Why won’t my vivoactive connect to my phone with bluetooth?

"Alexandre Carrier

@zuradnir


Rep: 181




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"OK heres the answer - its not intuitive at alkl and drove me crazy!!

There is a pairing option on the watch - if you dont activate it and use the other links etc on the app and even the phone without bringing up pairing IT WONT PAIR. It must pair to sync so focus on that!

Go on the wrist watch HR, press the button, slide to Bluetooth, switch it on and THEN look for pairing and activate it on the phone

Seriously this will sort it - whoever wrote the program for this needs shooting - its not intuitive at all"

"Same problem. I have a Galaxy S5 mini and after 2 months of flawless performance I lost the Bluetooth connection.

- I uninstalled the app, powered down the phone, switched it on again, re-installed the app (historic data still there).

- Next I went into the Bluetooth settings on my phone. I unticked the ""only visible to paired devices"" box and hit SCAN - it found the Vivoactive HR device and asked for a PIN number.

- I then went into the Bluetooth settings on the watch (as described above) and selected ""Pair mobile device"" - a 6 digit PIN number appeared on the screen which I typed into the phone and miraculously the phone now recognises the watch.

- I manually synced the watch and was prompted to allow alerts from Garmin device. All data now up to date.

Thanks everyone - the above all helped to get me to a solution."

"When you have issues with the bluetooth connection, here are the steps that should be followed.

I always start by going to the app and tapping on the menu icon in the top left which looks like three lines. (iOS has a ""more"" button bottom right).

Scroll down and tap the ""Garmin Devices"" option.

If the bluetooth is turned off on the phone this page would prompt you to turn it on. It would show you for instance weather the vivoactive was ""connected"", ""not connected"", or ""no devices paired"". It obviously needs to be connected.

If it is not connected that means the phone still remembers the pairing but is not communicating with the watch.

Try turning on and off the bluetooth on the phone. Try powering on and off the phone and the watch. Try putting the watch in to pairing mode. For the vivoactive that is right button>swipe right>settings>bluetooth>pair mobile device. It should say ""searching for garin connect mobile"" if it is in the pairing mode.

If the above fails it would then be necessary to unpair and repair the connection.

Start by removing the watch from the Garmin Connect app. In the Garmin Devices page, press and hold on where it says ""vivoactive not connected"" then tap on ""remove device"" and confirm the action (iOS is different you don't press and hold just tap on it and then tap on the three dots in the upper right corner of the next page).Then make sure the phone no longer remembers the connection in the phone's bluetooth settings menu. Then turn off the bluetooth and clear the cache for the app if on Android and for the phone if on iOS. For android this would be in the app manager>connect>storage and iOS would be holding the Home and Power buttons (iphone 7 it's down volume and power) till the screen goes blank and displays and apple logo. It is important to release the buttons as soon as you see the apple logo.Once the cache has been cleared turn the bluetooth back on and go to the Garmin Devices page in the Garmin Connect app.Tap on add a device at the bottom of the page and chose ""browse all compatible devices"" at the bottom of the list. Then chose ""vivo"" and then ""vivoactive"".It should then prompt you to put the watch in pairing mode. Follow the previously mentioned steps for that.If all goes well it should prompt you for the pin. This must be entered correctly in 60 seconds on android and 30 seconds on iOS.

Things to bear in mind:

Android 6 and above require the location permission to be turned on for the app to have access to the bluetooth radio. This includes the global location settings and the app location setting.

If you experiance frequent disconnects or the watch fails to reconnect with the phone after you walk away and come back try ""update connection"" this is a new option that was introduce for Android only with the app version 3.11. If you go to the Garmin Devices page and hold your finger down on the watch in question while it is in the ""connected"" state. It will pop up with a list of options. As previously mentioned this is where you can remove the watch but you can also ""update connection"". This will pair the watch to the phones bluetooth settings menu while it is still paired to the app. Sometimes it is necessary to reboot the phone after doing this so the watch will connect back up to the app.

For iOS users, if you experience issues after an iOS update try clearing the cache first."

"With iOS I have found if you close the Garmin Connect app that is running in the background by pressing the home button twice and swiping up to actually close the app the Bluetooth connection is disabled. I tested it out and have no issues with my phone randomly unpairing unless I am out of range. Hope this helps!!

BTW I have the most up to date iOS on the iPhone 6Plus

Best,

Dave"