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Garmin Connect is down worldwide – but there’s a workaround

Outage has lasted several hours now, causing frustration for users

Garmin Connect is currently down worldwide, with users – many of whom, curiously, seem to have achieved a personal best today, whether running or cycling – taking to Twitter to vent their frustration. Read on for a workaround that will enable you to keep your data and upload it once the service is back.

The facility has been down for several hours now, affecting users in countries including the UK, the US, India and South Africa, and the situation is ongoing according to tweets posted shortly after 1.30pm BST time by Garmin, which says it is “working to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.”

One Twitter user who posted earlier today about the problems he was having uploading  his “pretty sweet 5k time” received a number of replies from other people around the world who were similarly unable to upload their activities.

Besides being unable to upload activities, the outage means that other features on Garmin devices cannot be used, such as creating new routes or sharing bike rides or runs to Strava.

Data on devices such as Garmin smartwatches or bike computers won’t be lost, however, and can be posted to services such as Strava manually by connecting it to a computer via USB, downloading the .fit file from the activities folder, and then uploading it from the computer to the website. On Strava, there's an option to upload activities manually from a drop-down menu that appears on the top right on the desktop site, and on the top left on their mobile app.

Obviously, at the moment that’s not an option if it’s Garmin Connect or Garmin Express that you want to interact with.

It’s not the first time this year that users of the company’s products have experienced difficulties.

In February, we reported how a road.cc reader said he had been left with “a very expensive paperweight” after he downloaded the latest firmware onto his Tacx Neo smart trainer, one of a number of users to have experienced such a problem.

> Garmin introduces repair option following complaints from Tacx Neo smart trainer owners

In response Garmin, which bought Tacx in early 2019, introduced a flat rate repair option to support owners whose units were out of warranty.

A spokesperson said: “We are aware of the comments on social media and continue to address Tacx product repair inquiries.

“The purchase of a Tacx trainer includes an initial two-year warranty. After the original warranty expires we will offer customers a flat rate repair option within our standard service phase.

“For a period of time during the integration of the Garmin and Tacx product support teams, a subset of legacy trainers did not have this option available for customers. This was not intentional, and the Garmin and Tacx teams have worked to ensure we make this option available, effective immediately.”

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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14 comments

Avatar
stub | 4 years ago
0 likes

The worst thing about all of this is just how poorly it has been handled. 3 days in and not a peep from Garmin themselves as to what is going on or when it might be resolved...

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Toon Army | 4 years ago
0 likes

Tried to manually add my ride yesterday from Garmin Edge 1000 but the workout/activity was saved as a gimp file and not in the format required by Strava.

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rkemb | 4 years ago
1 like

Also from Twitter:
A leaked email from Garmin's Taiwan office says everything including the production line has been shut down for two days: https://t.co/Hs4NYfVGIW
Local media suspects a ransomware attack, which is the only thing that could explain how widespread this is. #garmindown #garmin

Avatar
2Loose replied to rkemb | 4 years ago
1 like
rkemb wrote:

...Local media suspects a ransomware attack, which is the only thing that could explain how widespread this is. #garmindown #garmin

Looks like accurate info
https://www.zdnet.com/article/garmin-services-and-production-go-down-aft...

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rkemb replied to 2Loose | 4 years ago
2 likes

Someone _really_ desperate for a good 5k time, then.

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SculturaD | 4 years ago
0 likes

"Outage has lasted several hours now, causing frustration for users"

I first noticed it being down around 3am-4am this morning. 12hrs later and still no further forward in regard to being fixed.

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Jetmans Dad | 4 years ago
1 like

The Garmin situation perfectly illustrates the potential downside of doing everything across the web. IP phone services can be great, and cheaper than traditional landline services but a service outage like this one (or even a power cut) can render them unusable right when your customers might most need them. 

Also ... that guy's 5k time can be directly uploaded to Strava if he is so keen to show it off to the world!

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brooksby replied to Jetmans Dad | 4 years ago
0 likes
Jetmans Dad wrote:

The Garmin situation perfectly illustrates the potential downside of doing everything across the web. IP phone services can be great, and cheaper than traditional landline services but a service outage like this one (or even a power cut) can render them unusable right when your customers might most need them. 

Also ... that guy's 5k time can be directly uploaded to Strava if he is so keen to show it off to the world!

Exactly.  My office got talked (ha!) into replacing our landlines with an IP phone system, without anyone really explaining this 'slight' downside.  PITA.

Avatar
2Loose replied to brooksby | 4 years ago
1 like
brooksby wrote:
Jetmans Dad wrote:

The Garmin situation perfectly illustrates the potential downside of doing everything across the web. IP phone services can be great, and cheaper than traditional landline services but a service outage like this one (or even a power cut) can render them unusable right when your customers might most need them. 

Also ... that guy's 5k time can be directly uploaded to Strava if he is so keen to show it off to the world!

Exactly.  My office got talked (ha!) into replacing our landlines with an IP phone system, without anyone really explaining this 'slight' downside.  PITA.

Do people not remember the landlines being out in an area because of a JCB going too deep?   It is all wires. if the wires are out, it doesn't matter if it is VOIP or traditional PSTN, outages can happen.  At least with IP Services you can host your service in multiple locations for service continuity.  

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Judge dreadful replied to brooksby | 4 years ago
0 likes

It can be a nightmare, however the rise of V.O.I.P and video, has kept me very busy for the past few years, and when it works properly, it is a great thing. The people who have these systems in place really need to make sure their I.T. security is top notch though, or this is what happens.

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hawkinspeter replied to Judge dreadful | 4 years ago
0 likes
Judge dreadful wrote:

It can be a nightmare, however the rise of V.O.I.P and video, has kept me very busy for the past few years, and when it works properly, it is a great thing. The people who have these systems in place really need to make sure their I.T. security is top notch though, or this is what happens.

Or keep voice and data packets in separate VLANs.

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mdava replied to Jetmans Dad | 4 years ago
0 likes
Jetmans Dad wrote:

The Garmin situation perfectly illustrates the potential downside of doing everything across the web. IP phone services can be great, and cheaper than traditional landline services but a service outage like this one (or even a power cut) can render them unusable right when your customers might most need them. 

I take your point, but isn't this actually the ideal sort of thing to be cloud hosted?  99.9% of users are individuals / amateurs and it really doesn't matter that you can't see your RHR or run time for a few hours, versus the convenience and cloud storage / backup for no cost for the other 364 days of the year.

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Simon E replied to mdava | 4 years ago
1 like

It obviously matters a great deal to some people!

"The fact that this makes my watch not talk to my phone makes me upset."

https://twitter.com/stompy243/status/1286285347811360769

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Tired of the tr... replied to Simon E | 4 years ago
0 likes

I'm not really bothered and I would just give them time to track the problem down and eradicate it, but I do have to say I was surprised that Garmin connect relies on the internet connection so much and doesn't show heart rate from the vivosport without internet. This is a not ideal for longer tours where I have been without internet for days (or only expensive connection). I don't really see why Garmin Connect can't keep a local cache of the data, and also store the data from the smartwatch locally and sync with the servers every now and then, so you can use it offline at least for a few days.

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