#10 The Deep Dive Fix Files: Week Ending 7 August 2026

This is a weekly roundup of significant sports tech problems that the endurance community has encountered and, where possible, resolved. Each entry covers the issue, the affected hardware or software, and the current best fix or workaround known to the community.

Garmin Forerunner 970 resetting and losing the session when saving an indoor rowing workout

On current stable software the Forerunner 970 and 570 reset at the moment an indoor rowing session is saved, and the reset can take the recording with it before it reaches Garmin Connect. The same software carries a related fault that crashes the watch during an indoor climbing activity. Both problems sit in the activity save and recording path rather than in a custom app or watch face, and the affected units were stable on the previous release.

Garmin confirmed both faults in its change log and corrected them in public beta 18.14, which began reaching enrolled users on 15 July 2026 across the Forerunner 970 and 570. To install it, connect the watch to Wi-Fi, open Settings, select System, choose Software Update, and select Check For Updates. Garmin stages beta releases, so the update may not appear immediately, and requesting it from the device is the reliable route.

Owners who prefer the stable release can save each indoor rowing session promptly and confirm it has synced to Garmin Connect before starting anything else, since the recording usually survives when the reset happens after a completed save.

Garmin Forerunner 970 music volume jumping to maximum after an alarm

On current stable software the Forerunner 970 and 570 handle media volume incorrectly around alarms and headphones. When an alarm sounds during playback, the music volume jumps to maximum afterwards. The watch speaker also blasts music at full volume for a moment when Bluetooth headphones disconnect, and the media player screen can show a track as playing when it is paused.

These are audio handling faults in the stable release rather than a headphone or track problem, and they appear across different headphones and music sources. Garmin documented them in its change log for public beta 18.14, which started reaching enrolled Forerunner 970 and 570 users on 15 July 2026. That build changes the default so button tones turn off when headphones connect, patches the volume spikes tied to alarms, and corrects the paused and playing state on the media player.

Owners who wait for the stable release can lower the media volume manually before an alarm is due and turn button tones off in the sound settings, which reduces the sudden jumps until the fix lands.

Garmin Forerunner 970 Garmin Coach rest days not matching the Connect app

On current stable software the rest days shown for Garmin Coach and the daily suggested workouts on the Forerunner 970 and 570 do not match the schedule in the Garmin Connect app. A day the app marks as rest can appear as a training day on the wrist, and the daily suggestion then follows the wrong pattern, which throws out the week for anyone on a structured plan.

The fault is in how the watch selects rest days for Garmin Coach and daily suggested workouts, and it sits on the device side rather than in the plan itself. Garmin listed a correction in its change log for public beta 18.14, which began reaching enrolled users on 15 July 2026. After the update the training days on the watch match what the app shows. To install it, connect the watch to Wi-Fi, open Settings, select System, choose Software Update, and select Check For Updates.

Owners on the stable release can treat the Garmin Connect app schedule as the reference and re-sync the watch before each session, since the app holds the correct rest day pattern while the watch does not.

Wahoo ELEMNT Roam 3 rebooting and factory resetting after firmware WH49-302661

On firmware WH49-302661 the ELEMNT Roam 3 reboots several times and then rolls itself back to the previous firmware through an automatic factory reset. Re-pairing the head unit to the phone reinstalls WH49-302661 straight away, so the loop returns and the device becomes unusable for a normal ride.

Owners have traced one trigger to the display language. The reboot loop appears when the Roam 3 is set to Polish, and setting the device language back to English stops it. A second trigger is the loss of a GPS fix. One owner found the Roam 3 rebooted the moment it entered a garage with no satellite reception and settled again once it returned to open sky. Sensors are not the cause, since a heart rate strap and a Varia radar paired without incident.

Until Wahoo ships a corrected build, keep the device language on English, start the ride outdoors with a clear view of the sky, and contact Wahoo support with the serial number so the fault reaches the developers and Wahoo has the pairing and location data to reproduce the loop.

