My names
- Type the names of the people close to you in Garmin Connect, separated by commas.
- The watch lists them by whose name day comes first — today in a pill, tomorrow outlined, the rest with a countdown.
- A separate alert with its own switch and its own time. It arrives the day before; on the day itself it is late for flowers.
- A name the German calendar does not know stays in the list marked with an exclamation mark, so a typo is visible.
What it does
- My names: watches the names you pick and alerts you the day before. Most names fall on several days of the German year, so each name appears in the list once — with its nearest date.
- Glance: today’s and tomorrow’s name day right in the glance list; a colour stripe shows whether today is an ordinary name day or a public holiday.
- Main screen: the name of the day on its own card, tomorrow on a quiet line below; German public holidays (incl. Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension and Whit Monday) carry a badge with the holiday name.
- Full-year list: scroll the whole year, jump to a month, or search a name — case- and diacritics-insensitive (“gunther” finds Günther). Months are separated by a divider with the month name, today sits in a pill and an arc shows your position in the year.
- Daily alert: optional reminder at a time you choose — the watch shows who has a name day today.
- Settings on the watch and in Garmin Connect: public-holiday highlighting, tomorrow in the glance, tap behavior in the list, daily alert time, vibration when scrolling.
- German and English interface. No phone, no internet — the whole calendar is on the watch.
1What the app does
In the German calendar of saints every day carries one or more names, and the people who bear them are wished a happy name day. Any calendar tells you whose day it is today — which is a day later than you need it, too late for flowers. So this widget watches the names you care about and speaks up the day before.
- My names — type the names of the people close to you and the watch orders them by whose name day comes first. The alert arrives the day before, at a time of its own.
- Today and tomorrow — the name of the day in large type on a card, tomorrow on one quiet line below.
- The whole year — a scrollable list of every day with today, Sundays and month boundaries marked.
- Public holidays — colour-coded, moveable Easter feasts included, with the holiday named on a badge.
- Name search — ignores case and diacritics.
- Daily alert — an optional reminder at a time you pick, telling you whose day it is today.
The whole name and public-holiday database sits on the watch, so the widget works with no phone and no internet connection.
2Installing
- Open the app page in the Connect IQ Store and hit Download.
- The widget lands on the watch at the next sync with Garmin Connect.
- You will find it among your apps; on watches with a widget loop you can add it there too, where it appears as a glance — a band with today’s name.
3Today’s screen
The important part is in the middle: the name of the day, on a card. Above it the weekday and date, below it a single quiet line with tomorrow. A short arc next to the START button hints which button opens the year list.
Long names shrink gradually, so „Bartholomäus, Maximilian“ stays readable instead of dropping straight to tiny type.
Mint means an ordinary name day.
Coral means a public holiday.
4Public holidays
On a public holiday the card and the name change colour and a badge with the name of the holiday appears below the card. The widget also knows the moveable Easter feasts, so Good Friday and Easter Monday land correctly every year.
The German calendar of saints has no day whose name is also the name of a public holiday, so the badge never repeats the name on the card.
5The year list
Press START or tap the screen to open the list of the whole year. Today is highlighted, Sundays stand out from working days, and every month opens with a full-width divider carrying its name. The arc along the right edge shows how far through the year you are. A short vibration marks each scroll step, so you can feel that the list moved.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| UP / DOWN | Moves the list by half a screen. |
| MENU | Opens the menu: name search and jump to a month. |
| BACK | Back to today’s screen. |
| Tap | Jumps back to today, or pages, depending on the setting. |
6Finding a name
In MENU → Find name, type part of a name. The search ignores case and diacritics, so gunther finds Günther. The matching day is highlighted in the list.
The same menu jumps to any month, which beats scrolling through the list.
When more than one day matches, the widget lists them and lets you choose. In the German calendar that is the rule rather than the exception — Andreas falls on four days, Johannes on twenty-three.
Days where the text matches the whole name always come first; names that merely start with it follow underneath.
slav will not find Miroslav. For looking up a name that is the right trade — you know the name you are after.7My names
Type the names you care about in Garmin Connect and the widget keeps an eye on them for you. Press DOWN on today’s screen to open them — or START and then MENU, where the menu carries My names. That second route works on every watch.
The list is ordered by whose name day comes first. Today’s name sits in a mint pill, tomorrow’s in an amber outline, and the rest carry a countdown — in 4 days, in 126 days.
Names are typed, separated by commas: Maximilian, Regina, Emma. Spaces around the commas do not matter, and neither does capitalisation or umlauts — gunther finds Günther.
