Recap

1What Recap does

Your watch only remembers the last few days in detail. Recap takes its own daily snapshot and builds the summaries you cannot get anywhere else on the watch — 7 days, a month, a whole year.

• Three summary pages — 7 days, month, year. Steps, distance, calories, floors and active minutes in one place.
• Daily bars that mark the days you hit your step goal, with today highlighted.
• History browsing — earlier weeks, months and years, as far back as your history goes.
• A glance card with today’s steps and the weekly total, without opening the app.
• Wellness and recovery RECAP PLUS — resting heart rate, stress, Body Battery, breathing and recovery time, by week and by month.

The watch does all the work. No account, no subscription, no server that gets to see your data.

2Installing and the first days

1. Install Recap from the Connect IQ Store — from the Connect IQ app on your phone, or from the web.
2. Open it once on the watch. On the first open Recap reads the watch’s own history and fills in up to 7 days back. Until then the glance card only says OPEN TO START.
3. Add it to your favourite glances (on a fēnix: hold MENU on the watch face → Glances) so today’s steps are one button away.
4. Let it run. From then on Recap records each day by itself — when you open it, and roughly every 4 hours in the background.

So the month page starts out incomplete, and so does the year. Recap does not hide that: the year page says SINCE 12 JUL — the date its data really starts.

3Controls

Two axes: START (or a tap) switches pages, UP/DOWN (or a vertical swipe) moves through time inside the page you are on.

While you are at the current period, where there is nothing newer to browse to, UP (swipe down) steps to the previous page instead. From the first page that takes you straight to the last one, without walking the whole cycle.

The ‹ › chevrons in the subtitle show which way there is still something to browse. Switching pages always returns you to the current period.

The short arcs near the top edge are the page indicator — how many pages there are and which one you are on. The three summary pages and the Recap Plus block are separated by a wider gap.

A horizontal swipe is only a bonus, and the watch may claim it for itself: on most models a right swipe browses into the past and a left swipe back towards today, but on vívoactive 6, Venu 2 and D2 Air X10 a right swipe always means „back“, and on epix 2 and Descent G2 a left swipe browses into the past. The reliable time axis is the UP/DOWN buttons and a vertical swipe.

4The 7-day page

The default page and the heart of the app.

• Title — LAST 7 DAYS for the rolling week, THIS WEEK for the calendar one (see settings). Browsing history changes it to WEEK.
• Subtitle — the date range plus your step-goal score, for example 5/7: five goal days out of seven days with data. The denominator counts days with data, so a freshly installed Recap never reads as a week of missed goals.
• The big number — steps for the whole window, with its unit underneath.
• The grid — distance (km or miles, following your watch), calories, floors and active minutes.
• Day bars — steps day by day, scaled to the best day in the window. full colour = step goal met, the same colour held back = missed, white = today. A thin stub means a day with no data.
• The goal line — a dashed line across the bars marks your step goal, so a day you missed shows how close it was. Recap records the goal for each day separately (Garmin’s auto goal moves), so past weeks keep the goal you actually had. If no day in the window reached it, the line becomes the top of the scale.

5Month and year

The same layout as the week page, with a different summary at the bottom.

• Month — one bar per calendar week of the month, with the date that week starts under it. You can see at a glance which week was strong and which was not. The daily average moved up next to the big number’s label (STEPS · 11,945/DAY).
• Year — twelve bars, January to December, with the month’s initial under each. The best day of the year moved up to the big number’s label.
• The bars are averages per recorded day, not totals. February is therefore comparable with March, and a part-week at a month boundary does not look like a slump. Today is left out of the running week and the running month, so the numbers do not sag as the day goes on.
• The colours match the weekly bars — full colour means the average reached your step goal, dimmed means it did not, white is the running week or month. The dashed line is the goal. A period with no data stays a thin stub.
• If you prefer the old numbers, switch Charts on month and year to Numbers in the settings: DAILY AVG comes back on the month page and BEST DAY with its date on the year page. Watches with a fixed system font always show numbers, as the charts would not fit there.
• On watches without a barometer the best day already sits in the grid, so in number mode the bottom line shows DAYS TRACKED instead.
• The year subtitle adds SINCE date when tracking only started during the year.

6Browsing history

UP / DOWN (or a vertical swipe) moves you a whole period at a time: week by week, month by month, year by year.