Garmin Venu 4 crashing when playing Bluetooth music during a run

On the Venu 4, streaming music to Bluetooth headphones while an activity is running causes the watch to stutter, drop the audio at intervals, and in some cases freeze and reboot mid activity. The interruptions arrive minutes apart, often around the fifteen, twenty and thirty minute marks, and they continue on current stable software 17.33.

The fault sits with the watch rather than the earbuds. Owners report the same headphones playing without interruption on a Venu 2 and Venu 3, and the problem appears across different headphone brands. A full factory reset and a fresh setup do not clear it, and replacement units have shown the same pattern, so a hardware swap is not a reliable route out. Garmin has acknowledged the behaviour and has not yet published a fix.

The approach that holds is to stop streaming music from the watch during activities and play it from the phone instead, which keeps the recording stable while Garmin works on the audio fault. Sending Garmin the crash details after an activity helps match the unit to the pattern.

Garmin Venu 4 stuck rebooting on a blank screen after update 17.33

After the 17.33 update, some Venu 4 units drop into a repeating restart or land on a black, unresponsive screen that ignores taps and button presses. The watch can also lose steps recorded earlier in the day when it restarts, and the watch face design resets after the crash.

One reproducible trigger is the Bluetooth connection to the phone. An owner found the crash happened shortly after the watch connected to Garmin Connect and stopped when Bluetooth was turned off, which points at the sync path rather than any single activity. A hard restart clears the blank screen for most owners, done by holding the button until the watch powers down and back up. Turning Bluetooth off avoids the connect triggered crash at the cost of notifications and sync.

Garmin has asked affected owners to contact support in their region, and some units that bricked have been replaced under warranty. Garmin does not currently offer older firmware, so rolling back to a build before 17.33 is not available, and logging the fault with support is the route that gets the unit on record.

Garmin Fenix 7 Pro and Fenix 8 losing weather and Find My Phone overnight

On the Fenix 7 Pro running software 26.09, and on the Fenix 8 paired with a recent iPhone, part of the Garmin Connect connection drops overnight while the watch and phone sit idle. By morning the weather data has stopped updating, Garmin Connect shows the watch as disconnected, and features that depend on the Connect link such as Find My Phone do nothing. The activity and sleep records still sit on the watch, so the loss is in the phone link.

The connection is only partly down. Phone notifications, incoming calls, and contact names still reach the watch, so the fault is easy to miss until you check the weather glance or try Find My Phone. That split behaviour points at the Garmin Connect background service losing its session rather than a full Bluetooth drop. Owners have traced the same pattern on an iPhone running iOS 26, beginning around Spring 2026.

The step that restores the link is to turn Bluetooth off and back on on the phone. Garmin Connect then reconnects at once, weather resumes, and Find My Phone works again. The recovery holds until the next long idle period. Keeping the Garmin Connect app allowed to run in the background and excluded from any battery saver list reduces how often the service drops, without removing the fault.

Garmin Fenix 8 and Enduro 3 phone disconnection alert not working after software 22.35

After updating the Fenix 8 AMOLED to software 22.35, the alert that warns when the phone leaves Bluetooth range no longer appears. Leaving the phone behind, or turning Bluetooth off on the phone, produces no notification on the watch, so you can walk away from your phone mid run and never know the link has dropped. The watch paired normally before the update.

The Enduro 3 shows a related fault on the same 22.35 build, where one owner lost the ability to connect to the phone using the shortcut button and the Bluetooth connection dropped until it was forced back by hand. Both cases appear straight after the update, which places the fault in the 22.35 connection handling. Forcing the connection from the watch, through the settings menu and the phone or Bluetooth connection, brings the link back until it drops again, and a full Bluetooth reset with a fresh pairing clears the more stubborn cases.

