November 26, 2021

My tutorial on the Garmin Instinct

This is more of a "cheat sheet" for myself. Here is a tip up front. The Instinct is complex and has a substantial learning curve. Don't try to learn about it all at once. Rather, spend some time using what you know, then come back and watch some tutorial (or read the manual) to learn more. Like any manual, the manual was written for someone who already knows how to use the watch, so sometimes it is helpful, but more often than it ought to be, it is confusing.

Buttons

The watch has 5 buttons, 2 buttons on the right, 3 on the left. Clicking a button does one thing, but holding it does another.

The upper right button (GPS) is a selection button. Below it is "Set" which is also a back button.

On the left center you have "Menu" (which is also "up") and below it "ABC" (which is also "down"). On the upper left is "CTRL" (which is also "light"). On my unit, the first label is easy to read, the second one is printed on the black inner part of the watch and is almost invisible.

Holding "ABC" takes you to the atimeter, barometer, and compass page. This will show elevation in the center and a compass around the periphery. It also displays your heading in degrees.

Holding "Set" will take you to the Clock menu. Here you can set timers and alarms.

Using "up" and "down" cycle through various widgets. The "back" button seems to always return to the main watch face.

When you have selected a certain widget, you can hold the "Menu" button to modify that widget. The modification menu you get, also has an option to add widgets.

Clicking the "Ctrl" button toggles the backlight on and off. Holding the "Ctrl" button gets you a circular menu. The things in this circular menu are called "controls" not widgets. Once you have a control selected, holding "Menu" lets you modify it.

Activities

Holding GPS displays your current lat, long, and elevation. You can press GPS again to save this location (presumably this is a waypoint for later reference).

Wait a minute on clicking GPS and read the following.

Every tutorial I have read about this was totally confusing because I was being presented with a menu to "select my activities". You do this by using "GPS" to select each activity you want in your activity menu and using "ABC" to move down the list. When you get to the bottom you see done and you hit "GPS" to tell it you are done. This is a first time thing you are expected to do to set up your unit.

After you have done this, things make more sense. You use the up/down menu to cycle through the activities you just selected, and some new things appear, namely:

For fun, we select Navigate by using up/down to get to it and then pressing GPS. This presents us with another menu. I select "Saved Locations". I have one saved location (labeled by date and time). Note that your distance to each saved location will be displayed, if it displays "---" it is because you are already there.

I select it and get another menu, I select "Go To", however I am there already (in my house). You hit the GPS button when you get there, you will see a square appear in the "eye" and be presented with a menu. I selected "resume later", but that was not what I wanted. I select "discard" and that is the right thing. It discards the activity, but not the waypoint.

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Pressing "GPS" gives you a menu of various sorts of activities You use up and down to rattle through them, then press "GPS" again to select one of them.

Backlight settings

As much as anything, this is an example of how to screw with the watch. There are a variety of settings you can fiddle with (such as how long it stays on before automatically turning itself off). I want to focus on the brightness setting.

Press and hold the control button to get to the "controls wheel". Use up/down to get the icon that looks like the sun in the circle at upper right. Then press the GPS button to enter the adjustment "dialog" Use up/down to change the value (my watch started at 20, and I changed to 50). Press GPS again to apply the setting Then press "Back" to get to the clock face. Note that high settings for the backlight will excessively discharge the battery.

Another way is to press an hold the Menu button, use up/down to get to settings, Click GPS (don't hold it). Use up/down in the next menu to get to system. Then use up/down to get to Backlight and there are detailed settings for when you are in an activity and when you are not (including timeouts).

Watch faces

Press and hold the menu button and you should see "watch faces". Press GPS to select that, it should first show you the current watch face, you can use up/down to cycle through all possible faces.

To customize, press GPS to select the face, then GPS again to select "Customize". Some field will blink, and you use ABC to cycle through options for that field. When you see what you want, use GPS to select that option and a new field will start to blink. If you like what you see, just press GPS to

When you are done, you do some darn thing and it asks you if you want to save the changes. You press GPS to say that you do and there you go.

Selecting GPS modes

You hold Menu and go deep into various menus. This is not as obvious as it should be.

Charging

My watch shows a battery with a lightning bolt in the "eye" of the watch when it is connected to a charger. An animation is in motion around the periphery of the watch while it is charging. When the animation stops rotating, the watch is fully charged. The claim is that you can do a full charge in about 2 hours.

A "test mode" is available that shows information about the battery. You hold "ABC" while the watch is booting and you will see a bunch of information which includes battery voltage and percent of charge.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's home page / tom@mmto.org