garmin review I see on here will include some degree of criticism, but importantly it keeps those criticisms in context.

      I’m guessing you also missed this one: link to dcrainmaker.com

    • BC

      Yes! Another pet peeve. Why does the damn thing need to turn on just because I plug it in to charge?

  90. Jean

    Is there a way to upload a Zwift file without using Garmin Connect? I am doing one of Ironman VR races, and am worried that I’ll do the bike and won’t be able to upload it? I figure my runs will eventually sync when Garmin fixes the issue. I don’t use Strava (IM doesn’t work with Strava anyway). Thanks!

  91. Jeffrey Feldman

    Fff

  92. Elliot

    Thank you!

  93. Jill

    There should be troubleshooting, as this solution does not work for everyone. I.e. me. I uninstalled Garmin Express, but nothing. Only solution on Bing is to download expensive, dodgy drivers. This is SNAFU. A CF of huge proportions.

  94. Yuki

    Thank you for your post, I tried to connect my garmin watch in my pc but any forders don’t show up.
    I am a windows 10 user, and my garmin watch is vivomove style. I pluged my watch in my windows10 pc. I tried Step 2A/2B but I can’t find any folders. I am using a USB cable which was including in the vivomove style’s package, and is also literally labeled with ‘Garmin’ at the end. Is there any solutions?

  95. @my.ms.challenge

    Hi, thanks for this! So details and prompt! I had to kill Garmin Express from Activity Monitor to get this working on Android File Transfer (Garmin 945, Macbook Mojave)

  96. Bruno Gardlo

    It would be also great to find solution for uploading structured workouts (e.g. from training peaks) to garmin watch. The trick to upload the .fit file to NewFiles folder doesn’t seem to work for music enabled devices

  97. Kimouette

    Does anybody know how many days or how many training sessions a Garmin 245M can store? I don’t mon waiting to sync my device, but if I’m about to lose my data I want to know!!

    • Joop

      On the Dutch tweakers.net forum thread for sports watches someone posted yesterday for his Fenix 6s pro a limit of 199 activities. He had 199 and did a new one, after which the oldest one was removed a the latest was added. For the Vivoactive 3 it seems to be a retention of 7 days. No idea how other watches fare though

    • Garmins www says 200 hours of activity data…. So you just keep running 🙂

  98. Matt H

    Ahhahahahahahhhahahahahahaa! He said Myspace

  99. spidercrab

    According to this interesting news at link to bleepingcomputer.com , GARMIN reacted to the attack by switching everything off.

    The reported $10M ransom is peanuts to the real value of the location data of every GARMIN user.

    This tells you that GARMIN had no proper procedure in place to deal with such an attack, and did not have systems and procedures in place to guard against the attack. Requiring that the “system” be in place and working to allow Garmin devices to download data via bluetooth is a seriously poor and stupid design choice.

    I’m very relieved not to use any GARMIN products made after 2009 having returned every GARMIN product I owned that used an APP for communications. I really feel sorry for those unable to have to jump through these loops to used their recorder data. GARMIN are in very serious trouble and if they recover from this, I predict they will fire their best people and then carry on exactly the same way as before.

  100. paul

    You seem to have forgotten about linux. Since it slipped your mind 😉 here are some instructions for a 945
    I’m using jmtpfs which provides a FUSE mount over MTP. Plug the watch in, use jmtpfs mount_point e.g. ~/mnt then the .fit files are in ~/mnt/Primary/GARMIN/Activity. For a full offline experience you can use postrunner to view activity data locally via a local web browser.

  101. HeMo

    Unfortunately not EVERY Garmin device can be connected with a USB cable. For the not so super sporty people who are counting steps and use Garmin Vívofit there is now way to get the past data :-(.

  102. Trev

    Bang goes my 712 day Step goal streak.
    Seriously though. Lets hope Garmin find a way around this without paying the scumbags any ransom.

  103. Adrian B

    ”The good news though is that if there’s one thing to give Garmin credit for here, it’s that *EVERY* Garmin wearable, bike computer, hiking handheld, and so on, can be plugged into any computer and easily uploaded to any site you want.”

    Is that really true, that *EVERY* Garmin wearable can be plugged in? Even the Forerunner 910XT?

    Do you really mean that the charging cable for 910XT can transfer data as well?

    Because from what I’ve read in the comments here, that statement is incorrect. The 910XT cable is only for charging and the guide here does not work.

    And the Garmin Express app won’t transfer anything from the 910XT through the ANT+ USB plugg if the servers are down.

    (There seems to be workarounds with some Android phones with ANT+ and the app ST Uploader, but that’s another thing.)

    • paul

      For some devices you’ll need to use something that reads the data using ant-fs and an ANT stick. Look on github for projects like openant or ant-cli.

    • TMJ

      I got mine working by downloading Ant Agent, see the steps I shared in the thread above in answer to the same problem from FOO.

    • Eugene

      Vivomove HR doesn’t show up as storage, rather it appears as a serial device so I don’t see any way to get the .fit files off of it.

  104. Louis Dias

    Hi DC
    2 of my PCs are not picking up my Edge 530, any suggestions?

  105. Dan

    Bleeping Computer says it confirmed that Garmin was taken down by the Wasted Locker ransomware. I think they’re probably correct based on the details – screenshots and virus total submission – included in the article. link to bleepingcomputer.com

    I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes at least two weeks (maybe more) to bring back the Garmin Connect service. Its first priority will be to government contractors, then aviators, then big corporate clients, then the rest of us. Hopefully they were able to contain the attack before it did too much damage and it didn’t abscond with data.

    • Paul S

      So has this Wasted Locker exploit been around for a while? People know how to prevent/avoid it? (I assume it’s Windows only.)

    • Dan

      Wasted Locker has only been around since May, but the group that deployed (and likely developed) it has been around for a number of years. From what I’ve read, the group is mostly made of Russians cybercriminals.
      There are best practices that Garmin followed, as well as specific requirements placed on it as a US defense contractor. My hope is that the outbreak was limited to a small piece of its network and that they pulled everything else down as a precaution.

    • Paul S.

      I’ll bet a lot of those “best practices” have been eased to allow people to work remotely, though. I’ve seen mentions of Garmin’s VPN and bogus Flash updaters in the articles I’ve read about this. Ordinarily I’d think that remote machines, even on a corporate VPN, wouldn’t be allowed access to critical servers. But if you expect people to work from home, then you have to do something.

  106. Wendy Fear

    My fenix 6S isn’t being recognised by Garmin Express ( first time I e plugged it in )
    Any ideas ?

    Also , I don’t get the ‘Location ‘ tab mentioned in your Mac instructions ?

    Thanks x

    • Paul S.

