Turn it on for your study

In your study configuration, enable Garmin watch app (surveys on the watch). Until this is on, the watch features stay hidden in the participant’s app — the Garmin menu will not offer the Watch App screen and no surveys will reach a watch.

This setting sits next to the biometrics setting and is separate from it. Turning on the watch app does not start biometric collection, and turning on biometrics does not deliver surveys.

Check

After you change the setting, the participant’s app picks it up the next time they tap Download Updates. If you are testing on your own device, do that before expecting the Watch App screen to appear.

What the participant needs

  • A supported Garmin watch (see the Overview article).
  • The Garmin Connect app on their phone, with the watch already paired in it. This is Garmin’s own app and the way every Garmin watch is set up; it is not specific to mEMA.
  • The Garmin Connect IQ app on their phone. This is the free app store for Garmin watch apps, and it is how the mEMA watch app gets installed.
  • The mEMA app, set up with the participant’s server code and mobile code.

Pairing the watch in Garmin Connect must happen first. Everything else depends on it, and if it has not been done, the mEMA Watch App screen will report that no watch is set up.

One phone, one or more watches

A participant can have more than one watch paired. Surveys go to every watch they have, and each watch keeps its own copy. The Watch App screen lists them all, so you can see at a glance that each one is receiving.

What you do, and what we do

You handle everything inside the web application: enabling the setting, building surveys, assigning schedules, and reading the data. You and your research assistants also handle the participant-facing setup in Setting up a participant's watch.

Come to us for anything below that line — a watch model we do not support yet, a survey that will not appear on a watch after you have worked through the checks in Troubleshooting the watch app, or anything that looks like a fault rather than a configuration question. We can read the diagnostics; you should never need to.