Garmin Connect, the partner app to the most popular sports watches for runners and other athletes, experienced an outage on 8 January, meaning that users were unable to sync activities to the app.
The outage started at around 5am ET, with almost all services returning to normal by 9am ET according to the status updates on Garmin’s website. The link with Strava is still described as ‘limited’ but that seems to be working for me now too.
I ran myself at around 5am ET that morning, so was immediately aware of the outage because my run didn’t upload to Garmin Connect. There was a large spike in error reports on the website Downdetector just after 7am ET, with reports then declining as services returned to normal.
I’m a long-term Garmin user and have been through several outages in the past and they don’t tend to last long usually, and Garmin moved fast to sort this one as well.
Garmin Connect is down
Runners, cyclists and all kinds of other athletes are getting told that Garmin Connect is down when they go to upload their activities to the app. The outage is being fixed as quickly as possible according to Garmin, but there is no set timeline for this as yet.
Our senior fitness writer Nick Harris-Fry was alerted to the outage when he tried to upload his run this morning, and instead had to plug in his watch to manually upload the activity to Strava.
DC Rainmaker tweets
Sports tech guru Ray Maker, who goes by DC Rainmaker, has tweeted about the outage, pointing out the problems users will now face, such as being unable to sync activities easily or send routes to their watch.
It's been a while since we've had a solid Garmin Connect platform outage. Seems like it's been about two hours thus far. Without GC, you can't seamlessly sync workouts to Strava, get routes to your watch, or do any of the other features listed on Garmin's status site. pic.twitter.com/9z9fRZr410January 8, 2025
How to get your activities on Strava
There is a manual workaround for getting your activities onto Strava, which is to plug your Garmin device into your computer, then find the ‘Activity’ folder on the device and look for your most recent activity file.
This will be a .fit file and has a long name that starts with the date, with the year listed first. You can upload this file to your Strava account using the ‘+’ symbol in the top right corner of your screen when you log into Strava on a computer,
Select ‘upload activity’ and then select ‘file’ on the left side of your screen. Select your file and the activity will upload as normal, and you can edit the name and other information on the activity before posting it.
One quirk for Mac users that have a Garmin capable of playing music is that you’ll need to use a third-party app to see your Garmin files when you plug it in. Android File Manager is a good option, and the one that our writer Nick Harris-Fry used to get his workout uploaded from a Garmin Forerunner 965 this morning.
What areas are affected?
Garmin Connect is down globally according to the Garmin website, and user reports are backing that up, with our writer in the UK unable to use the app, and users across the US finding out about the problem as they wake.
This map from the website Downdetector shows lots of complaints on the East Coast, particularly in New York, Boston, Tampa, Washington and Montreal, and these will surely spread across the country as people try and upload activities in the morning.
No Garmin Connect at CES
Right now CES 2025 is taking place in Las Vegas, where participants will soon be rising to find they can’t log their activities on Garmin Connect — a potentially huge loss given the amount of steps people take at the show.
Garmin actually launched the Instinct 3 range of watches itself at CES this year, along with a new heart rate monitor called the HRM 200. Check out our CES 2025 live blog for more insights into the most exciting new electronics on show.
The Garmin Connect app seems to be working again
Garmin seems to be getting a handle on the outage, with our activities now appearing in the Garmin Connect app, and we were also able to send a route to our watch.
Error reports on Downdetector spiked at about 7:14am ET and have been declining since, suggesting that most users are now able to use the app, despite the fact the Garmin website still says its down, and the notifications about the outage are still showing in Garmin Connect.
How long do Garmin outages last?
If Garmin Connect is getting back to normal now that would follow the pattern of most Garmin outages, since they rarely last longer than an hour or two. The exception to that was in 2020 when a ransomware attack meant that Garmin Connect was shut down for several days.
Nothing as malicious seems to have occurred this time and with key features like activity uploads seeming to have returned to Garmin Connect already, the outage looks like it could be over soon.
Garmin Connect is back up and running
Garmin's website has confirmed that almost all Garmin Connect services have returned to normal service, with the only exception being its link with Strava, which is currently described as 'limited'.
Our activities are now syncing to Strava from Garmin Connect though, so it seems like only a matter of time before that is confirmed as fully operational as well. The outage lasted around three to four hours in total, so kudos to Garmin for sorting it so quickly.