LiveTrack and notifications on race day and long runs depend on the phone staying in range, so a silent disconnect can run for a whole session before you notice. Checking the connection icon before you start, and keeping the phone on you rather than in a bag that drifts out of range, avoids the quiet drop. Garmin has not published a fix at the time of writing.

Garmin Fenix 8 screen not waking with the wrist gesture during a timer alarm

On the Fenix 8 running firmware 22.38, the raise to wake gesture stops working the moment a timer alarm sounds. While the timer counts down the gesture behaves normally and a wrist turn lights the screen, but once the alarm fires the screen stays black on a wrist turn, and only a tap or a button press wakes it. It reproduces in seconds with a 15 second timer left to alarm with the screen already off.

The cause is the vibration. Garmin engineers confirmed that the vibration motor masks the wrist gesture, so the watch cannot pick out the raise to wake motion while it is buzzing. Garmin has classed this as by design rather than a fault, so a firmware correction is not planned. The same interaction affects the incoming call screen, which also fails to wake with a gesture while the watch vibrates.

Turning vibration off restores the gesture, at the cost of losing the buzz that many runners rely on. While vibration stays on, a tap or a button press shows the timer or the caller. Garmin pointed owners to the ideas form as the only channel for a change, given the by design ruling, so logging the request there is worthwhile if the alarm gesture matters to your training.

Garmin Fenix 7 and Enduro 2 glances resetting order after syncing with Garmin Express or Connect

After a sync with Garmin Express or Garmin Connect, the glance order set on the watch gets rearranged. Loose glances that sit directly in the glance loop jump to the front, ahead of any folders, and native glances such as sunrise and sunset can reset to the top on their own. Owners see it on the Fenix 7 on 15.77, the Fenix 7 Pro on 17.28, and the Enduro 2 on 26.09, and it still happens on Garmin Express 7.29.1.

The behaviour is a sync interaction between the watch and Garmin’s servers rather than a fault in the watch settings menu. Garmin Express release notes for 7.27.0 and 7.27.1 both claimed a fix for glances and activity lists being moved after a sync, but the reorder returns, and it triggers after a sync from a computer or from a phone. Glances placed inside folders keep their position relative to each other, so grouping the glances you rely on into folders limits the disruption.

Some owners also report unwanted glances such as stock tickers being added back during a forced Garmin Connect sync. This connects to the 2026 change that stops Connect IQ apps working if the watch stays offline from Garmin Connect for more than 39 days, which pushes people to sync more often and expose the reorder. Logging the fault with Garmin support attaches it to the open ticket.

Garmin Forerunner 970 metronome making no sound through Bluetooth headphones

On the Forerunner 970 with Bluetooth headphones paired, the running metronome produces no beep and only the vibration alert reaches the wrist. Pace and heart rate audio prompts still play through the headphones as normal, so the link is working, but the metronome tone is dropped. The Preview control inside the metronome settings is also silent, and owners see this with the alert set to tone and to tone and vibrate.

The 970 metronome had an earlier fault where the beat drifted and the beep landed at irregular gaps while keeping the count per minute roughly correct, and Garmin tested a beta build that corrected the off-beat timing. The silent-through-headphones behaviour appeared alongside the software 18 line, including beta 18.14, so audio routing to Bluetooth headphones now suppresses the metronome tone in particular.

The vibration alert still fires, so switching the metronome alert type to vibration keeps the cadence cue during a run with headphones on. The tone plays through the watch speaker when no headphones are connected. Garmin is gathering videos and sound-setting screenshots to reproduce it, and the case is open on a support ticket, so reporting your software version and whether the beep returns with headphones disconnected helps separate the audio routing from the metronome timing.

Garmin Edge 850 stuck on Loading courses on factory firmware 6.16

A new or factory-reset Edge 850 that ships on software 6.16 can stall on the “Loading courses, workouts, and locations” screen at startup. The device does not offer 31.31 over the air, Check for Updates reports nothing or “Transfer already in progress”, and Garmin Express does not download the firmware even though the unit appears when plugged into USB. A plain factory reset drops it straight back onto the loading screen.

