Namedays CZ

1What the app does

In the Czech calendar 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.
• Birthdays and anniversaries — a second field next to My names: a label and a date. They are announced the evening before, just like name days.
• 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.
• Special days — Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Women’s Day, St Nicholas and the clock changes, with a switch of their own and an optional reminder.
• 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.

My names is the reason this widget exists. Set it once in Garmin Connect and you no longer have to keep your people’s name days in your head — the watch speaks up in time by itself. Details in My names.

2Installing

1. Open the app page in the Connect IQ Store and hit Download.
2. The widget lands on the watch at the next sync with Garmin Connect.
3. 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 „Drahoslava, Drahuše“ 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.

On three days of the year — 1 January, 1 and 8 May — the name-day entry is the name of the holiday. There the badge is left out, because it would only repeat what the card already says; the colouring stays.

Public-holiday highlighting can be switched off in the settings if you only want the names.

5Special days

Besides public holidays the widget knows days that are not a day off but are worth remembering: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Women’s Day, St Nicholas and the clock changes. It works out the moveable ones itself — Mother’s Day is the second Sunday in May.

On today’s screen a special day gets a pink badge with its name, in the year list a tag after the name, and in the glance a pink stripe. The day before, the tomorrow line announces it, so nothing takes you by surprise.

6The 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.

7Finding a name

In MENU → Find name, type part of a name. The search ignores case and diacritics, so vaclav finds Václav. 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. Petr is the only name in the calendar that falls on two days — 22 February and, as „Pavel, Petr“, 29 June.

Days where the text matches the whole name always come first; names that merely start with it follow underneath.

8My 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: Jitka, Petr, Alena. Spaces around the commas do not matter, and neither does capitalisation or Czech accents — tobias finds Tobiáš.

Each name appears in the list once, with its nearest name day. Petr has his name day on 22 February and again on 29 June as „Petr a Pavel“; only the one that comes first is listed. Once it passes, the other takes its place on its own.

9Birthdays and anniversaries

Next to My names, Garmin Connect has a second field: Birthdays and anniversaries. Type a label and a date, entries separated by commas: Mum 3/12, Wedding 6/5. A year is optional — Jana 3/12/1985 works too. The day-first form with dots is understood as well: Mum 12.3.

The dates join the My names list, ordered by what comes first, and the My names alert reminds you the evening before: „Tomorrow: Mum“. Someone born on 29 February celebrates on 28 February in non-leap years.

10Glance

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. A special day has a pink stripe.

When someone from your names or dates has a name day or birthday tomorrow, the glance says so in amber instead of the ordinary tomorrow line. A birthday today shows as „TODAY · Mum“.

11Alerts

There are three alerts, and each has its own switch.

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 — and the day before a birthday or anniversary from the second field. Tomorrow is not a typo — on the day itself it is late for flowers. It defaults to 18:00.

The special-day reminder arrives the evening before, at the My names alert time — „Tomorrow: Mother’s Day“, for instance. It has no time of its own but its own switch.

When alerts fall at the same time you get one message with everything, not several.

12Settings 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.

13All settings

14Controls

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.

The menu is the only place where touch watches differ from one another:

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.

15Different watches

The widget runs on 111 models and tries to use whatever each display offers.

Instinct 3 Solar and Instinct E have a display that shows only black and white, so they get a look of their own — grey labels and outlines would disappear. The day number sits in the round window at the top right, today in the list is a white pill with black text, and nothing runs into the window.

16Tips 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 Czech calendar. Separate apps with the same controls exist for the Slovak, German, Polish, Hungarian, Latvian and Lithuanian calendars.

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.