Garmin has introduced a free Google Maps app is now obtainable within the Join IQ Retailer, bringing devoted turn-by-turn navigation to suitable smartwatches. This information might be large for runners like me, who like getting notified with on-the-go path when it’s time to make a flip alongside the route. Nevertheless, this information is at the moment nothing for runners like me, who solely have an iPhone and never an Android. If you’re a twin Garmin/Android person, although, this is benefit from this free maps function in your smartwatch.
What Garmin’s Google Maps app can do for you
Now that Garmin gives a free Google Maps possibility, the method is fairly simple. After coming into a vacation spot into Google Maps in your Android cellphone, the app delivers turn-by-turn instructions on to your paired smartwatch. Customers obtain notifications for every upcoming flip whereas strolling, working, or biking, creating a way more seamless navigation expertise in comparison with always checking your cellphone.
In fact, that is Garmin we’re speaking about, so the Google Maps app works alongside exercise monitoring. Customers can concurrently document their walks, runs, or bike rides whereas receiving navigation steering, all whereas monitoring metrics like distance and coronary heart charge with out interruption.
Even if you happen to’re not utilizing your Garmin to actively monitor a exercise, this function is nice for pedestrians navigating busy city environments. As an alternative of regularly checking your cellphone whereas crossing streets or transferring by crowds, you’ll be able to obtain mild vibrations on their Garmin smartwatch to sign upcoming turns. For extra context, a easy faucet on the watch display shows the subsequent three turns within the route.
As soon as customers full their journey, they will sync their exercise knowledge from Garmin Connect with different Android well being and health apps by Well being Join. This connectivity supplies enhanced flexibility and broader integration with customers’ current health ecosystems.
What do you suppose up to now?
obtain Garmin’s Google Maps app
The Google Maps app is accessible without cost obtain from the Join IQ Retailer. The app requires an Android smartphone working Google Maps and is suitable with choose fashions from Garmin’s principal Venu, Forerunner, Vivoactive, and Fenix product strains.
It is essential to notice that the present model of this app is pretty restricted. It solely supplies fundamental turn-by-turn instructions, and you want to find your vacation spot particularly utilizing the Google Maps cell app on an Android, and that Android cellphone wants to remain stored in vary. On the app’s itemizing on Garmin’s Join IQ retailer, there’s no point out of help for iPhones or iOS.
In case you do not feel like downloading Garmin’s Google Maps app, some Reddit customers have identified that this form of navigation was already achievable by normal notification forwarding. All you’d have to do was plan a route on Google Maps, flip off your cellphone display, and let Google Maps ship notifications to your Garmin watch. Nonetheless, the brand new devoted app ought to deliver a extra purpose-built expertise in comparison with counting on basic notification forwarding. It gives options like that three-turn preview, and it is particularly designed to work with Garmin’s interface.