      That’s likely because you have them all turned off. In the Finder, go to “Preferences…” and then choose “Sidebar”. A 6S won’t show up there anyway, but the kind of devices that will (Edges for example) also show as disks on the Desktop even if you have Locations turned off.

      The 6S should show up in the Android File Transfer app described above. If Garmin Express can’t see it, the likely culprits are the cable or the port. But if it really is the first time you’ve ever plugged it in, it’s possible that it’s not working because Express needs to communicate with the servers that are down. So quit Garmin Express completely and try Android File Transfer.

  107. Grégoire Favre

    This morning I wanted to do strength training and I couldn’t pause (bottom right on 945) so I stopped the activity and tried to save, as it stayed in saving “indefinitely” I powered off the watch.
    Then I went for a run, I got GPS signal but no distance (0 km) for one hour run… and also when I saved it stayed indefinitely in “saving” so this time I plugged the watch to my computer and opened garmin express and after unplugging my watch it’s again a watch.
    Any idea how I could use it WITH GPS for my bike ride now ?

    Thank you very much.

    • Daniel Ludwig

      I had the same issue today. Went on a trail run but despolite GPS signal not kilometers recorded and saving is als o indefinitely. I believe the watch got sind wrong settings from the failed attempt sync with the garmin app. Don’t know why really.

    • GLT

      An earlier contributor indicated their issues saving new activities ceased when they freed up space on the device by deleting older activities.

    • Grégoire Favre

      I’ve deleted last month activities (I had 198 activities on the 945 watch) and I’ll see how it goes, thanks.

  108. mac

    Thanks for this helpful article.
    I’m not techy and only know garmin connect.
    Is there a way to upload workout directly to IMVR virtual race? TIA.

  109. Annette Sandel

    The garmin forerunner 35 has a different charger it clips on the watch, how can this be downloaded to a computer without usb

  110. TIP: once you uploaded to Strava, to see the charts, maps etc, you can use:
    https://processmyrun.com
    link to runalyze.com

    PS. The first is my website and i do it for free as I’m passionate about sport and programming.
    Please let me know of any bug or new feature you would like

  111. a guy in our cycling club has no pc or Mac, only an iPad. Is there anyway he can get his workouts manually onto Strava?

    • usr

      A non-ancient Android phone and a USB-OTG cable should do the trick just fine (that’s how I strava’d from my Edge yesterday). Don’t know about the situation with idevices.

  112. Chris

    Hi! This worked for me on Thursday and Friday, but as of today I am unable to even record an activity on my Forerunner 45. The watch shows a GPS connection, but will not show any distance covered. It did show hr during the activity, so I attempted to save but it never completed this action and eventually just defaulted back to the homescreen. A worrying development! Might this be related to the outage/ransomware attack?
    Thanks!
    Chris

    • Jörg G.

      Hi Chris,

      if you look at Comment #182 that could be your solution too ?

      Jörg

    • Chris

      Indeed! This seems to have corrected the issue. Thank you, Jörg.

      For those that don’t want to scroll up, I simply had to delete activities from my device to free up space and I am now able to record activities and manually upload again. It seems this just coincided with the outage, which led me astray.

  113. David

    How to upload from a Garmin 920XT using a Mac:

  114. Roger Watson

    What I’d like to know and what I can’t find the answer to after a couple of hours of looking is how long does my Fenix 6 hold the activity for before it deletes it? I’m happy to wait for Garmin to sort everything and let it sync normally. I’m sure my Suunto kept it for 28 days or so so would imagine the Garmin is the same.

    • PaulyG

      Roger:

      Depending on how much music and other stuff you keep on your watch, months of workouts can be stored. A quick check shows that I have 192 workouts on my watch dating back to October of last year (38 MB total) with 7GB of my 14.4 gb still available. This would be years of storage for me!

      The .fit format is much more compact than the old .TCX format. Your watch will tell you when it is running out of room and will start to delete the oldest files.

    • Roger Watson

      Oh that’s really cool so unlike the Suunto it’s based on your remaining storage and as I don’t listen to music so have none I’ve nothing to worry about for quite some time.
      Thanks for that.

  115. Marcia

    Results of a Saturday afternoon experiment: PhysioTrueUp requires Garmin Connect. I loaded a .fit file from one device (Edge 530) to another device (Fenix 6). While I can view the activity in the history of the 2nd device now, it didn’t change the load, training statue or recovery hours on that 2nd device.

    Not surprising, but done for science!

  116. Koen

    Hi Ray
    I just noticed complete malfunction of my 945 during run activity. When browsing the Slowtwitch thread on Garmin connect issue, I noticed another user who encountered the same issue today with a Fenix6.
    Do these issues sound familiar?
    Currently on firmware release 4.40 on my 945

  117. Karl

    Anyone have any joy with a vivosport? Thought you could touch-hold the screen and it would go into usb mode when plugged in but alas not working for me

    • Ned Newberry

      Did you download the Garmin Express software?
      I can’t log in to the Express software, of course. However, the device did show up on my Mac Finder under “GARMIN”

  118. Katlyn

    Thanks for the instructions Ray! The AFT method works on my Mac to transfer FIT files from my Garmin Fenix 6S Pro to upload to Strava. However I have been unsuccessful at loading FIT courses to the NewFiles folder despite following online instructions. Also, after every time I connect my Garmin through AFT, the GPS on my watch will connect and pace shows accurately but distance records 0 and maps will not trace where I’ve been. In order to get it to work, I need to do a factory reset and then it works great until I connect again to my Mac. Hopefully this is just user error, anyone have tips on what I may be doing wrong??

  119. cler dec

    How do you get 910xt files. The connection to computer only charges the watch? I have tried everything must be a way?

  120. Zoltan

    It is the time when it should be evident for the herd why a sports software running locally (laptop/PC based) has a high value. I just refer to Sporttracks 3 , which was “killed by its creator/owner 4 months ago, but some still use it including me.

    I am in a comfortable position at a time when cloud based giant companies are attacked.

  121. JW

    You are the man. Thank you!

  122. ReHMn

    High tech smart puppies using smartphones with smart applications, but unable to localize your fit file… Also, 310XT/910XT users! The files in question are located here:

    C:\Users\PuppyYourName\AppData\Roaming\Garmin\Devices\WhatEverNumber\Activities

  123. DontGetTheCheese

    So, my $1K 6X Solar is not saving workouts and to top things off the time isn’t accurate (15 minutes slow).

    Regarding the workouts, when I complete the workout, and click save, the watch just spins with the word Saving, and spins, and spins………until I give up and force reset the watch, thereby, losing the workout. Stryd data appears lost as well.

    Who knows, maybe there’s a setting but for a watch with 32GB of storage, losing workouts is ridiculous. I wonder if there’s some dumbass hard limit on workouts and activities for the watch. I know there’s a limit on custom workouts.

