Custom photo · beta

Your own photo on your Garmin

Pick a picture on your phone, frame it on a live preview of your exact watch, and send it straight to the watch face. No computer, no cable, no sideloading.

Connect your watch

Open Custom Photo on your watch. Scan the QR code it shows, or type the 6-character code here. Each code works once and changes every 30 minutes.

How it works

Open Custom Photo on the watch. A face with photo support shows a QR code and a 6-character code until it has a picture. Later you find it in the face’s settings on the watch.
Scan the code with your phone. This page opens already knowing your watch model and its screen size.
Frame your photo. Drag to move, pinch to zoom, pick a filter or tune brightness, contrast, colour and warmth, and darken it so the hands stay readable. The preview is the real screen, pixel for pixel.
Apply to watch. The watch picks the picture up the next time it checks in, usually within five minutes, through Garmin Connect on your phone.

Your photo is not kept

Cropped on your phone. The original photo never leaves it. Only the finished background, about 50–150 KB, is uploaded.
Deleted after sync. As soon as the watch confirms it has the picture, the upload is permanently deleted from our server. An upload that never reaches a watch is deleted within 6 hours.
No account. We only keep a pairing record with the screen size and the watch model, so you can change the photo later. This phone keeps a private key for your watch; Forget this watch removes it.
The copy lives on the watch. It stays in the face’s own storage and goes away when you remove the photo or the face.

Full details: Privacy Policy → Custom Photo

What you need

A WatchFaceKit face with Custom Photo — the first one is coming to the Connect IQ Store soon.
A round AMOLED Garmin: fēnix 8, epix Pro, Forerunner 265/965/970, Venu 3/4, vivoactive 5/6 and similar.
Garmin Connect on the phone paired with the watch, Bluetooth on.

Questions

Why does it take a few minutes?

Garmin lets a watch face go online only in the background, at most once every five minutes. The page shows each step live: waiting, downloading, installed.

How do I change the photo?

Open this page again on the same phone — it remembers your watch. On another phone, open the face’s settings on the watch, choose Show pairing code and scan the fresh code: codes work once and change every 30 minutes, so an old screenshot of one is useless.

Why is the photo gone in always-on mode?

A bright picture on an always-on AMOLED screen drains the battery and Garmin limits how much of the screen may stay lit. In always-on mode the face switches to black with dimmed hands and comes back to your photo on a wrist raise.

How do I remove the photo?

In the face’s settings on the watch choose Remove photo. Nothing is stored on our side by then anyway.

Your own photo on your Garmin

Connect your watch

Sending to your watch