Most names fall on several days of the German year. Each name therefore appears in the list once, with its nearest date — otherwise Johannes would show up twenty-three times and bury everything that matters. Once the day passes, the next one takes its place on its own.
8Glance
On watches that support glances, today’s name shows up right in the widget loop — without opening the app. The colour stripe at the left edge tells you whether today is an ordinary name day or a public holiday, even when a long name has to be shortened.
9Alerts
There are two alerts, and each has its own switch and its own time.
The daily name-day alert speaks up at the time you choose and tells you whose name day it is today. It defaults to 9:00.
The alert for your names arrives the day before the name day of one of the names you picked. Tomorrow is not a typo — on the day itself it is late for flowers. It defaults to 18:00.
Set both to the same time and you get one message with both, not two.
10Settings on the watch
You do not have to reach for the phone. Hold MENU on today’s screen and the same settings you get in Garmin Connect open on the watch. On touch watches with no MENU button (Venu Sq 2, Venu X1) hold the upper right button instead.
A second route works from anywhere: START, then MENU, then Settings in the year list’s menu. On watches without glances that is the only route — see Controls.
It is one set of settings, not two copies — what you change on the watch shows up on the phone and the other way round.
A time is picked in two steps: the hour first, then the minute in five-minute stops. Each list opens on the value you already have, so you do not have to scroll to it.
11All settings
| Option | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Highlight public holidays | Colours and the holiday badge across all screens. | on |
| Show tomorrow in glance | The second glance line with tomorrow’s name. | on |
| Tap in the year list | A tap jumps back to today, or pages by half screens. | jump to today |
| My names | Names separated by commas for the widget to watch. | empty |
| Daily name-day alert | Reminds you once a day whose name day it is today. | off |
| Alert time | The hour and minute the daily reminder fires. | 9:00 |
| Alert for my names | Fires the day before the name day of one of your names. | off |
| My names alert time | The hour and minute for the my-names reminder. | 18:00 |
| Vibration when scrolling | A short vibration on each scroll step in the year list. It also follows the watch’s own vibration setting. | on |
12Controls
The widget is driven a little differently on each watch, because the watches themselves differ. The table was tried on a representative of every group, not guessed.
| I want | Button watches fēnix, Forerunner, epix, enduro |
Touch watches Venu, vívoactive |
|---|---|---|
| year list from today | START | tap or START where there is one |
| My names from today | DOWN | swipe up |
| the menu from today or the year list: search, go to month, My names, settings | hold UP | depends on the model — see below |
| scroll in the list and in My names | UP / DOWN | swipe up and down |
| jump back to today from the year list | tap touch models only | tap |
| back from anywhere | BACK | lower button |
The menu is the only place where touch watches differ from one another:
| Model | How to open the menu |
|---|---|
| Venu 2, Venu 3, vívoactive 5 | hold the lower button |
| Venu 4, Venu X1, vívoactive 6 | swipe left |
| Venu Sq 2 | hold the upper button |
Watches without glances: fēnix 5 Plus, 5S Plus and 5X Plus
On these three models today’s screen is only a preview inside the widget loop. UP and DOWN there belong to the watch and scroll between widgets — the app never receives them. You get inside with START.
So the controls match the table with one exception: from today’s screen both routes go through START.
| I want | On other watches | On fēnix 5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| My names | DOWN from today | START, then hold UP, then My names |
| settings | hold UP on today | START, then hold UP, then Settings |
13Different watches
The widget runs on 101 models and tries to use whatever each display offers.
Venu Sq 2, Venu X1 — left-aligned, with the next days instead of a single tomorrow.
fēnix 5 Plus, 6 Pro, the fēnix 7 family, MARQ, Enduro — strong high-contrast colours and outlines instead of dark fills.
14Tips and FAQ
Does the widget need the internet or a phone?
No. The name and public-holiday database is stored on the watch itself. The phone is needed only to install the app and to change its settings.
Why is a long name sometimes cut short with three dots?
On smaller displays the longest entries — „Den upálení mistra Jana Husa“, for instance — do not fit on one line. The font shrinks gradually first, and only when that is not enough does the end get trimmed. For public holidays the full name stays readable on the badge below the card.
Does it cover name days from other calendars?
This version works with the German calendar of saints. Separate apps with the same controls exist for Czech and Slovak name days.
I set an alert and nothing arrived
The usual reason: the setting was changed in Garmin Connect and the app has not been opened since. The watch only schedules its next alert while the app is running, so after a change on the phone just open the widget once.
The other common reason is that there is genuinely nothing to announce. The alert for your names arrives the day before the name day, so when none of your names has one tomorrow, silence is correct. The My names screen shows in advance who is next.