    I understand hacks, ransomware, and that isn’t what makes me angry. What gets me angry is that Garmin chose to build everything around the cloud when it didn’t have to. Bluetooth sync, then to the cloud when in wi-fi range, would solve this problem. Honestly, there’s clearly something in the watch that isn’t saving under the current situation and that just shouldn’t be.

    • Roger Watson

      I’m new to Garmin so don’t know the in-and-outs what I can say is my Fenix 6x is saving my activities with no issues at all and they are still there having completed 2 activities since the shutdown.
      Another helpful poster has mentioned that activities are based on storage so as long as it’s not filled with music then you have enough room for 100’s of activities.

    • ReHMn

      The outage is not affecting devices at all.
      Only the webserver, the cloud storage where your activities are uploaded is affected…

      Even if all user’s data will be deleted, it can be all reloaded from the fit file. Your HDD is able to store all of them…That’s why I do not care about third party apps.

    • Koen

      Had this same issue on my 945.
      Deleting my entire workout history seems to solve the issue! (Maybe just deleting one workout could work as well??)
      Did you fetch .fit files from the watch to upload to Strava or such?
      I’m suspecting the formatting or write access or something got corrupted…

    • Grégoire Favre

      On my 945 with plenty of available space it’s not the case : I can’t save 199 activities, only 198.

    • Stephan

      I am having the same “stuck on saving” issue. I also noted that the activity, before I tried to save it have 0 calories. So I am assuming that there is profile data that needed to be updated from GCM or GC and hasn’t been or something. This means the activity is not saved. While stuck on “saving” I also tried plugging the watch in and that did not help.

      Time is still correct, so at least I still have a watch.

    • DontGetTheCheese

      Well, unless my post is the source for this article,

      link to zdnet.com

      and the comments here, well, it would suggest that you are wrong, but, since we have no actual knowledge of what’s wrong, it’s possible some other problem is causing this. It is Garmin that we’re talking about here.

    • Sid

      Same for me. I have had a Vivoactive 4S for about 4 months now, and as of Sunday, it will not save any activity and eventually says “saving failed” and goes back to watch face. I did delete a month’s worth of activities to see if that would solve it, since so many said that’s the problem, but that did NOTHING. There is something else going on for some of us. No distance, no calories in activities. The gps went through it’s normal motions when I started a walk this morning (which was just grayed out yesterday) and I got so excited, but then no distance ever showed up and failed save at end.

  124. Randi

    Will the activities be available to get into Connect eventually from Strava, for example, or will they only ever be on Mapmyfitness or Strava?

  125. Allan

    Thanks! Good Instructions. Note that you don’t have to be a premium subscriber to Strava and looks like my Garmin 45 can hold atleast 3 months of activities. So eventually this would all sync up assuming Garmin can be up soon.

  126. Dan O.

    Hi Ray – when I try to open Android File Transfer, a window pops up that says “no android device detected”. I followed the prior steps as you mentioned. Did you have any issues like this?

  127. Daniel

    I have a Mac. I downloaded the Android File Transfer app just fine. The Garmin and activities show up in the Android app itself. But when I open Strava and click “upload” I cannot navigate to the files through the Finder pop up. I also can’t copy and paste the files from the Android File Transfer app to another folder. Any ideas anyone?

    • Paul S.

      No one on a Mac “copy and paste”s a file anyway. Grab the file in AFT with your mouse, Drag it somewhere (Desktop works fine). That copies the file and from the Desktop you’ll be able to see it in the standard file dialog. (“Copy and paste” is what you do with text.)

  128. WILLIAM LOGAN

    Thanks!

  129. Jimbo

    Trying to get my old 310XT files. Garmin Express won’t even pull onto my computer because it can’t connect to Garmin servers. I can find my fit files on my C drive, but the last one is a week ago – the last time I used my 310XT.
    I could maybe try an Android-ANT option, but I don’t see a Strava file upload option from my Android app.
    Should I do the Android option and then email the file to myself to use on my PC?

    • TMJ

      Try the steps I posted above in a reply to FOO. I had to download Ant Agent to access the data on my 910xt & think it might work for the 310 too.

  130. David Fowler

    Your instructions don’t track exactly to my user experience – the Strava “Browse” button does not allow you to access the Contents on the Garmin 245 Music via Locations in the Finder window – however the Android app does allow you to easily copy the files to the Mac for upload.

    Thanks for sharing this!

  131. Kenneth Williams

    Thanks so much, I couldn’t get my 530 to show the files, I had no idea I wasn’t using the right cable. I just grabbed one of the dozens of the USB-C’s i had lying around, Grabbed one of the Garmin cables and all is right.

  132. Aaron

    Should we be at all concerned about infection beyond garmins servers? In theory a sophisticated enough actor could inject malware into either the Garmin connect app on your phone or even to your device itself. It sounds super paranoid but I kinda want to get the all clear from Garmin before I start plugging a device into a windows machine right now.

    • usr

      Unlikely. There are easier ways to infect a random stranger’s Windows PC than this convoluted route.

      Another thing to keep in mind: if the attackers wanted to do something like that in addition to the central ransom they would have done so while the attack was still in stealth mode, not after surfacing with demands.

  133. Keith Brown

    All well and good if you use a device that doesn’t depend on an ant+ stick connection. Do you know of an application that can extract a fit file from a 910xt without the use of garmin express?

  134. RuNan

    I’ve pulled the .fit file from Saturday’s 2:46hr ride off my Fenix 5+, but it doesn’t include any altitude data??
    All other cycling metrics including power, cadence, heart rate etc. are there, as well as the map of the ride. Imported the file to Stava and Rouvy but neither show altitude profile and elevation gain is listed as 0m.
    Any ideas?

  135. Ashleigh

    Thank for this fabulous post. I have done all the above to my Mac but the latest file is 09 July and I have done plea ty since then? Have I done something wrong?

  136. Ilkka from Finland

    Has anyone had an issue with Garmin + Macintosh?

    I plugged in the cable to my Macintosh.

    Activity / Activities folder was empty. 0 files.

    On my device before plugging in the cable, my triathlon was intact and showing all the data 100% correctly.

    Then, I tried EaseUS recovery software with cable + garmin device, and discovered the lost .fit file.

    The .fit file was corrupt, since the Macintosh had overwritten something. (? What does this mean)

    I tried saving the file with fit file recovery tool on a windows machine with poor results. I saw the segments on swimming and running correctly, but one of the cycling laps showed 1598 km.

    What did I do wrong?

    Can I still repair the file – is there an expert on this forum?

    Has anyone else had similar problems with Garmin 735xt and Macbook Air or Macintosh in general?

    Thank you.

