Garmin offers a variety of smartwatches with plenty of fitness tracking features for various activities such as running, watersports, golf, cycling and swimming.

Moreover, they also come with GPS capabilities that help you navigate when you are trekking, hiking, or even running around your neighborhood.

However, it appears that some Garmin smartwatch users aren’t able to take full advantage of GPS as it is suddenly not working as intended.

Garmin-watch-inline

GPS not working accurately on Garmin smartwatches

Users are reporting (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) that GPS on their watch is not accurately showing their route during runs or walks. Here are some reports for reference:

Garmin-smartwatches-GPS-issue
(Source)

I am still having wildly inaccurate GPS readings on my runs this morning – is the issue still ongoing or did I fail the message about how to fix it? (Source)

Something’s going on with the gps today. I went for a run and it was waaay off then i went for a short walk same issue, then after troubleshooting with customer support I went for another short walk still messed up. Not even close. It showed that i walked to a different neighborhood on top of rooftops across a creek. I hope it gets fixed soon. (Source)

Supposedly, some users figured that this could be happening due to solar flare or some atmospheric problem and it has nothing to do with the smartwatches.

Here’s a description of what could allegedly be causing the issue from the National Weather Service:

Garmin-GPS-issue
(Source)

Apparently, some atmospheric issues are throwing off GPS globally. However, this is just speculation as some users with other devices have confirmed that they aren’t facing such issues with GPS.

While some say it’s due to atmospheric issues, others have pointed out that the issue popped up after the latest Garmin watch update as they have managed to resolve it by changing some GPS settings.

Here’s the workaround that might do the trick for you as well:

Workaround: There an issue with GPS. Go into your activity settings and change to GPS only or one of the other settings. You probably have it currently set to GPS GLONASS (Source)

The actual cause of this issue is still unknown since Garmin support hasn’t yet acknowledged it. But as soon as they do, we will let you know by updating the article.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated smartwatches section, so be sure to follow them as well.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.

Aashish Singh
502 Posts

I developed a keen interest in technology ever since my school days. And writing about it keeps me closer to this fascinating world. When I’m not working you can catch me playing video games.

Next article View Article

Google Drive not letting users play videos, throws 'allowed playbacks has been exceeded' error

Google Drive users have been dealing with an issue for years where they get an 'allowed playbacks has been exceeded' error when trying to play videos. And Google has still...
Feb 20, 2024 2 Min Read