Something is broken or missing
Write to prezek@seznam.cz — the watch model and what exactly happened are the useful parts.
1.6.1 2026-08-31
- Support for 45 more watches — 101 in total. The whole fēnix 9 family (43mm, 47mm/51mm, 9 Pro 43/47/51mm, 9 Pro Solar 47/51mm), Venu, vívoactive 3 Music, 4 and 4S, Forerunner 245 Music, 645 Music, 745, 945 and 945 LTE, the whole MARQ first generation, Instinct 3 AMOLED and Instinct Crossover AMOLED, Descent Mk2, Mk2 S, Mk3, Mk3i and G2, D2 Air, Air X10, Mach 1, Mach 2 and Mach 2 Pro, Approach S50 and S70, and the Legacy Hero and Legacy Saga watches.
- Fixed: on the fēnix 7 family, Forerunner 255 and 955, enduro 3 and fēnix 8 Solar the palette for 8-bit transflective displays was not applied at all, so today’s highlight came out as a solid block of colour instead of a fine outline. It now reaches every transflective watch, as it always should have.
1.6 2026-08-21
- NEW: My names. Type the names you care about in Garmin Connect, separated by commas, and the watch keeps an eye on them. A new screen lists them in the order their name days come – today in a pill, tomorrow outlined, the rest with a countdown. Each name appears once, with its nearest name day.
- NEW: A separate alert for your names, with its own switch and its own time. It arrives the day BEFORE the name day – on the day itself it is late for flowers.
- NEW: Settings on the watch. Both alerts with their times, public-holiday highlighting, tomorrow in the glance, vibration and tap behaviour. Everything is still changeable from the phone as well.
- A name the calendar does not know stays in the list marked with an exclamation mark instead of disappearing without a word, so a typo is visible.
- Fixed: searching for a name could land on the wrong day with no way to reach the right one – a short name lost to a longer one containing it. Whole-name matches now come first, and when several days match, the watch offers a list to choose from.
- Fixed: searching for a name the calendar does not contain crashed the app.
- Fixed: on watches with transflective displays the palette used pure primary colours that looked harsh. The name of the day is now mint, tomorrow amber, a public holiday coral.
- Fixed: two alerts set within five minutes of each other could stop alerts from arriving at all.
- Fixed: opening the app pushed a pending alert further away, because a wake-up can only be scheduled at least five minutes ahead.
- On watches without glances (fenix 5 Plus, 5S Plus, 5X Plus) the main screen is a preview inside the widget loop, where UP and DOWN belong to the system. My names and the settings are reached with START and then MENU.
1.3 2026-08-19
- The app has a new look. Nothing was added or taken away: the name-day and public-holiday data is unchanged and, as before, lives entirely inside the app — no internet connection is needed.
- Today’s screen: the name of the day now sits in its own card and takes over the space the app title used to occupy. Tomorrow moved to a single quiet line underneath.
- A short arc next to the START button shows which button opens the year list, instead of the down arrow that suggested pressing DOWN.
- Long names now shrink gently to fit instead of dropping to a much smaller size.
- The date line shows the day of the week as well.
- Public holidays are marked with a badge carrying the name of the holiday, instead of turning the whole screen red.
- Year list: each month opens with a full-width divider carrying its name, Sundays stand out from working days, and the highlight on today is calmer.
- A short vibration marks each scroll step in the year list. It follows the watch’s own vibration setting and can also be switched off on its own.
- Glance: a colour stripe along the left edge shows whether today is an ordinary name day or a public holiday.
- Square-screen watches (Venu Sq 2, Venu X1) get a layout of their own — left-aligned, with the next days instead of just tomorrow.
- Colours were retuned across the whole app. Watches with older displays keep strong, high-contrast colours so nothing is lost on them.
- New app icon: the tulip now sits inside a year ring whose lit segment marks today. The ring and the language chip carry the app’s colour, so the Czech, Slovak and German apps stay apart even at the smallest icon size, where two letters cannot be read.
1.2 2026-07-28
- Glance view: the day’s name now renders one font size larger wherever the glance band is tall enough for it, so it stands out and reads better at a glance.
1.1 2026-07-22
- Support for 11 new watches — 56 supported devices: Venu 4 (41/45 mm), Venu X1, Venu Sq 2 (+ Music), Forerunner 570 (42/47 mm), Forerunner 970, Forerunner 170/170M/70.
1.0 2026-07-17
- First release: German name-day calendar (the Catholic calendar of saints for the German-speaking area) as a widget with glance support.
- Today + tomorrow view, scrollable year list, jump to a month, name search that ignores case and umlauts.
- Nationwide statutory holidays highlighted, including the moveable Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension and Whit Monday.