    • Sev Roberts

      Not a Mac, but when I connected my 735XT to my Windows laptop, the Garmin Express app (which was previously installed on that machine for an older Garmin) kicked in, and emptied the ACTIVITY folder and wiped my Connect IQ watch face, custom fields and widgets. Fortunately for me I had copied my last few .fit files across before the whole folder on the watch was emptied.

      There was another comment somewhere on this post where this happened for a Mac user with a 935.

  137. Susan V Brooks

    Hello DC, This is great except that I believe I have a charge only cable. I can’t seem to find a cable that has the same clip for the watch to connect to my computer. Any suggestions?
    Thanks in advance,
    Susan

    • For all watches, they’re all charge/data (dual). So if you’ve got a watch charging cable, it’ll support data. It’s the Edge bike computers where folks can have 3rd party micro-USB/mini-USB chargers floating around.

  138. James

    Very helpful post albeit am still having issues. I have a Fenix 6s Pro + Windows PC and have followed steps 2b. However I don’t see any subfolder within the Fenix 6s Pro (under This PC) – just “this folder is empty”. Any ideas?

  139. erinc

    I have tried to synced without knowing that there was an outage and current I can’t see .fit files on my watch folder (735xt). Does it mean that my activites get lost or when the service will be resumed they will be on garmin connect ?

    • Ilkka from Finland

      I had a similar problem but the file was intact in my watch BEFORE I connected it with the computer.

      Try the old Garmin Ant Agent (as guided above), and see if you find the .fit file.

      If this doesn’t work, try a recovery software such as the Ease US recovery.

    • erinc

      thanks a lot, i used ease us recovery and was able to locate all the files…

  140. Zume

    It is Garmin worth to carry my/our data after this massive service down? If Garmin not able to protect their services I ask myself if they able to protect our data. What do you think it is time to switch to another sports tracking company?

  141. Darre

    Does anybody know how many days of “health” you can save on an Fenix 6. I know that there is 32GB of memory but is there any “day” limitation?

  142. Antony Ashbee

    All very well if Garmin supplied you with a data cable in the first place instead of a charge only cable. Despite having their name stamped on it. Any way to transfer your data from device to sd card on an 810? And then to pc?

    • BC

      Hopefully this can serve as a wakeup call to Garmin to fix all these little grievances customers have instead of relying on market share to force us into using everything their way or the highway.

    • Garmin includes a data cable in *all* boxes, so if your Garmin didn’t include a cable, then you probably didn’t buy a new unit.

      That said, since you’re talking an Edge series device – then you can use any cable as long as it has data (many do). The Edge 810 is a mini-USB cable, and the vast majority of those do have data on them (whereas micro-USB is hit or miss).

      You can actually save activities on any Edge series to the SD card instead of the internal card. However I don’t know of a way to move activities from internal to SD. Again, probably doesn’t matter now – but FYI.

  143. GH

    Man, long time garmin user, for whom their devices have almost always worked.

    I am not celebrating ransomware criminals. But isn’t there poetry in the fact that a company that was so nonchalant and sloppy about their software, which made concerted efforts to ignore customers, ended up getting caught with their pants down in such a public, painful way?

    • DontGetTheCheese

      But will it change anything?

      There are very limited consequences, at least in the USA, to this kind of thing. Anthem was breeched 3-times, with unencrypted data, and they rolled on like nothing happened. To my knowledge, my information has been jacked 10-times in the last few years. In a few of those cases I had no idea who the company was that had my information.

      And it’s very hard to get people to pay attention to the risk. The org I work for would rather buy new software than build out the security infrastructure. What happens if Garmin stops adding new features but a competitor decides to charge ahead? Remember, at least in the watch segment, Garmin competes with Apple, they can’t afford to sit back.

      And, it’s like that everywhere. People want a tax cut, but what about bridges, climate change, roads, hospitals, waste management, sewage, water, etc….

      Even with Apple, they protect the core, but app’s, who knows what they do and what their risk profiles are? MyFitnessPal got zapped.

      Risk vs business, it’s a hard thing. And maybe Garmin even did almost everything right and the 1 in a million thing happened.

  144. Grégoire Favre

    My 945 isn’t working reliably anymore, I have deleted lots of activities but I still can’t save new activity.

    I would appreciate to have full specs of my watch and write a firmware from scratch for it…or even better having Garmin’s source code and improve it, the watch could be so much better with an open source ecosystem.

  145. Mr David Cass

    Bit off subject but have you any info on why the fenix 5 and other watches are now not recording and getting stuck in a saving or discard loop leaving the owner having to shut them down this has just started over the last few days during there ha
    ck

    • GLT

      An earlier contributor indicated their issues saving new activities ceased when they freed up space on the device by deleting older activities.

    • GLT

      …far less scientific suggestions for those with free space:

      1) Exit Garmin Connect Mobile on your phone and/or disable the phone connection on the device.
      2) Turn off WiFi on the device if it supports it.

      Logically you wouldn’t imagine that either of those should interfere with the on-device saving or discarding, but if it helps then it helps.

      Perhaps there is a faulty LiveTrack housekeeping task that is trying to be helpful and cannot without the rest of the ecosystem healthy.

    • Juan

      Correct on turning WiFi off. I did so just yesterday UST in case and had zero issues. Fénix 5 connected to MacBook Pro, saved .fit file to desktop, disconnected watch, WiFi on back again and sync to Strava perfectly.

      Didn’t want to mess with apps launching and connecting to internet when there could bring more problems than anything…

  146. CaveSAR

    Since the outage started my Fenix 6X Pro Solar hangs with “Saving.” It takes at least an hour for the “auto powering down” message to appear and for me to have control again. Until then the watch has me completely locked out. Even the Power button does not work.
    Connecting to my PC, then disconnecting, via a cable – Garmin, 3rd party charging cradle. This makes the Fenix think the session has been saved. So I get a usable watch after a few minutes. For folks with no way to attach a cable to a PC or a Mac they will have to wait for the watch to time-out and go into power save shut-down. Nigel

    • You should be able to hold the power button for 10-15 seconds and it’ll power-off/restart.

      For those with issues of saving, I’d be curious to know about the size/space remaining.

    • David

      Thanks I can power it off doing a soft reset the watch works OK again then until you record a activity again it gets a green gps lock shows heart rate and pace but records no distance then again just loops in discard or save until its powered off again. Was thinking of doing a full reset but would this loose my unsaved activities from earlier ? Or should I just leave it and hope it rectifies when garmin gets back up and running ?

    • Nicolangelo

      7.89 GB free of 14.4 GB

      Obviously, no .FIT files saved from this mornings activities…

    • DontGetTheCheese

      I’m not sure how to check that, because I can’t plug into Garmin Express, but my watch has 32GB of storage, no music, so there must be 20GB, probably 25 GB, at least, available depending on the size of the OS.