The unit is stuck on the old factory build and the update file will not apply. The step that clears it is to factory reset following Garmin’s boot loop instructions, then plug the Edge into a computer, put it in mass storage mode, and delete GUPDATE.GCP from the device home directory. Ejecting from USB returns it to the loop, so factory reset once more and connect to WiFi during setup. Check for Updates then shows 31.31 and the over the air update completes.

Once on 31.31 the auto-upload of activities works again, and the later 31.33 build installs over the air without the manual steps. Keep the device on WiFi through the update, since it drops the connection when it sleeps and stalls the transfer part way.

Suunto Vertical 2 and Race S false off-route alerts on trails after the latest update

On the Suunto Vertical 2 and Race S, following a GPX route triggers repeated off-route alerts that clear a few seconds later with a back on route message, even when the watch is on the correct trail. The alerts arrive often enough on twisty mountain trails, and on roads while running on the correct side of the street, that they train you to ignore them. One runner following an official race GPX on a mountain 50K reported around a dozen false alerts without ever leaving the course.

Owners link the change to the software update that revised off-route detection. The distance at which the watch declares you off route was reduced to roughly 40 metres, and in some reports 20 metres, so small gaps between your position and the recorded line now cross the threshold. The GPX itself contributes, because a route drawn from an older activity, or a track that does not follow the trail precisely, sits far enough from your real position to trip the reduced threshold. Komoot adds a further step, since importing a GPX offers a choice between snapping the route to known paths and keeping it as recorded.

Running in a battery mode that holds full GPS accuracy keeps the watch from drifting far enough off the line to trigger the alert, and checking how the route was created or imported catches GPX files that stray from the trail before you rely on them. Neither restores the older detection distance, so the behaviour continues until Suunto adjusts the threshold.

Garmin Fenix 8 calendar training plan disappearing from the watch

On the Garmin Fenix 8, the calendar training section can vanish from the watch even though scheduled workouts ran correctly on previous days. The training menu then shows only Recommended and My Trainings, and selecting the calendar returns a message telling you to download your trainings in Garmin Connect. Owners report the same section disappearing once before, several months earlier, then returning on its own, so the fault recurs rather than settling after a single fix.

The scheduled workouts still exist in the Garmin Connect calendar, so the break sits in the sync between the phone app and the watch. The watch loses the calendar feed while steps, activities and other data continue to move across, which points at the Connect Mobile connection rather than the training plan.

The step Garmin support gives is to uninstall Garmin Connect Mobile, confirm the watch no longer appears in the phone Bluetooth menu and remove it if it does, power cycle both the watch and the phone, then reinstall Connect Mobile and pair again with no other Bluetooth devices nearby. Because the fault has returned after an earlier self-resolution, log it with Garmin support so it attaches to the open case if the calendar drops out again after the reinstall.

Garmin Edge 1050 E-Mountain Bike profile saving rides as Mountain Bike in Garmin Connect and Strava

On the Garmin Edge 1050 running firmware 31.33, an activity profile with the Default Ride Type set to E-Mountain Bike records rides that reach Garmin Connect as Mountain Bike, and Strava receives the same incorrect type. No eBike sensor is paired. The same E-Mountain Bike type syncs correctly from a Fenix 8 for the same rider, which places the fault on the Edge side rather than in the Connect account.

The behaviour is not universal. Other Edge 1050 owners run separate E-Mountain Bike and Mountain Bike profiles and see both upload with the correct type, and the device history on their units shows the ride recorded as E-Mountain Bike before the sync. That split points at the pairing between one device and one Connect account.

The step Garmin gives is to remove the Edge 1050 from Garmin Connect, then uninstall and reinstall the Connect app before adding the device again. Garmin has asked owners still seeing Mountain Bike after the reinstall to report back with details so its team can pull diagnostic logs. Editing each activity by hand after every ride restores the correct type but does not stop the mislabel returning.

