Investigate the connection between active watchface and HR crashing the app / watch

[Artaud]

I believe the issues with heart rate and intermittent tracking aren't an actual Garmin issue, but in fact stem from a 3rd party watch face app. Specifically Actiface, Dozen Run, and others.

I first noticed the issue about 8-10 months ago when I installed dozen run. That app not only broke the heart rate tracking in Sleep As, but also broke sleep tracking in Garmin's native app. All returned to normal after uninstalling dozen run. Esstentially the same thing happened when I installed Actiface and Watch II. Uninstalled those and again things returned to normal. Since then, you removed its hr tracking, so I reinstalled Actiface, which promptly broke Garmin's native tracking. I then upgraded the firmware to 4.3 and uninstalled Actiface and Watch II. Again, the native tracking has returned, but only sporadically, so it is possible there is a FW issue as well, Sleep As Android tracking still works 100% of the time however. Sorry I can't provide any more technical details, but maybe this will help a little.

HS # 58274

[rodrigoarratia]

Not sure if it was this or the last update, but today I got all the data + heart rate with the Forerunner 235. Previously it was failing.

I removed all the watchfaces I had installed but weren't used, so I only have the one called "Rails" now, and worked perfectly last night.

[TheNetStriker]

Thank for the hint. I had the same problem with the TimeStyle watchface. I also had to uninstall the watch completely to fix the problem.

I will try to contact the developer of the watchface. There must be some kind of background service that is causing this problem.

[TheNetStriker]

Update: I still have the problem, even when no other apps are installed. I guess it just happens more often if other apps are installed.

I've tried to find out what is stopping the application by adding a debug log in the onStop method and logged the state. Here is the value of the state dictionary when the app is stopped:

{symbol (8391788)=>true}

Sadly I have no idea what this means and I also did not find anthing about this in the documentation from Garmin. Does anyone have an idea what this means?

Edit: I just found out that this number is the :suspend symbol. Also when the app is started again the number 8391787 is passed to the onStart state dictionary which is the :resume flag.

The only thing I found regarding this suspend symbol is the following from the API docs:

If true, the app has been suspended and the current state can be resumed at a later time.

But I've found no information how the app can be started again.

[TheNetStriker]

I guess I found out what is causing the app to close.

Apparently the watch has a touchscreen gesture that closes the app when the touchscreen is covered completely with the hand. So when I place my arm on the screen during sleep the app just closes because of this gesture.

I've already disabled the touchscreen during activity, but then this gesture is still working. I have to disable the touchscreen compleletey to disable this.

Is it somehow possible to disable this specific gesture only?