      There’s no way I’ve hit the storage limit. But, this being Garmin, there may be a limit on workouts that you can store / save.

    • CsabX

      Space in itself is definitely not the cause of this issue, but after having the exact same problem as described here with the “Saving” with my FR945, it seems to be OK now after I deleted (backed up to my PC) all the activities from the watch!
      So after GPS lock is acquired, and the start is pushed the recording is started (distance is OK – before this it stayed zero, that was the first symptom) and Saving is done as before! – both BT and Wifi is OFF now.

      I was completely sceptical, but indeed this deletion has helped in some ways!
      For the record, I checked and I had 194 activities in the “Activity” folder..

    • Jarda

      This happened to me yesterday. Seems pretty common: link to zdnet.com. Starting any activity would simply not start tracking and distance would be 0. Discard or Save ends up in endless loop. Plenty of space on the watch – I have a very new Fenix 6 Pro Solar with no music and only handful of activities recorded.

      I did full reset (“Reset Default Settings”) in the end and while that kept all the activities, with Connect down, there’s no way to pair the watch to the phone. So no notifications, no weather, nothing relying on connection.

      People seem to have good luck with deleting some old activities, I’d recommend trying it first. It’s too late for me, but if you can avoid doing Reset, I’d highly recommend it.

    • JohnW

      >> I’d be curious to know about the size/space remaining.

      I hit the same problem with my FR945, no distance during the run and hangs on save.

      I can’t see a way to get the space remaining without using Connect, but last time I looked when I was uploading music there was lots free, several GB at least.

      Looking in the activity folder, there are 197 fit files in there, which appears to be the limit.

      I assume when it syncs to garmin connect, it must delete the oldest and keep the number at around 195.

      So if that’s true, everyone who’s done more than ~190 workouts with their watch will hit the save hang in the next few days once they do a few more workouts without being able to sync!

      Seems lame that there’s such a low activity file limit and also that they run it so close to the limit, even if you were off the grid for a few days hiking etc, you could hit this issue.

      Fortunately I had my Stryd pod, so I could do an offline sync to download the run file from that.

    • Jarda

      >> So if that’s true, everyone who’s done more than ~190 workouts with their watch will hit the save hang in the next few days once they do a few more workouts without being able to sync!

      It has nothing to do with free space or number of activity files. My F6 Pro Solar failed with 16 activities and 20GB of free space.

  147. Valli

    Will change to Coros. Such a bad ecosystem and no
    Words on their security. Bye

  148. Gunnar

    Just did a short search for “Polar outage” and “Suunto outage” and Polar had an outage that lasted what appears to be about 48 hours 5 months ago. Another outage in (unconfirmed time span) in 2017. We all know Movescount (Suunto) is shutting down and have had their shut down issues. I’m not a fan of Training Peaks or SPorts track…..or Golden Cheetah. My favorite platform is Polar flow followed by Garmin Connect, but the fact you are REALLY stuck if Polar goes down as you can’t extract your activity files. My Vantage M is about to be shipped out to an ebay buyer….but seriously considering keeping it and having the best of both worlds….Polar flow with the Vantage M and Garmin Connect with my edge 1030…..it wouldn’t hurt so much then when one of these companies have issues with their servers.

  149. David Harrison

    Thanks for the tips Ray!

    Works fine from my watch to PC to Strava. Nice that Strava will detect and remove duplicates – I wish the Stryd Power Meter site was that smart (I get duplicates there quite often, but have been to busy to sit down and figure out why).

  150. Stephen Ceglarski

    Awesome!!
    Thank you
    This was super easy, took like 2 minutes start to finish for 4 workouts

  151. Dave

    *EVERY* Garmin wearable, bike computer, hiking handheld, and so on, can be plugged into any computer and easily uploaded to any site you want.

    Are you sure? Because it seems that VívoMove Style cannot be accessed this way.

    • Eugene

      This is the problem I’m running into

    • While probably not an issue anymore, there’s a way to toggle the USB mode on, on the Vivomove series. I don’t have one handy right now, so will have to do some digging for the future.

    • Eugene

      I’ve dug through every menu and read the downloaded pdf manual for the Vivomove HR and not found any way to change it. It appears as a serial device, I’m hoping maybe GPSBabel can read something from it.

    • Dave

      Please do! Would be extremely helpful. No amount of googling gave any useful results and on the Garmin reddit forum people were facing the same problem.

  152. Crispin E.

    For anyone that is noticing their (newer) Garmin is no longer accruing distance during activities and ‘gets stuck’ on the Saving activity screen, the solution published here link to reddit.com works. Having had the issue during an OWS yesterday and MTB ride today, I just moved all my old activities to a temporary folder on my Fenix 6X. I’ve just tested with two short MTB activities and the distance is now accruing fine and the activities save fine.

  153. Scott

    What about us that somehow our watches are affected to.
    I have a Garmin Fenix 6X Pro solar.
    When in a Run activity or Trail run for example, it picks up GPS but does not track distance.

    Then when saving the activity, it just seems to hang on the saving screen (I’ve tried many times, and it just stays there, have waited up to 30 mins and nothing)
    Have to force shutdown the watch and start up again.

    Checking the only source I know while Garmin is down, Reddit seems I’m not alone and this has affected different model of Garmin watches…

    Needless to say, no fit file is saved 🙁

    Any idea what us that are suffering this issue can do?

  154. Rebecca Tate

    When I tried this, there were no files in my Garmin Forerunner 35 to transfer. Sometimes if I charge it without syncing it loses all the data it has in it. This is another such occasion. Unfortunately I had no bars left so had no choice but to try it or lose the data anyway. Very sad that Garmin doesn’t work as it should 🙁

  155. Christopher Campbell

    I was having the same problem with the Fenix not tracking a run correctly and hanging on save. I have a solution to get my Fenix 6x working. This fix was given to me by Garmin support several months ago after my workout calendar would not synch on the watch. It seems to have cleared out the hang on save (which is a problem I have also had before this mess). YMMV
    From upper tier support:
    “If you’re able to get the device connected to a computer with Windows installed, here are some instructions you can follow for trying to clear space on the watch and ensure the calendar is able to sync over:

    Plug the device into the computer using the charge cable.
    >>
    Enter your computer’s File Explorer (windows key + E)
    Open the Fenix drive and enter the Garmin Folder to delete the following folders:
    Activity
    RemoteSW
    NewFiles
    Workouts
    Monitor
    Deleting these files will not be detrimental for your device. Once you have deleted the files, unplug the unit from your computer and perform a Hard Reset (this will not erase any user data or custom settings): press and hold the top left button for 10-15 seconds or until the device powers off completely. Leave off for 60 seconds, then press the top left button again to reboot. ”

    This clear out the save error and makes the watch functional again but it also wipes out all previous activities. I am not sure if you can get away with only deleting one of the above files to fix the problem.
    Christopher

  156. James

    Thanks for this! Worked great from my Vivoactive 3 to get my “virtual race” uploaded to Strava

  157. T.J. STANFORD

    I just got my Garmin vivoactive 4s right when Garmin and connect went down. I’m guessing there’s no way to set up my watch until Garmin connect is back up?

