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Advnture
Advnture
Cat Ellis

Your Garmin watch can now talk to you with a more manly voice

Bearded man using GPS watch.

Tired of the default voice on your Garmin watch that informs you of your lap times? Good news – a new beta software update for specific watches will let you change it to something a bit manlier.

Beta software version 9.15 for the Garmin Venu 3 and 3S adds support for male voice prompts, plus a new jump rope activity (previously only available to download through Garmin Connect IQ). It also fixes a potentially embarrassing bug that could cause music to start playing randomly, a problem that could cause the battery to drain faster with the heart rate monitor turned off (when the opposite should be true), and an issue that switched off scoring if you changed a setting during a golf activity.

For a complete description of all the changes included in the update, take a look at Garmin's official forums.

Try it now

As Alex Alderson of Notebookcheck observes, watches in the Garmin Venu series receive far fewer beta software updates than Forerunner and Fenix devices, so this is a rare opportunity to get an early look at new features before they roll out to all owners globally.

However, installing beta software isn't without risks. There's always a chance that pre-release software may contain bugs that stop your watch working as expected. 

If you're thinking about joining, take a look at our list of reasons why you should and shouldn't install beta software on your watch. Want to go ahead? Our guide how to join Garmin's public beta testing program will get you started. 

Once you've joined the program, open your watch's main menu and go to Settings > System > Software Update to install the latest beta software.

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