Garmin Forerunner issues

[ciato]

Plan

Premium

Country

The Netherland

Device

Garmin Forerunner 245

Operating System

Garmin OS version 7.20, Spotify version 1.4.9

My Question or Issue

I have a Garmin Forerunner 245 Music connected to my Spotify account. When syncing I experience a few things:

• Syncing sometimes stops at random percentages. After waiting for a long time the sync failes. Retry syncing does not help. Tried update downloads, also stops. Tried adding different types of audio (playlists, podcasts), same result.
• For podcasts that are paused (but is still active in the main music control display) and I am halfway through the episode and I sync my watch the progress of that episode is lost. I need to skip all the way to the point where I stopped listening before syncing, which is a lot of pressing buttons when you listen to a two hour podcast and the skip button only jumps 15 seconds.
• If I want to add podcasts, sometimes only 3 of my subscribed podcasts show up. There is no way to get them to show up: syncing doesn't work, nor restarting the device. Usually for my next workout (the next day or so) all podcasts show up again.
• When I listen to a podcast during a workout and the podcast is not finished, the next time I resume listening the audio is not paused when I receive an audio prompt from my watch (for example a heartrate notification). Normally the podcast pauses and automatically resumes when receiving audio prompts.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @ciato,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community.

Can you remove Spotify from your watch > restart your watch > add Spotify again to see if the issue persist?

Let us know how it goes 🙂

Take care!

[ciato]

Followed the steps you suggested. The first podcast is synced succesfully (although it was stuck at 99% is seems to be synced correctly). The second podcast I tried to sync is stuck at 0%.

[Jeremy]

Hi again @ciato,

Thank you for your reply.

Can you double-check so there's no pending updates on the watch?

On another note, does the downloading work as it should on other devices?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Cheers!

[ciato]

Hi Jeremy,

Thank you for your help so far.

I am running the latest software versions for the spotify app as well as the firmware version of the watch.

I also tried downloading playlists on my phone. That did work.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @ciato,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

Can you try with a different network connection to see if the issue persists?

If that doesn't do the trick, we suggest that you check the storage option on the watch.

Keep us posted 🙂

Take care!

[ciato]

Hi Jeremy,

I already tried syncing using my phone's data connecting. That did not work. 

What storage option are you referring to?

Kind regards

[Eni · Accepted solution]

Hi @ciato, 

Thanks for getting back to us.

No worries, we meant to check the available storage on your watch to make sure that it has enough space. 

On another note, there's a few more steps we can try:

1. Logout from Spotify on your watch.

2. Delete and then re-add the WiFi network on your watch.

3. Turn off and then on your phone and watch. 

Let us know how it goes.

[ciato]

Hi Eni,

The sync issue seems to be resolved now. Syncing now also does not reset the progress in a podcast. 

Thanks for your help. Will take a look out at the other issues but they seem good!

Kind regards,

Steven

[Ver]

Hey @ciato,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop 🙂

Glad to hear that it worked out and there is no issue with the syncing process.

If the other issues occur again, let us know. We'll look into this further.

The Community is here for you if there's anything else!

[ciato]

Hi! 

The sync issue is back again. I checked for an update on three Spotify app, there was one, installed it. No luck. How come these issues keep coming back?

Thanks in advance. 

Steven

[Eni]

Hi there @ciato, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

Just to confirm, have you tried the steps that worked for you previously?

On another note, could you let us know how much storage space does your phone have available?

Lastly, sending us the exact OS of your watch and the Spotify version of your phone would come in handy. 

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

[crazybassist32]

I know it's been a while since you had this issue. I just stumbled across a video on youtube where some comment said to use your phone as a hotspot for your Garmin's wifi connection. I'm having the same issue as you, but on my Garmin Forerunner 645M. I kept getting to about 9% and then get "sync failed" even though I my watch was 100% charged and sitting directly beside my router. I'm sitting here now with my watch syncing, using my phone as a mobile hotspot. It's eating the battery away pretty quickly, but I'm at 54% of a 75 song playlist, 59% battery remaining, and it's been about half an hour. I'm hoping I can do the full sync in just a couple of charges and have this available. This has been the only solution that has seemed to get me past like 9%.  I hope this helps both of us and that maybe others will stumble upon this because I've not seen this anywhere else.

[dc2tom]

Hi, I just wanted to add to this as the above comment about trying a personal hotspot made me realise what the issue is, some older Garmin devices like my vivoactive4 clearly don’t like being stable on a modern Wi-Fi network with a merged SSID, where both 5ghz and 2.4 are combined. Split the SSIDS and connect to the 2.4 and voila! 100 % syncing all the time, just like with my 2.4ghz personal hotspot.

[cav0909]

Urgh I really thought the hotspot solution would work for me. This is a real pain.

[pagter]

Have the same issue with a Garmin Forerunner 965. Tried the suggestion above. Tried adding and removing Spotify. Out of ideas. Help welcome.

[Chainkiller]

Bought a new Forerunner 955 today. Among the general setup, I tried to setup spotify on the watch. The sync is not working. I did all the tweaks I found on the web, like enabling 2,4 GHz only, Step down to Wi-Fi 3, WLAN reconnect, reboot, etc. Nothing helps. Forerunner SW Version is 21.22, Spotify V 1.7.2. It's a kind of unusable if it stays like this.

[madgrudges]

How do we unsolve this issue? Its 2025 and its still happening for tons of people

[Chainkiller]

Garmin support offered to replace my Forerunner, but this will not solve the issue, as it is not hardware related.
They confirmed that there are known issues in combination with the AVM FritzBox a s WLAN router, which is very common in germany. Tried the WLAN hotspot of several google pixel phones (9 pro, 7, 4), but with all of them I faced the same sync issue. But I had success connecting to a Xiaomi Redmi 13 of a friend, however all my devices are not working together with the garmin watch.
It's really anoying, because this was one of the main reasons I decided to buy this watch.