  158. ROB

    DOES NOT WORK AS IN STEP 2A IT NEEDS TO CHOOSE A GARMIN DEVICE WHICH IT CANNOT DO AS THE “GARMIN SERVERS ARE DOWN”!

  159. JB

    Does anyone know how to move a future structured workout built in TrainingPeaks to a watch (FR935). Would you just drop a .fit file into the “Workouts” folder?

    • RNZ

      Reports from Garmin friends here suggest that if you delete old files that you know have already synched up to Connect you can free up enough space for the watch to work again – for a while at least.

      Seems modern Garmins don’t do proper storage housekeeping if they can’t sync. Don’t remember it ever being a problem on old FR 305. Used to go weeks without getting out the cable and uploading to TC.

      For Sunnto Ambit 3 I don’t have any problem getting files off the watch using the Ambit Connect app on Android phone with OTG USB adapter and Suunto cable. Works like a charm.

  160. RITCHIE C ROBERTSON

    So I was using Garmin connect to track my current daily run streak. I don’t remember the exact number of days but it was around 65. My OCD won’t allow me to accept that number. But even worse is I am using connect to track the mileage on 4 pairs of shoes. Now I am going to have to buy new ones so I can start over. Real world problems.

  161. Vin

    Seems I was able to sync data from my Garmin Fenix using the Garmin Express application on Windows this Sunday evening.

  162. fl33tStA

    any1 knows, if Garmin Index Scale have internal memory, i get always a X after my measurements?
    or the scale only works with Garmin NTP Server online?

    • KW

      They do have internal memory and no they don’t work without NTP being online.
      I regularly have long periods where the scale doesn’t upload displaying X after measurements – months at a time. Eventually it starts upload again and data for the offline months start to appear on Connect. It seems to be able to store quite a lengthy period of data.

  163. jay

    Garmin connect seems to be working even though the server maintenance banner is still there. My activities just updated to strava 🙂

  164. KW

    Seems to be partially back online now. Activities start to upload.

  165. fl33tStA

    looks like, they came back: link to connect.garmin.com

  166. Tomas Misevicius

    Does anybody know how Endomondo handles duplicates?

  167. Is there a way to download a new course to a Garmin watch? I have FR 945 and trying to transfer a .gpx route I have made offline but cannot find a way with Garmin connect down due to the hack.

    (Btw Thanks for this guide DCR)

  168. Bertram Redmeijer

    Looks like Garmin is up again.

    • Zoltán

      Not everywhere. Indeed, Garmin states GC partially works, but for me both GC and ConnectIQ apps give a server error and non sync happens.

    • JD

      Looks more like they are reconstructing things from backups versus “unscheduled maintenance”. 🙂

      link to connect.garmin.com

      I wonder how long it will be before we hear the real story instead of rumours.

    • GLT

      Everyone has their own preference and it is natural to be curious, but I would have more respect for the recovery effort if no details are circulated to the general public.

      The vast majority of customers aren’t going to understand the details. What is more important in my view is their forward-looking changes to make similar events less likely. How they will enhance GC, GCM, GE, and their devices to be more tolerant of ecosystem issues seems more interesting to me.

  169. giorgitd

    Probably too late for this outage (Garmin services seem to be coming back on line), but I use a Chromebook to manipulate the data on my FR920XT. No problems uploading to Strava, etc. and no Garmin Express to cause troubles. 920XT shows up just fine as a storage device.

  170. Tim

    Interesting. I was able to connect my Fenix 5 today and activities did load but the GarminIQ app on my iPhone still shows little data. It seems like there is some info flowing now as several of my activities and rides from last week did upload. It appears Sleep and Stress also uploaded. YMMV

  171. GarMEAN

    Garmin su**ks?

  172. Dominik Rappaport

    Hi,

    Has anybody been successful manually transferring a planned workout created with TrainingPeaks’ Structured Workout Builder to Garmin’s fenix 6 smartwatch?

    I’ve followed TrainingPeaks’ FAQ

    link to help.trainingpeaks.com

    and tried both, putting the .fit file in the NewFiles and the Workouts folder and even turned the watch off and on again. However, the workout doesn’t show up in my calendar and is also not suggested if I try starting a running workout as usual.

    Any ideas?

  173. Dirk Blomme

    It seems that Garmin has most likely been infected by ransomware.
    The fact this happened over the weekend, seems like it is an attac from Evil Corp, who already attacked other companies in the world. It seems to be very targeted attacks.
    Such a targeted attack is adapted to the target and then causes additional damage. That group therefore wants to ensure that the company is held hostage for as long as possible and that it cannot recover. This is how it will damage its reputation. And then, of course, the chances increase that the company will still pay the requested ransom – about $ 10 million is talked about. Receive money, that’s what these hackers are after. And if they ask such a large sum, then they have penetrated very deeply into the company.
    Let us hope that the data of the users will not be published.
    The fact that Garmin does not communicate about the incident, makes me suspect that this is likely the case.
    Source: link to sporza.be

  174. David Madden

    Great work! Always spot on!

  175. Doug Curtis

    It looks like some Garmin Connect syncing functionality is working as of this morning. I was able to sync a stored ride from Thursday and Saturday. However, one part that I noticed isn’t working yet is the IQ Connect sync/install. There’s an app that has an update, that just silently fails and another app that I downloaded, but won’t install.
    The status screen in Garmin Connect under “Your Queue” shows “You Have Items Ready To Install”, and clicking Install takes you through the syncing progress screen, as it if worked, but then comes back to the You Have Items Ready To Install status again.

  176. Michael

    Would be interesting if Garmin’s shutdown has be done by ransom ware or something similar – this would be a shame as there are very intelligent protection solutions (e.g. prolion.com) available for a long time…

  177. Laramie

    So Garmin failed to maintain proper security, got hacked and now their costumers are supposed to be happy they have a work around to upload files? That’s not how most objective observers would see it. I’m just glad I don’t currently use a Garmin device and I’m not sure how to trust reviews that come from someone so determined to defend a Garmin at every turn. I’ve enjoyed posts from this site for several years, but this is disappointing.

    • Just trying to help out folks, given nearly 300,000 people found this post useful in the last few days, it seems like folks were looking for some options.

      Also, this post was written early in the outage before ant clarity on the cause.

      If you’re disappointed that I’m trying to help folks, then feel free to browse other parts of the internet instead.

