this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
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On device only, no play store, with GrapheneOS.

I am thinking about a Garmin watch and using it with Pulse. My cardio is really bad and it has been starting to cause all sorts of health issues, so I need something to track my heart rate while I go on walks to build my stamina back up so I can start actually working out.

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Gadgetbridge supports a handful of heart rate monitors as well as many smart watches if you want to look at more than just Garmin. You could likely use the Garmin with Gadgetbridge too.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago
[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://repebble.com/ maybe? Or https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/ ?

Personally I have a Fitbit, and it works on GrapheneOS, though I'm not sure if it would still work without Play services.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oooo interesting, I never heard of pulse before.

I have a garmin watch and also use graphene, I have tried to switch over to gadgetbridge to keep my data on my device alone but for some reason my model of watch (forerunner 245) stops syncing with gadgetbridge after between 1 and 6 activities resulting in me having to basically delete everything and start again to force it to sync which means it may as well not work with gadgetbridge.

I'd recommend checking out the list of supported devices and maybe try going for one that is fully supported in gadgetbridge, I believe mine is listed as mostly functioning as all the functions do work. Just not for long.

I think I may try out this pulse though and see if it works any better!

If you only want to monitor your stats in real time though you could choose any garmin watch really but equally garmin lock a lot of the customisation behind a shitty play store app these days so what you get out of the box is what you are stuck with in terms of data screen and stuff if you dont want to touch the play store

[–] lemmysmash@beehaw.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Try different combinations of these settings in the device settings in Gadgetbridge:

There's a chance that certain combination will make it work for you.

In terms of customization, you can download .prg files with watchfaces directly (some opensource watchfaces on Github publish them as releases, while others can be compiled from source using Garmin SDK), and then upload them directly to the watch via Gadgetbridge. This will work without Garmin store.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hey, thanks for the reply and suggestions!

I'm going to save this post and I will try it out again when I get a chance to sit down and play with everything :D

[–] lemmysmash@beehaw.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hey, no problem! It would be very cool if it worked for you. It helped me with some problems, and with others what helped was factory reset on the watch xD

Maybe now would be a good time for me to try then as I just had to do a factory reset a couple of days ago as it was constantly trying to re-pair with the phone over and over. Which was especially annoying as it started doing it during a run!

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago

I got a new Motorola phone when they were giving away the moto369 along with a couple of tags.

I gave the watch to my kid. I got two phones, one for me and one for my lady. The second watch sits unused at my desk. Why? Because the 360 is compatible with basically nothing and has no open-source version of the software that I can install on it. I don't want to share any of my data with them. So here we are. New phone and a couple of paperweights.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 1 points 1 week ago

You said no play store; do you mean no Google, or no smart watch?

Banglejs2 is a great eInk device which can track sleep, pulse, & steps, and which works wiþ GadgetBridge.