Synching Fitness Apps Is Complicated
I have an Apple Watch 4, use Apple Fitness, track my rides on a Garmin Edge 840 cycle computer, have a Fitbit scale, and am a Strava premium subscriber. In other words, I am balancing with one foot in the Apple ecosystem, one foot in Garmin land, one hand in the Stravasphere, and one thumb planted in Google-Fitbit soil. How does one make it all synchronize?
That question doesn’t come with an easy answer for a variety of reasons. Strava can import Garmin but not the other way around. There are multiple formats (.fit, .tcx, .gpx, .csv) at play. You want to be careful with circular synchronizations. In nerd lingo, you need Fitness Spanning Tree.
Using a third-party iOS app, RunGap, I have been able to set up the following scheme:
- I connect both Apple Health (source) and Garmin Connect (destination) to RunGap. This requires a $9.99/year subscription. I set it up to start synchronizing starting today (see advanced settings). I also enable the Fake Garmin Device setting (see this video for details).
- I connected Garmin and Strava, such that Garmin automatically pushes new workouts to Strava. This means that my cycle computer can synchronize to Strava without the need to running RunGap.
The result is such that all my workouts are available in Strava and in Garmin Connect. The data may be off a bit due to different algorithms to connect the gps points. The different step count is a mystery to me. Because it is all in the same ballpark, it is good enough for me.
An alternative setup is to make RunGap the synchronization hub for all workouts, as opposed to Apple Health — via Run Gap –> to Garmin Connect, and from Garmin automatically to Strava.
A disadvantage of this set up is that it requires some manual steps.