    • Laramie

      Didn’t mean to sound so confrontational, it’s just that objective sources are hard to come by. And I’ll just add that a post on how to keep your data secure/backed up and describing what companies like Garmin are doing or not doing to help secure that data would be helpful. Thanks.

    • GLT

      I’m assuming a large percentage of Ray’s readership are Garmin users, and that they more urgently desired operational advice than industry analysis.

      If Ray had not proactively closed part of the gap left by Garmin corporate support being offline, the same questions would have flooded into his blog across the device-reviews and quality analysis articles he published.

    • Laramie

      My apologies. Very poorly worded comment earlier. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

    • JD

      Kudos for posting the apology.
      One only has to monitor this post to realize DCR calls it like it is. The good, the bad, and the ugly. 🙂
      link to dcrainmaker.com

  178. Happy Runner

    Could the tech savvy give opinions on whether Garmin paid out money to the hackers, given how things have played out so far and how things are coming back on line?

    Could the corporate savvy give opinions on whether, if Garmin paid out big money, there would be evidence of this in publicly available shareholder documents?

    • Mark

      According to TechCrunch:
      “By imposing sanctions, the Treasury would have effectively made it illegal for any U.S. company to pay a ransom to get their files back.”

    • My assumption at this point semi-supported by piecing together various tidbits is that they were infected in certain areas (sounds like starting or initially impacting their production facility in Taiwan), and then it sounds like they purposefully shut off/disconnected everything else to minimize spread. To what extent they recovered from backups vs swept through machines isn’t super clear right now. Obviously, I suspect the things that aren’t online are either because they haven’t been validated as clean, or they haven’t been resorted from backup yet.

      I doubt they paid out, given the sanctions involved. Garmin is far too risk adverse a company to even dabble with that idea.

    • usr

      Somehow I doubt that a plain payout would have been accompanied with so much blanket outage.

      But a likely scenario is in the middle ground: there’s a whole ecosystem of supporting organizations around ransomware, just like the main business of a shady pawn shop might be fencing stolen goods. The ransomers demand 10 million, but they’ll happily take a lower amount through a fake data recovery company that claims to restore the data through extreme expertise but actually just colludes with the ransomers. The victim may or may not be aware of the true nature of the “recovery expert”.

      It’s a simple negotiation tactic: the victim will be far more willing to pay a shady “recovery company” 5 million to get out of a 10 million ransom (that might even feel like a who to the victim of they are stupid enough not to see through the ruse) than to pay a 5 million ransom straight up. And all concerns regarding embargoes and not supporting a ransom industry only increases the possible “pretend that it’s not a ransom” price relative to the nominal ransom.

      It’s a sad affair entirely, as a customer I wish Garmin would have taken a firm stand beyond all doubt, even if that meant visible data loss and longer downtime.

    • usr

      *”feel like a victory to the victim if”

      instead of “feel like a who to the victim of”

      Someone stop me from posting without a proofreader 🙁

    • Dan

      I really hope that’s the case. I’d rather lose 8 years of Garmin data then have the hackers receive a cent. I know others may disagree…

  179. George

    A couple of people lamented the demise of Sportstracks.

    I use Rubitrack 5 to keep all my Garmin workout activity backed up. Actually I have all my workouts since 2005 stored there. I also back up the database file and computer backup to a Hard drive that isn’t connected to the internet (I keep it in my safe). I was a computer programmer / analyst in a former career and am cautious about my data retention.

    Rubitrack can sync with Garmin Connect online or you can upload your activities directly to the desktop.

    It also lets you keep track of your equipment, bikes, tires, whatever you want.

    I’m not affiliated with them in any way, just a satisfied user.

  180. DC D.

    Got on earlier and synced my watch ( though had been uploading to Strava via file transfer last few days). Then did a 45 minute spin using my 245 to just keep time and heart rate. Everything looked good till I went to save and entered into a never ending Saving notice…spinning and spinning… couldn’t break the spin spell so tried using Ray’s button charger to try and reset the watch back to clock screen.. presto it worked but no workout saved (oh well, who cares).

    No I wonder will I get a ransom text on my watch when I wake up tomorrow morning??

    Garmin is OURS!

    • Jarda

      Yeah, probably. They’ll want you to chip in on $10M ransom. 😉

      There’s a very common bug, reported over here and on reddit repeatedly, that the workouts show GPS fine, but don’t record any distance or track and cannot be saved or discarded. It also happens with indoor things apparently which is even more annoying because I don’t know how to tell if it’s ok or ot.

      If that’s it, you will run into the same issue again on your next activity. Apparently, deleting some workouts works for lot of people.

  181. Guru

    Fantastic, its working for me, thank you So much

  182. Matthew

    Hi Ray. Do you or anyone know how to recover a Fenix 3 from the debug/diagnostic screen?
    Seeing the app down on Thursday, I plugged it in to charge and when I took it off the usb caddy, it went into service mode. Right before taking it off, it showed 100% charge and after it only boots into a status screen.
    I’ve tried holding down start and lap while booting for the two beeps; same thing. Also my PC no longer sees it as a device, yet the status screen will show it’s getting power.
    My guess? On Thursday morning the device got given bad firmware and now its bricked.

    Are there any software tools to see the device, even if it’s not listing as a drive? Can I flash a firmware to at least make it operational?

    • Matthew

      Here’s a photo of the watch now, in case anyone can recognise and suggest something.

    • So normally to get into the diag screen, it’s because you’re holding down a button (usually down) when it tries and boots up. Usually, rebooting it (soft or hard reset), or plugging it into a computer will easily get out of that mode, or, just simply pressing escape a few times.

      However, one rarely seen issue is if the button is stick down (whether you realize it or not). For fun, stick your watch in a bowl of warm soapy water for 10-15 mins, then press all the buttons like a toddler for 20-30 seconds. Then try the soft reset again. I’m wondering if one of the buttons is semi-stuck (due to salt/gel/etc…).

    • Matthew

      Spot on! Thank you.
      I had a cup of 70deg water with lots of soap and did the toddler routine – and now it’s back working. I had already tried this but the previous time either wasn’t warm enough, wasn’t long enough soaking or not enough toddlering.
      How unfortunate that the first time it happened was on the morning of the biggest Garmin outage.
      It’s been fully reset but it’s working again – super thanks Ray!

  183. erinc

    interesting issue;

    – activity folder on my 735xt seemed empty after I had tried to synced during outage (without knowing it)
    – use ease us recovery to locate files; 3 other activities (walking), 1 strength activity, 1 run activity (based on a workout I had created earlier)
    – run activity on monday (27th)

    sycned few minutes ago (28th); 3 other activities and 1 strength activity synced, however run activities are not…tried to upload manually .fit file, connect web gave me error message that file type is not supported…

    any ideads ?