• Past periods get a different title — THIS MONTH → MONTH — and the week page drops the today highlight.
• You cannot go further back than your first recorded day; the ‹ › chevrons simply stop showing.
• BACK returns you to the current period in one press.

The history grows with you. Recap stores about 2 kB per month, so years of it fit in the app’s storage.

7The glance

The glance is the strip your watch shows in its glance carousel — no need to open the app.

• The big number — steps today, live.
• The bottom line — the last 7 days: distance and steps. On narrower displays it shortens to the distance alone.
• The RECAP title carries your theme colour — a settings change reaches the glance immediately.

Until Recap has been opened at least once, the glance has nothing to build on and says OPEN TO START.

8Recap Plus: trends, wellness and recovery

Past the year page the cycle continues into the paid block: trends first, then a mint-coloured trio about how your body is holding up — wellness week, wellness month and recovery.

Trends

Twelve periods side by side, and with them the number no other screen shows you: what an average week of yours actually looks like.

• The big number is the average of your settled weeks. The running week is left out, and so is a week the watch only partly recorded, such as the one you installed Recap in. Otherwise it would drag the average down for a quarter of a year.
• The row under it says how far ahead or behind the running period is. It compares steps per day, not totals, so on the 2nd of a month it does not announce a 90 % collapse.
• The bars are the twelve periods, oldest on the left. The colours mean what they mean everywhere else: full colour when you met your step goal on at least half the recorded days, dimmed when you did not, white for the period still running, a thin stub for the time before your first record.
• On weeks a bar is a whole week; on months it is a single day. That is the only difference between the two views, and it has a reason: every week is seven days long, so weeks compare directly. Months are 28 to 31 days, and comparing totals would put February a tenth below March even if you walked exactly the same amount every single day. So months are divided by the number of recorded days and the big number reads AVERAGE PER DAY. The year page has always counted it this way.
• The dotted line is your own average. The dashed line on the week and month pages means your step goal, so this one is drawn differently on purpose — two different things must not look the same.
• At the bottom is your best week, with its date.
• Zooming out — DOWN (or a swipe up) switches to twelve months and the page turns blue, UP comes back to the teal weeks. The colour itself tells you which zoom you are on. BACK returns to weeks before it closes the widget.
• What the trends follow is a setting: steps (default), distance, active minutes, calories or floors. Only steps carry a goal, so for the others there is no goal line and no dimmed bars — just your own average. Floors falls back to steps on watches without a barometer.
• The white bar is the period still running, and it does not compete. It stays out of the average, and it cannot be your „best“ until it has at least a week behind it (half a month on the month view). Without that rule the first strong day of a month would crown that month the best of the year.
• A fresh install does not pretend. Instead of inventing a trend it says 3/12 WEEKS COLLECTED and shows the bars it already has.

Wellness and recovery

Wellness week

• The headline — your average resting heart rate over seven days, with the difference against last week below it (the triangle shows the direction; no „better/worse“ judgement).
• Tiles — average stress plus one bonus value, whichever your watch measures: SpO2, breathing rate, how far your skin temperature sits from its long-term average, or the average overnight charge.
• The bands at the bottom — the daily Body Battery range (low to high) for each of the seven days. Today is white; a day without a record is just a stub.
• The quiet hint HIGH STRAIN · TAKE IT EASY only appears when several signals line up at once — resting heart rate, skin temperature and breathing rate all above your own 30-day baseline. It is not a medical claim, just a nudge to notice.

Wellness month

• The headline is again the average resting heart rate, compared with last month.
• A curve of your daily resting heart rate across the month against a dotted 30-day level. The dotted line is drawn for the running month only — on older months it would lie, because the baseline is computed up to today.
• Tiles: average stress, and how many days Body Battery reached 100%.
• At the bottom, the calmest day of the month.

Recovery

• The headline is your average recovery time in hours over the last seven days, with the difference against the week before.
• Tiles for BREATH (resting breathing rate) and MAX HR (the highest daily heart rate of the week).
• Seven daily bars of recovery load at the bottom.
• Until the watch records a recovery time, the page honestly shows a dash and FILLS IN AFTER A WORKOUT — breathing and max HR are already live.

The first week

Wellness data cannot be reconstructed backwards; it is collected from the day you install. For the first seven days both wellness pages therefore show a COLLECTING DATA state with the number of days gathered and honest partial numbers (FROM 3 DAYS) — never an empty page.

