Crystal Reborn 2.0 — Garmin’s One Million Download Watch Face Is Back

There are a handful of third-party apps in the history of the Garmin Connect IQ store that became genuinely iconic. Crystal was one of them and a favourite on this site. Over one million downloads. Garmin’s own Best New Watch Face award. A design so clean and so functional that it stayed on the wrists of Garmin owners for years.

Seven years on, developer Pixel Pathos has rebuilt it. Crystal Reborn is a ground-up rewrite for today’s Garmin devices — AMOLED screens, always-on displays, and health metrics that the original never supported. If you have been waiting for Body Battery on a watch face with a classic style the part, or weather data pulled directly from OpenWeather, read on.

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What’s New in Crystal Reborn

Here’s what’s changed. Before → Now

• AOD: monochrome → full colour
• AOD: all-or-nothing display → individual element control (any combination from full data display down to time and date only)
• Icons: single theme colour → each complication has its own colour
• Colour gradients: none → on the time on all devices, on meters and move bar on AMOLED
• Side meters: one level of sub-division → two levels, significantly more readable at higher values
• Settings: phone app required → full on-device settings menu
• Weather: OpenWeather shared key only → Garmin Weather default, OpenWeather optional
• Complications: limited set → 30+, including body battery, stress, recovery time, solar charge, respiration rate

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Why It Took Seven Years

The original Crystal never really went away. It still sits in the Connect IQ store, it is still free, and Pixel Pathos has committed to keeping it there. But Garmin’s more recent devices — the Fenix (Epix) series, the Forerunner 965 and its successors — demanded something built for them rather than retrofitted. What began as a light refresh became a substantial rebuild, with much of the codebase refactored or rewritten. Crystal Reborn requires System 4 / Connect IQ 3.2.0 or above. Legacy device support goes; everything else gets considerably better.

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Colour, Gradients and the New Look

The most immediate difference is colour.

The original Crystal was restrained — functional and precise, colourful but largely in a monochromatic way (blue was my favourite). Crystal Reborn introduces colourful icons across all complications, while remaining, in the developer’s own words, “easy on the eye”. The time display carries a colour gradient on every supported device, including MIP screens. On AMOLED devices, the gradient extends to the side meters and the move bar.

The side meters keep their auto-scaling behaviour, but now render two levels of subdivision for larger values. At 5,000 steps, for instance, small gaps appear every 500 with larger gaps every 1,000. The result is significantly more visual precision without added clutter.

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The Always-On Display — Rebuilt

The AOD is entirely new. Where the original Crystal’s always-on mode was monochrome, Crystal Reborn runs in full colour. In AOD mode, the hours font shifts to an outline style, the meters and move bar become thinner to protect battery life, and you can control which elements appear individually, from a full data display all the way down to time and date only. AOD brightness is adjustable, with the time controllable separately from the rest of the display.

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Body Battery, Stress and the Full Complications List

This is where Crystal Reborn earns its depth. The watch face supports more than 30 complications across its side meters, data fields, indicators, and move bar.

The full list covers:

• battery,
• battery in days,
• steps,
• calories,
• active calories,
• floors climbed,
• active minutes,
• heart rate,
• body battery,
• stress,
• recovery time,
• run VO2 max,
• bike VO2 max,
• oxygen saturation,
• respiration rate,
• weekly run and bike distance,
• solar charge,
• altitude,
• barometric pressure,
• humidity,
• current weather,
• sunrise and sunset,
• notifications,
• Bluetooth status,
• alarms,
• distance,
• thermometer, and
• wheelchair pushes.

Body battery is the one most existing Crystal owners have been waiting for. It sits in either a side meter or a data field, and if a live reading is unavailable, it falls back to a value up to ten minutes old rather than showing nothing. Stress and recovery time sit alongside it as side meter options — recovery time maxes out at 4 days, which automatically sets the meter’s scale.

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OpenWeather Integration

Crystal Reborn supports two weather sources: Garmin Weather, which is the default on most supported devices, and OpenWeather, which many users find more accurate for their location.

Setting up OpenWeather requires a free API key. Sign up at openweathermap.org, copy the key generated automatically for your account, and paste it into Crystal Reborn’s settings in the Connect IQ phone app. Once active, a small coloured dot on the weather field tells you the connection status at a glance — green for a successful update, blue for a queued request, grey for no connection, red for an invalid key. The face refreshes weather data every 30 minutes and can make at most one internet request every five minutes, so allow a short delay on first activation.

One important note: the original Crystal used a shared OpenWeather key provided under an open source agreement. Crystal Reborn is not open source and cannot use that key. Your own key is required — registration is free and takes under two minutes.

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Customisation

The settings menu lives on the watch itself, via the main menu under Watch Face > Edit > Settings. You only need the Connect IQ phone app to enter an OpenWeather key or set a custom colour on older devices without the on-device theme editor.

Colour options include a range of built-in themes — dark or light background, though AMOLED devices are limited to dark themes — plus two custom theme slots where you choose your own colour via a hex code or the on-device colour picker. The Colourful Icons setting controls whether complications keep their individual colours or take on the theme colour uniformly. Hours and minutes digits can be styled independently: theme colour, high-contrast monochrome, or medium-contrast monochrome.

The move bar, meter segments, and meter digit display all carry their own style settings. You can show filled segments only, merge segments into a single arc, or hide them entirely.

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Take Out & Thoughts

There’s a free trial here but, as is the way of the world, Crystal is now a now a paid-for for.

Whislt the original Crystal was my go-to fce for years and gen 2.0 is better both technically and visually, I can’t help but feel there are better 3rd party watchface out there with improved aesthetics. The world has moved on.

How to Download Crystal Reborn

Crystal Reborn is available in the Garmin Connect IQ store in two versions. The Garmin Pay version is the recommended route if your region and bank support it — it is the cheaper option and payment is required before download. The KiezelPay version supports PayPal and a wider range of banks and includes a 24-hour free trial before any payment is required. Both versions are a one-off purchase tied permanently to your Garmin account.

Full documentation is available at pixelpathos.co.uk — the manual covers every setting in detail and the FAQ covers installation, payment, and troubleshooting.

Last Updated on 20 March 2026 by the5krunner