  184. R H

    I had to hard reset the Fenix 6 because it would say it had GPS then record nothing. When you shut down the run… immediate death spiral.

    Now I’ve done that and reattached the watch, all my stats are gone – ie VO2 Max from 63 to 45 etc.

    Does anyone know how to get your data on to the new watch? Happened to me when I upgraded from 5 to 6. Not sure I’ll upgrade again if this isn’t a simple fix!

    Thanks!

  185. JG

    Years ago Garmin had a PC/Mac compatible app that was meant for offline syncing storing of data, it was called Training Center. Garmin, in their infinite wisdom, decided to EOL the application. For some time another site hosted links to download versions of it even though Garmin had hid the software on their site. It is apparent that since then, Garmin has fully removed it from their website as the links lead to not found urls.
    After this kerfuffle, I would say it is time to give users back some capability to manage and process their own data when/if Garmin is unavailable or worse (plugin any of a number of scenarios). There also isn’t really any reason that the mobile apps couldn’t do more work and storage than they are now, which is none, given the storage and processing in modern smart phones.
    I am hopeful that Garmin will look into this, but knowing them, they won’t, but will instead look to charge their customers a premium fee for some type of upper tier service a la Strava.

    • Paul S.

      I was using Training Center right up until a few months ago, when Ray posted about My Bike Radar Traffic. Using that changed the FIT file, and GTC could no longer handle it. It had a good run, about 12 years worth of stuff. (It didn’t make the jump to Catalina because it wasn’t 64 bit, but I could still use it on my old MacPro running Sierra). I never liked it very much, since what it could do was so limited; always used something else (currently Golden Cheetah and RubiTrack).

  186. anthony

    Hi – I’m trying to download structured workouts from Garmin Connect onto my Fenix2. And although Garmin Connect says it has sent successfully they won’t show up on my watch. This isn’t a feature I’ve used in the past, so don’t know if it’s outage related, or something else?
    Any help or other ways to do this?
    Thanks
    Anthoy

  187. ok runner

    Here’s a question. Is it safe to install a new version of Garmin Express etc. on your PC considering Garmin was infected with ransomware? How do we know? A little worrisome.

  188. Lynn

    Since the outage, I can’t even record an activity on my Garmin Edge 810, let alone upload it. As soon as my Garmin tries to find a GPS signal, it shuts off. I can’t even use it to see my heart rate or cadence, which doesn’t seem to have any link to Garmin’s platform. Is anyone else having this issue?

    • ok runner

      My 520 plus is recording events but I can’t sync and upload. My Fenix 3hr won’t sync with the app either.

    • Lynn

      ok runner, any idea why I can’t even get my 810 to stay on and record? I’m fine with not being able to sync and upload ’til later (I can still plug the 810 into my laptop and save the files elsewhere, and it’s not an issue of too many Activities on the device…I connected it yesterday and the folder is now empty). Or is it possible that something is wrong with my 810 and it’s just a total coincidence that it happened at the same time as Garmin’s outage?

  189. Kip W

    Hi, i’m aware of the connect status page, but interested in a touch more detail. I have a 630 and a Fenix, looks like physio trueUp is dead as the devices are not aware of each other any more. Is anyone else seeing this? I use training status/training load to manage my training so it’s causing me some issues.

    Are there any other subtle features that don’t seem to be working for anyone?

    thanks

    • Dr. D

      Yes, I am also observing that TrueUp is not working. The mobile app seems to track ok but the devices are out of sync.

  190. ok runner

    Ray,
    Still this morning, nothing on the Connect app is working for any of my devices or my daughter’s. On the net, it is being published that Garmin is back up in a limited fashion, but I know of no one local who has any functionality. Any inside scoop on when Garmin may be back up?

    • Paul S

      Been working for me for a few days. Not completely back, but automatic uploads (probably over WiFi, not likely through the app) are working, passing on to Strava is working, and the app is showing what I did this morning.

    • Yeah, for me most of the major stuff has been working since Garmin said/tweeted out (in terms of sync upwards/etc…).

  191. JD

    Coincidence or precautionary measures at work?
    Seems odd to have maintenance scheduled mid-week.

  192. Graham

    Pretty much full functionality between my Edge 830 and Garmin Connect for the last 24hrs which came as a pleasant surprise as I’m in rural Norfolk (UK not US). Was able to plan a route on Strava that uploaded seamlessly last evening. 105km in the bag this morning. Nice!
    Having lived and worked through a cyber ransomware attack that wiped tens of thousands of desktops in a single business across an entire continent I actually feel Garmin has handled this ok so far…probably a minority view here but like I said, I’ve lived the nightmare

  193. tk

    I am experiencing problem loading new routes (courses) to the watch (Garmin Fenix 6X Pro)? I can import gpx files via connect web and the routes are showing in connect app (android) but are not pushed/synced to the watch… Any ideas?

  194. giorgitd

    Had a weird message on GC yesterday – something like ‘your 920XT activity is uploaded, but it will take some time to process and appear in GC’. It showed up soon after. Interesting.

    Also interesting are a few reports that Garmin paid (maybe indirectly and maybe not the full ask) – but these stories all seem to point to tone article, but now also reported by BleepingComputer.
    link to bleepingcomputer.com

  195. BrownieTheDestroyer

    3 August. Activities in Garmin Connect are not showing in Strava. Watch uses Wi-Fi fine to get to Connect. What steps are needed to “re-map” Garmin Connect to Strava?

    Strava -> Settings -> My Apps shows Connect has access to Strava.

    • Andrew Cushen

      Have you tried disconnecting your Garmin account from Strava then re-connecting? That usually works for me.

    • BrownieTheDestroyer

      That worked, but I still have one ride on Connect that was deleted from the watch. I’ve tried to put the ride back on the watch in reverse but no luck. I can see the ride in Connect but can’t copy it to Strava since it’s already deleted from the watch. Garmin 935 / Macbook.

    • John Reinke

      Brownie – you can download the Fit file from the Connect website. Go to the activity, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner, and select Export Original. That will give you a zip file with the original Fit file, which you can upload to Strava.

  196. Andrew Cushen

    As of this morning, Auto-upload on my Edge 1030 Plus was working spottily: some rides uploaded, but last night’s refused even with a manual upload attempt from the Ride History on the device. Re-pairing the Garmin to my phone seems to have resolved it. Fingers crossed for my next ride ?

  197. JD

    Green for Go on all sectors today —
    link to connect.garmin.com
    I wonder when we’ll hear the real story. 🙂

  198. Emily

    The android file transfer isn’t working for my watch. It keeps telling to reconnect or restart the device. I’ve done both and it’s still not working. (I’m using a mac air with a vivoactive 3 music)