Suunto Race 2 and Vertical 2 restarting and losing workout data after software 2.56.18

On the Suunto Race 2 and Vertical 2, software 2.56.18 has introduced unexpected restarts that arrived with the update on 14 July. The watch reboots on its own during walks, yoga and structured workouts, and also while it is sitting on the normal watch face doing nothing. When a restart lands inside an activity the recording usually survives, but it comes back with data missing. One owner kept the duration of a yoga session and lost all of its heart rate data, another loses the final 9.1 seconds off every affected recording, and a third sees the watch restart at the end of a guide or interval roughly three times out of five.

The behaviour is not tied to third-party SuuntoPlus apps. Owners who run no S+ apps report the same restarts, and a one-week-old Race 2 migrated from an Apple Watch showed the fault out of the box, which points at the firmware rather than a specific setup. Suunto has acknowledged the reports and asked affected owners to synchronise the watch and send diagnostic logs through the Suunto app as soon as a crash occurs, because some restarts involve guides and others do not.

Several owners have rolled back to the April firmware and report that the restarts stopped on that version. Reverting means losing the 2.56.18 additions such as the map labels and the Tide widget, so it is a trade-off that holds until Suunto ships a corrected build. Given that a restart can wipe hours of data, testing 2.56.18 thoroughly before a long run or race is sensible if you stay on it.

Garmin Forerunner 970 and 570 unable to pause music from the main music screen after firmware 18.14

On the Forerunner 970 and 570 running firmware 18.14, playback cannot be paused from the main music screen. Neither the top right button nor the touchscreen stops the track, so once music is playing there is no way to pause it from the watch face you would normally use. Owners report the problem with Spotify, and a second owner has had YouTube Music refuse to work since the first 18.XX build, so the fault covers the offline music apps rather than a single service.

The 18.14 release is a public beta that rolled out to around twenty per cent of enrolled users from mid July, and it reworked music handling on both watches, including a change that defaults button tones to off while headphones are connected. That music rework lines up with the pause controls breaking, which places the fault in the beta software. The watches paused music correctly before the 18.XX branch.

Two routes restore control until Garmin issues a corrected build. Controlling playback from the connected phone pauses and skips tracks while the watch stays on 18.14, and rolling back to the stable 17.37 release removes the beta and returns the on-watch controls. Owners who need reliable music control during a run should treat 18.14 as a test build and either revert or keep the phone to hand.

Garmin Edge 1050 and 850 freezing and rebooting with Saving Diagnostics during course navigation after firmware 31.33

Since firmware 31.33, the Garmin Edge 1050 freezes while navigating a course, displays a Saving Diagnostics message and then reboots. The crash recurs at varying distances, reported at around 20, 40 and 60 km on different rides, so it does not sit at a fixed GPS position or a single map tile. Other owners see it worsen to a reboot every few minutes, and some trigger it at home while only browsing the map or scrolling through the settings, which shows the fault is not limited to riding.

The usual file and hardware causes have been ruled out. One rider validated the GPX as a clean 167 km file with no corruption, performed a factory reset, disabled course recalculation and confirmed device storage, and the reboots continued. The crash appears with courses built in Garmin and imported from Komoot, and on a brand new unit. Owners in the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere describe the same freeze and reboot, and one is seeing it across three units, with the Edge 850 affected on the same firmware.

Garmin has asked owners to upload a RAM dump through Settings, then System, then Diagnostics, then Upload RAM Dump, while its engineering team analyses the crash. The reboots began specifically after 31.33, so rolling back to 31.31 is the step owners are taking while a corrected build is prepared. A mid-ride crash can truncate the recording, so the current firmware is not safe for a long ride or a race.

Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt v1 slow to lock GPS and cold starting every ride after the August GPS fix firmware

The Gen1 Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt v1 acquires GPS very slowly since the firmware update that corrected the Gen1 GPS date rollover. Owners report five to fifteen minutes to get a fix, and the unit behaves as if it performs a full cold start every time it loses signal, including after being switched off or after half an hour indoors. The slow acquisition arrived with the corrective build WB17-17055 and has carried through the later WB17-17068, WB17-17071 and WB17-17081 releases, with a fresh report filed on 28 July 2026. The Roam 1 and the original ELEMNT show the same behaviour.

The device shows heart rate and speed sensor data normally, so the fault sits with satellite acquisition rather than the sensors or the recording. Because the unit cold starts each time, it does not retain the satellite data that would normally give a quick lock, which is why starting a ride within a minute of powering on leaves the computer searching while you are already moving.

Wahoo support gave a GPS calibration routine that several owners confirm reduces the lock time. Turn the ELEMNT on outdoors, let it warm up, scroll to the map page, wait until the acquiring GPS message clears, and only then start the ride. Repeating this and power cycling the unit three times forces the calibration to hold. A factory reset resolved it for one rider, whose unit then locked within seconds across four restarts, so a clean reset is the stronger option if the map page routine does not hold. Downgrading the firmware is not possible, and some owners took Wahoo up on a discount toward a Roam 3.

Suunto Vertical 2 showing wrong elevation gain from GPX routes and wrong Climb Guidance after software 2.56.18

Since software 2.56.18, the Suunto Vertical 2 reports inflated total ascent for uploaded GPX routes and shows the wrong remaining climb in the Climb Guidance tile during the activity. One owner measured an 830 metre AllTrails route as 1049 metres in the Suunto app, and an 861 metre route as 1261 metres, with the watch guidance running 200 to 400 metres higher than the real profile. The error does not appear on every route, and it was not present before the update.

The problem is on the app side rather than the watch. The elevation profile is baked into the route that the Suunto app syncs to the watch, and that pre-planned elevation data is unreliable, sometimes over-estimating and in other cases under-reading actual climb by ten to twenty per cent. The barometric altimeter in the watch is accurate, so the current and peak elevation readings during the activity remain correct even while the guidance figure is wrong.

The practical approach until Suunto corrects the app data is to read the current and peak elevation tile driven by the barometer during the climb and to treat the Climb Guidance total as an estimate only. The recorded ascent after the activity is accurate, including after Strava applies its GPS elevation corrections. Routes that run off established trails are the worst affected, because the app does not compute elevation for off-trail segments at all, so checking a known route against its published ascent before pacing a long climb is worthwhile.

Suunto Vertical 2 recording short GPS distance when a cycling cadence sensor is paired after software 2.56.18

On software 2.56.18, the Suunto Vertical 2 records a short GPS distance when a cycling cadence sensor is paired. One rider logged about six kilometres on a fifteen kilometre ride and had to correct the activity by hand against a Garmin Venu 4, even though the GPS track drew perfectly on the map. No cadence data appeared during the ride either, which is the first sign that the sensor was not handled correctly.

The cause is a sensor mismatch. The Vertical 2 registers the cadence sensor as a speed sensor, and the watch cannot pair a speed sensor and a cadence sensor at the same time, so only one role is active. Once the sensor is treated as a speed source with an automatic wheel circumference calculation, distance is derived from that wheel data instead of the GPS track, which is why the recorded distance falls well short while the map trace stays correct.

Removing the sensor restored correct distance immediately, so the direct fix is to delete the sensor pairing, or to set it strictly to cadence and disable any speed sync so the watch falls back to GPS distance. A factory reset did not change the behaviour, which points at the sensor configuration rather than a corrupted install. Checking the sensor role in the watch settings before a ride avoids the manual distance correction afterward.

More from last week’s Fix Files roundup.

Browse every issue in the archive at the Deep Dive Fix Files hub.

Last Updated on 7 August 2026 by the5krunner