Trial and unlocking

• Every install starts with 14 days free of the complete Recap Plus.
• After that the three pages collapse into a single preview card, and Recap Plus unlocks with a one-time $2.99 payment. No subscription, no sign-up.
• The watch shows a short code on that card. Enter it at kzl.io/code, pay, and the watch unlocks itself within a minute.
• The payment server remembers a purchased watch — reinstalling never asks you to pay twice.
• The 7-day, month and year pages stay free forever and the license never touches them.

9Every setting explained

Right on the watch (since 1.3.0): on any page hold MENU (the UP button); on touch-only watches touch and hold the screen. A system menu opens, each item showing its current value; a change applies as soon as you return.

On your phone: Garmin Connect → your device → Connect IQ / Activities & App Management → Recap → Settings (or in the Connect IQ app, or through Garmin Express on a computer). They are the same settings — the last change wins on either side and the next sync lines them up.

10Watch-face complications

Since 1.5 Recap can put two values right on your watch face as complications (data fields): Steps today and Steps – 7 days. Tapping the field opens Recap directly — the fastest route to your summaries there is.

• Where it works. Garmin’s built-in watch faces don’t offer app fields yet. Use a Face It watch face — on your phone open the Connect IQ app → Face It, edit a face, tap a data field and pick Recap – steps today. The other option is a Connect IQ store watch face with slots for app complications.
• Permission. After the update the watch asks once for a new permission (complication publishing) — without it no values reach the watch face.
• Freshness. Steps today refresh roughly every 15 minutes and whenever you open Recap, so they can trail the native counter by a few steps. The weekly total recalculates with the data sync (~every 4 hours) — invisible at weekly magnitude.

11How it works and where the data lives

• A daily snapshot. The watch keeps detailed activity history for about a week. So Recap writes one small record per day (steps, distance, calories, floors, active minutes, goal met) into its own storage and builds every summary from that.
• When it happens. Every time you open the widget, plus roughly every 4 hours in the background; since 1.5 the watch also wakes briefly every ~15 minutes to refresh the complications (no storage writes on those wakes). Missing days are filled from the watch’s own history up to 7 days back, so a weekend away from your phone costs you nothing.
• Wellness collection. Resting heart rate, stress, SpO2, Body Battery, breathing, skin temperature and recovery time all come from measurements the watch already makes — Recap switches no sensor on. That is what the sensor history and user profile permissions are for.
• The data stays on the watch. Recap uploads nothing, has no account and no server. The only connection it ever makes is the anonymous Recap Plus license check (the communications permission).
• Space. About 2 kB per month — years of history ahead of you.

12Tips and FAQ

The complication shows a different number than the watch / doesn’t vibrate on tap

The value refreshes every ~15 minutes, so it can trail the native counter by a few steps — opening Recap lines it up. And tapping an app complication comes without a vibration; that is how the system treats every Connect IQ complication. Recap opens all the same.

Why are the numbers slightly different from Garmin Connect?

Recap reads the daily totals straight from the watch. Garmin Connect refines them further after syncing, so small differences in distance and calories are normal. Steps and floors match.

I installed Recap today — why is the month almost empty?

The watch’s own history only reaches seven days back, and nothing can reconstruct more. From the install on, one record is added every day, so your first complete month arrives in a month and the first full year in a year. That is why the year page states the date its data starts.

Where are the floors?

They are missing on watches without a barometer (vívoactive 6 and similar) — Recap shows your best day there instead.

The wellness pages show dashes.

Either Recap is freshly installed (the first seven days of collecting), or your watch does not measure that metric. Resting heart rate in particular comes from overnight measurements — it needs you to wear the watch while you sleep.

Did I lose my data?

The summaries live in the app’s storage on the watch. Uninstalling Recap or resetting the watch clears them, and a fresh install can only fill in the last 7 days again. Changing phones or syncing with Connect does not affect them.

Can Recap go on a watch face?

No — Recap is a widget (a glance). You open it from the glance carousel; on a fēnix, press UP from the watch face.

Languages and units

Recap speaks 19 languages and follows the watch’s language. Kilometres or miles come from the watch’s unit setting — there is nothing to switch separately.

Something is broken, or missing

Write to prezek@seznam.cz. What changed in which version is in the changelog.