Background Garmin iPhone Syncing in EU
Thanks to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Garmin watches in the EU can now sync steps, sleep, and heart rate data automatically, even when the Garmin Connect app is closed. This removes a long-standing limitation that previously favoured the Apple Watch.
For years, Garmin users on iPhone had to manually open the Garmin Connect app just to sync their data.
The changes Apple has made affect how Bluetooth and background data transfer work. It’s part of a broader push to level the playing field between Apple’s own devices and everything else. That includes watches, fitness trackers and other health gear. Apple is required to give developers access to the same communication tools its own apps use. Garmin seems to be making use of those.
There are still limits to what happens in the background, especially on iOS where battery management remains strict.
See also: Accidental Tech Podcast.
Previously:
- Apple Watch Fitness Regressions
- iOS 26.3: Notification Forwarding in EU
- iOS 26.2
- iOS 26.2 to Remove iPhone–Apple Watch Wi-Fi Sync in EU
- Apple Appeals EU Digital Markets Act Interoperability Rules
- Apple Restricts Pebble From Being Awesome With iPhones
8 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
A lot of my colleagues have Garmin watches, but I don't think any of them have an iPhone.
I wonder if that's a common pattern.
Its interesting to see these restriction come into play right as Apple competition is really starting to heat up.
An OAI device will almost certainly want to use an API like this
Sunil Bhatt is simply incorrect; Garmin iPhone users do not need to manually open the Connect app for syncing to work if it has Background App Refresh access.
@Brian The standard Background App Refresh doesn’t work very well. I have all sorts of problems with it (with non-Garmin apps), and I’ve heard from multiple Garmin users who are seeing a benefit from this change.
@MT. I’m not saying there’s no improvement, only that “Garmin users on iPhone had to manually open the Garmin Connect app just to sync their data” is false, and to the best of my personal experience of over five years with various iPhones and Garmin watches, has never been true.
If instead of “just to sync,” he had said “when BAR is glitching, to sync,” then I would agree. I would also agree that BAR is flakey, and I would need to open the Connect app a few times a month to sync, four years ago, but today Garmin sync with iPhone works just as well as anything else on iOS, at least with a 2025 Garmin watch and iOS 26.
Are things even better today in the EU? Probably. Would any present day Garmin iPhone users notice? I’m doubtful.
No third-party background syncing has ever worked reliably (or at all) for me on iOS. The most recent victim of this is immich. It works beautifully on Android; any time I open the app, everything is already synced. It doesn't work at all on iOS for me, even though it ostensibly should.
@Plume I wish I had the energy to set up something like Immich, and move all of our family photos there.
Tried the demo, and I love that they had search by camera. Silly simple thing that Google photos doesn't do.
How many photos do you have?
Right now, I have 600k photos and 10k videos going back to the 90s.
I know it sounds daunting to set up something like immich, and you do have to do a bunch of stuff, but none of it is hard. Find an old PC, install TrueNAS, put in some old spinning disk drives and make a RAID, then install immich using TrueNAS's app installer and point immich's storage paths to the RAID. Install Tailscale or NetBird to have access outside of your LAN and Kopia (or a similar tool) for backups.
It'll take an hour or two to get it all set up, but it's not difficult, and for me, it's been set-and-forget. I get an e-mail once every few weeks that a backup failed, but it'll resolve itself the next day, and I run the TrueNAS updates every month or so, and that's it.
