RiversideArt: Eighteen Garmin Apps Built Against the Subscription Tide

When Garmin launched its Connect+ subscription in March 2025, the reaction from owners was loud and mostly unprintable. People who had paid several hundred pounds for a watch did not enjoy being asked for a monthly fee to get more from it, and a year on, the mood is similar. Meanwhile, a quieter frustration has been building beneath the surface: useful features keep landing only on the newest and most expensive watches, while perfectly good Forerunners and Fenixes from two or three years ago are left as they are.

RiversideArt is a small Connect IQ shop that has planted its flag on exactly that ground. Since June 2026, it has shipped eighteen apps to the Connect IQ store. Each one is either free or a one-time purchase; every paid app now carries a free 7-day trial, and nothing needs an account, a phone connection mid-activity, or a server. This article looks at what the shop is doing and at four apps that each fill a specific gap Garmin has left open.

The Problem With Renting Features on a Watch You Own

Subscriptions make sense for services with running costs. A data field that does arithmetic on your watch has zero running cost to support, and owners know it.

The consequence for Connect IQ is that readers increasingly check the payment model before the feature list. At the same time, Garmin focuses on new native features on current premium hardware, so the large installed base of older watches becomes fertile ground for small developers willing to solve one problem well and charge for it once.

How RiversideArt Works

TL;DR: Eighteen Connect IQ apps, all free or one-time purchases between $1.99 and $4.99, free 7-day trials on everything paid, no subscriptions, no accounts, no servers.

The catalogue is mostly data fields, plus two watch faces, two small watch apps, and a glance widget. Nearly every product traces back to a specific request or complaint on Garmin’s own forums, some of them years old, and the shop’s habit is to reply in those threads once the app exists. Support requests get answered by the developer, and twice already, a user request has shipped as an update within a day:

• a configurable label for the free Countdown Timer field, and
• weigh-in calibration for the Sweat Loss Estimate field after a Forerunner 970 owner asked to tune the model against real before-and-after weights. (for live sweat and sodium loss, see the hDrop review)

Ultra Race Executor: Cutoff Pacing for the Watches Garmin Left Behind

Garmin’s early 2026 update added checkpoint and cutoff tools to its course planner, but only on the newest premium watches. If you run ultras on a Forerunner 255, 265, 945, 955 or 965, or a Fenix 6 or 7, you’ve got nothing, and plenty of ultra runners still carry a paper pace card for exactly this.

Ultra Race Executor is that card, live. Set race distance, goal time, an optional cutoff time and an optional checkpoint distance, and mid-race, the field answers the questions that actually matter: the pace you need, the time you have banked, the pressure of the cutoff, and when you will hit the next checkpoint. It is $4.99 once, and it runs on the older watches that the native feature skipped.

Fuel Coach: Alerts That Survive Structured Workouts

Garmin’s native eat and drink alerts have a known dead zone: they stop firing during structured workouts, which, for long interval sessions, is precisely when fuelling discipline collapses. Fuel Coach runs off the activity timer instead, so the cues keep coming.

Here is a worked example. Set a target of 90 grams of carbs per hour with 22-gram gels and the field cues a gel about every 15 minutes, which works out at 88 grams per hour, over a 3-hour ride that is 12 gels and roughly 264 grams of carbs, within a few per cent of target, with separate drink cues on their own interval. Run a 6-by-8-minute threshold session in the middle of that ride, and the cues carry straight through, where the native alerts would have gone silent. It is $3.99 with the 7-day trial to test it on a real workout first.

Resort Ski Runs: Counting Descents, Not Chairlifts

There are forum threads several years old about the alpine ski profile counting chairlift ascents into run counts and distance on watches like the Forerunner 955 and Forerunner 265S. Garmin has acknowledged it, but no fix so far.

Resort Ski Runs sidesteps the whole issue. The field watches barometric vertical speed and ground speed, decides whether you are descending, riding a lift, or standing around, and counts descents only: count, last run drop and time, descent-only vertical, and ski time against lift time. A minimum drop setting stops bunny slopes from inflating the count. Southern hemisphere skiers can use it right now; everyone else has it ready for winter. It is $3.99.

Recovery Countdown: When You Will Actually Be Recovered

Garmin gives you recovery as a bare number of hours, which means clock arithmetic every time you glance at it. Recovery Countdown is a glance and widget that shows the hours remaining and the day and hour the countdown actually ends, so “38 hours” becomes “Thursday around 6 pm”.

One honest caveat the app states itself: outside a watch face, Garmin exposes recovery in whole hours only, so the end time is approximate by design. It is $2.99. On the Venu series watches, note that it lives in the glance list, which Garmin makes you add to by hand.

Compatibility

The portfolio targets the broad Connect IQ range rather than only current flagships:

• Forerunner: 165, 255, 265, 570, 945, 955, 965 and 970 series
• Fenix and Epix: Fenix 8 families, Fenix 6 and 7 families, Epix Gen 2 and Epix Pro, Enduro 2, Tactix 7 and 8
• Venu and vivoactive: Venu 2, 3, 4 and X1, vivoactive 5 and 6
• Instinct: Instinct 3 AMOLED models
• Edge: the fuelling and countdown fields also run on current Edge cycling computers

Exact device lists are on each store page. The review prompt and trial mechanics need Connect IQ 4.2 or newer, but the apps themselves run well below that.

Background

RiversideArt is a one-person shop, registered as a small LLC, that entered the Connect IQ store in June 2026 with three free utilities and, within weeks, followed with the paid catalogue. The build list comes from reading what Garmin owners keep asking for: the indoor rowing field, for example, implements a feature list posted almost verbatim in a forum idea thread. The bet is simple: in a market annoyed by subscriptions, being the shop that visibly does not do them is a position worth holding.

Summary

Eighteen apps, one price each, trials on everything paid, and a build list drawn from what Garmin owners actually ask for. If one of the four gaps above matches your watch and your sport, the trial costs nothing to check. Search RiversideArt on the Connect IQ store.

Quick answers

Are these really one-time purchases?
Yes. Every paid app is a single purchase between $1.99 and $4.99 with a free 7-day trial. There are no subscriptions, no accounts, and no in-app purchases.

Which watches are supported?
Most Connect IQ-capable Garmin watches from the Fenix 6 and Forerunner 945 era onward, including Forerunner 165 through 970, Venu 2 through X1, Instinct 3, and current Edge units for the cycling-relevant fields. Check the store page for the exact model.

What happens when the trial ends?
The watch blocks the app after 7 days and offers the unlock. Buying it through the Connect IQ store unlocks it permanently on the user’s account.

Related reading on the5krunner

• Garmin Connect IQ 9: Do You Miss Out On The New Capabilities?: six new CIQ 9 capabilities, which devices qualify, and which do not.
• Awesome Maps: Ordnance Survey and Satellite Maps for Garmin CIQ: another indie Connect IQ shop shipping premium map tiles to older watches, one-time purchase model.
• Beatpace: Structured Running Music That Plays Native on Garmin: an indie Connect IQ music provider that plays a workout structure rather than a catalogue.
• Fix Files: the ongoing coverage of specific Garmin bugs, gaps and workarounds. RiversideArt’s whole catalogue is that same fix-a-thing approach, delivered as apps rather than articles.

Author: RiversideArt, edited by the5krunner.

Last Updated on 16 July 2026 by the5krunner